The Thorny Destiny of the Bessarabian Migrant in Current Prose

In this study the author refers not only to the topic of illegal emigration, particularly to the issue of human trafficking, reflected in the novels written by Liliana Corobca and Stela Branzeanu – two writers from the Republic of Moldova, but also to the way this phenomenon is reflected in the novels of other writers whose protagonists represent the current situation in Bessarabia. The novels do simply offer solutions to the situation in which the characters are, but they tend to make the reading public aware of illegal migration and human trafficking as well as to draw attention to the identity problems in the Republic of Moldova. The authors focus more on the subject and less on the aesthetic finality or on the architecture of the writings, their focus is basically the dialogues, the direct discourse, which is rather journalistic, as well as the simplification of the lexical props, following the desideratum of accessibility and sensitization of the reader.

The Diatribe in Meaning Making of Paul’s Letter to Romans

ABSTRACT In this work it was analized the diatribe in the meaning making of the Paul’s letter to Romans, focusing on the dialogical relations in its use in the enunciative construction of the letter. Thus, it dialogues with the enunciative language perspective from Bakhtin’s Circle, from a qualitative and interpretative approach. The analysis of the letter showed the occurrence of the diatribe materialized in the linguistic-enunciative elements that configure the rhetorical direct discourse. In terms of using this diatribical resource in meaning making, the letter reveals its internal dialogicity, veiled dialogue, the meeting of voices and discourses, materializing enunciatively recipients’ points of view. Therefore, meaning making settles down under bigger and smaller influence of the other and their anticipated response.

Fictive Deixis, Direct Discourse, and Viewpoint Networks

This paper proposes a renewed and more textured understanding of the relation between deixis and direct discourse, grounded in a broader range of genres and reflecting contemporary multimodal usage. I re-consider the phenomena covered by the concept of deixis in connection to the speech situation, and, by extension, to the category of Direct Discourse, in its various functions. I propose an understanding of Direct Discourse as a construction which is a correlate of Deictic Ground. Relying on Mental Spaces Theory and the apparatus it makes available for a close analysis of viewpoint networks, I analyze examples from a range of discourse genres - textual, visual and multimodal, such as literature, political campaigns, internet memes and storefront signs. These discourse contexts use Direct Discourse Constructions but usually lack a fully profiled Deictic Ground. I propose that in such cases the Deictic Ground is not a pre-existing conceptual structure, but rather is set up ad hoc to construe non-standard uses of Direct Discourse–I refer to such construals as Fictive Deictic Grounds. In that context, I propose a re-consideration of the concept of Direct Discourse, to explain its tight correlation with the concept of deixis. I also argue for a treatment of Deictic Ground as a composite structure, which may not be fully profiled in each case, while participating in the construction of viewpoint configurations.

Logophoric speech is not indirect: towards a syntactic approach to reported speech constructions

The distinction between direct and indirect speech has long been known not to reflect the crosslinguistic diversity of speech reporting strategies. Yet prominent typological approaches remain firmly grounded in that traditional distinction and look to place language-specific strategies on a universal continuum, treating them as deviations from the “direct” and “indirect” ideals. We argue that despite their methodological attractiveness, continuum approaches do not provide a solid basis for crosslinguistic comparison. We aim to present an alternative by exploring the syntax of logophoric speech, which has been commonly treated in the literature as representative of “semi-direct” discourse. Based on data from two unrelated languages, Wan (Mande) and Ainu (isolate), we show that certain varieties of logophoric speech share a number of syntactic properties with direct speech, and none with indirect speech. Many of the properties of indirect speech that are traditionally described in terms of perspective follow from its syntactically subordinate status. Constructions involving direct and logophoric speech, on the other hand, belong to a separate, universal type of structure. Our findings suggest that the alleged direct/indirect continuum conflates two independent aspects of speech reporting: the syntactic configuration in which the report is integrated, and language-specific meaning of indexical elements.

Another turn of the screw on the history of the reaction object construction

This article deals with the Reaction Object Construction (ROC), as in She smiled disbelief, where an intransitive verb (smile), by adding an emotional object (disbelief), acquires the extended sense “express X by V−ing” (i.e. “She expressed disbelief by smiling”). Earlier research has suggested a diachronic connection between the ROC and Direct Discourse Constructions (DDCs) of the type She smiled, “I don’t believe you” (Visser 1963–1973). More recently, Bouso (2018) has shown that the ROC is primarily a feature of 19th century narrative fiction. This paper aims to bring together these insights. On the basis of a self-compiled corpus and De Smet’s Corpus of English Novels, it investigates the productivity of the ROC in 19th and 20th century fiction, and the role of DDCs in its development. The results reveal a peak in the productivity of the ROC that coincides with the development of the sentimental novel, and a correlation between the development of the ROC on the one hand and of those DDCs that have been mistakenly hypothesised to be its single source constructions on the other. Extravagance is proposed as a triggering factor for the use of the ROC in the 19th century as an alternative to DDCs.

Plenardebatten als Spiegel sich wandelnder Diskurskoalitionen: Die Positionierung der Bun- destagsfraktionen zum Verhältnis von Ökologie und Ökonomie seit 1977

Contrary to what is often assumed, members of the German Bundestag do not only use the plenary debates for issuing pre-fabricated statements or advertising party positions to an imaginary public but they also refer to each other and enter into a direct discourse on con­tent . In an innovative long-term study, this article examines all speech shares on ecological topics in the chancellor’s budget debates (EP 04) since the eighth legislative period . By com­bining quantitative and qualitative content-analytical methods, it shows how discourse coali­tions develop and change within and between parliamentary groups . Not only did the ecol­ogy issue continuously take up more space in the budget debates but content alliances developed across factional boundaries, with the CDU/CSU and the Greens in particular converging over time and partly taking up each other’s arguments . The second readings on EP 04 provide a very good basis for comparison in this regard as they depict the antagonism between government and opposition annually in a largely unchanged framework, which allows to control possible intervening variables .

Provocative Vocatives in the Gospels: Part 3, John

This article is the last in a three-part survey of the various vocative forms used in direct discourse in the Gospels, and the similarities and differences among the forms used. Some of the problems associated with finding terms appropriate to each context in English and other languages are raised, and attention is drawn to the complexity of the issues.

Types, Distribution, and Lexico-Grammatical Realization of Discourse Presentation Categories and Their Functional Implications

The fourth chapter presents the quantitative findings for the categories of speech, writing, and thought presentation in the corpus of 19th-century narrative fiction and compares their statistical distribution with the findings by Semino and Short (2004) for 20th-century fiction. The author finds that the JLVeffects of particular categories of thought presentation are different from those of speech presentation in the 19th-century data. Further, the scales of speech and thought presentation in 19th-century narrative fiction are differently distributed compared to the 20th century, this giving quantitative evidence to Fludernik’s (1993) “direct discourse fallacy” according to which a character’s direct discourse should never simply be accepted as fully reliable because the narrator’s mediation is always a distortion.

Provocative Vocatives in the Gospels: Part 2, Matthew, Luke

This article is the second in a three-part survey of the various vocative forms used in direct discourse in the Gospels, and the similarities and differences among the forms used. Some of the problems associated with finding terms appropriate to each context in English and other languages are raised, and attention is drawn to the complexity of the issues.