Exploring Pragmatics in Contemporary Cross-Cultural Contexts

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue is aimed at facilitating linguistic, applied linguistic and interdisciplinary research in the area of pragmatics of cross-cultural communication. It focuses on cross-cultural communication and the ways in which it is changing. We explore the new challenges that communication faces in terms of IT-driven versus traditional modes, as well as on the wide comprehensive understanding of culture. 

        The development of IT and AI in the 21st century has triggered an unprecedented change in the ways we communicate (e.g., Galinon-Mélénec, 2010; Fukumura et al., 2021). We talk less in person and the culturally important genres of communication, such as dinner talks (Blum-Kulka, 1997), may be fading into the past. We communicate more through the Internet, social media, apps, text messaging, blogs and other IT tools (e.g., Stein et al., 2013). We may communicate not only with other humans, but also with computers and AIs (e.g., Williams, 2021), such as our i-phone Siri (Zeidan et al., 2021). Through these tools, we may befriend any person on the other side of the world, but due to being too engaged with these tools, we may also ignore the people around us or face cyber-bullying (Wagner, 2019). We no longer need to transmit knowledge or information to each other through language (its primary referential function is undermined), since Internet and Wikipedia can do this for us. The assessment of communication and professional skills in education and professional development is challenged too, as “short essay” or “literature review” assignments are no longer sustainable due to ChatGPT. Images and multimedia rival the traditional communication channels of reading, writing and speaking/listening. Thus, the very essence and modes of what we used to know as communication are in a state of flux. Language teachers are losing ground in terms of what pragmatic functions to teach (Kawamura, 2018), as these functions are being constantly reinvented. While the consequences of humans’ own digital creations are not yet fully evaluated or understood, they are reshaping our communication, our language and its use, and therefore, they are altering the nature of our thought process and who we are as a species.

       At the same time, as we approach the end of the first quarter of the 21st century, it is becoming more apparent that globalization does not only bring benefits, such as the ability to communicate, trade, receive long-distance education worldwide, make new discoveries with researchers across the world, etc. (Coupland, 2010). Globalization also makes us more vulnerable to crises that may originate in individual countries and regions, but has repercussions around the whole world. The latter include ecological and climate change, economic and political crises, pandemics, wars, hunger, social inequalities, mass migrations and other hardships (National Geographic Society, n/a; Shopina et al., 2017). Instead of uniting in the face of global emergencies, people often become more antagonistic to one another, as we have seen, for example, during COVID-19 (Bar-On and Molas, 2021; Thobani, 2022).

     Nevertheless, global cataclysms can only be handled by joined efforts of different cultural and linguistic groups. Communication is believed to be based on the ability to construct mental representations of others’ minds (Givon, 2005). To break mistrust and antagonism among different social groups, we need to find communication pathways that allow us to find a common ground and build bridges over cross-cultural differences, while being sensitive and respectful of diversity. Getting to know and understand one another is the only way to prevent othering (no matter on what grounds the othering is made) (Melo-Pfeifer and Gertz, 2022). The cross-cultural aspect of communication in our study is understood in a broad way, not only as national cultures, but also as being representative of any other social groups seen intra-nationally and internationally, as it pertains, for example, to genders and sexual orientation groups, migrants, regional varieties, classes, professions, ages and generations, social networks, communities of practice, online and social media communities, etc. These considerations have been an inspiration for this volume, which will hopefully advance pragmatics one step further in understanding the patterns of the changing contexts and communication patterns across cultures and languages. 

The scope of expected contributions

We welcome innovative contributions that explore the above-outlined or other specifics of pragmatics in intercultural communication in the 21st century. We are particularly interested in original cross-cultural comparisons or intercultural communication studies within any of the following subfields of linguistic pragmatics:

• Politeness/impoliteness;
• Speech acts;
• Language functions;
• Presupposition and implicature;
• Contexts impact on communication (personal and online);
• Genres and modalities;
• Pragmatics in language teaching/learning/acquisition including bi/multilingualism.

Any empirical methods are welcome, e.g., qualitative, quantitative and mixed-method research approaches. The studies could be based on experimental, corpus linguistics, discourse, conversation, text and other analytical methodologies. However, in this particular volume, we will not consider works on the history of pragmatics, literature reviews or individual case studies, i.e., studies with very small numbers of participants. To summarize, we are looking for original research works supported by robust data analysis and contributing to pragmatics theory.

The submissions are expected to follow the steps outlined below. Abstracts will be reviewed by the Guest Editors for the purposes of ensuring a proper fit within the scope of the Special Issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer-reviewing.

Submission steps:

1. Proposal abstract submission (October 20).

Interested individuals are expected to submit an abstract of the proposed contribution by October 20 to the Languages Editorial Office ([email protected]).  For any questions related to the content suitability, please contact the Guest Editor at [email protected]

2. Notification of acceptance (November 10).

The abstracts will be reviewed, and the notification of acceptance will be sent to the authors by November 10.

3. Submission of the full article (May 20, 2024)

Authors of selected contributions will be requested to provide the full articles of 7000–9000 words (maximum) by May 20, 2024.

References

Bar-On, T., & Molas, B. (2021). Responses to the COVID-19 pandemic by the radical right : scapegoating, conspiracy theories and new narratives. Stuttgart: ibidem-Verlag.

Blum-Kulka, S. (1997). Dinner talk: Cultural Patterns of Sociability and Socialization in Family Discourse. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Coupland, N. (2010). The handbook of language and globalization (Blackwell handbooks in linguistics) (Vol. 58). WILEY. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444324068

Fukumura, Y. E., McLaughlin Gray, J., Lucas, G. M., Becerik-Gerber, B., & Roll, S. C. (2021). Worker Perspectives on Incorporating Artificial Intelligence into Office Workspaces: Implications for the Future of Office Work. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(4), 1690. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18041690

Galinon-Mélénec, B. (2010). Enterprise social networks: new tools for new challenges? Communication et organisation, 37(1), 41–51.

Givon, T. (2005). Context as Other Minds: The Pragmatics of Sociality, Cognition and Communication. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Kawamura, A. (2018). Lexical Pragmatics : Teaching English Communication and Pragmatic Skills to Japanese Learners. Tokyo: Hituzi Syobo Publishing.

Melo-Pfeifer, S., & Gertz, H. D. (2022). Transforming disinformation on minorities into a pedagogical resource: Towards a Critical Intercultural News Literacy. Media and Communication (Lisboa), 10(4), 338–346. https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.v10i4.5708

National Geographic Society. (n/a). Efects of Economic Globalization. https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/effects-economic-globalization/

Shopina, I., Oliinyk, O. & Finaheiev, V. (2017). Globalization and its negative impact on the global economy. Baltic Journal of Economic Studies 3(5), 457-461.

Stein, D., Virtanen, T., & Herring, S. (2013). Pragmatics of Computer-Mediated Communication. De Gruyter, Inc.

Thobani, S. (2022). The Deadly Intersections of COVID-19: Race, States, Inequalities and Global Society. EBSCO.

Wagner, A. (2019). E-victimization and e-predation theory as the dominant aggressive communication: the case of cyber bullying. Social Semiotics, 29(3), 303–318. https://doi.org/10.1080/10350330.2019.1587832

Williams, E. A. E. (2021). Pragmatic extension in computer-mediated communication: The case of ‘#’ and ‘™’ Journal of Pragmatics, 181, 165–179. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2021.05.026

Zeidan, A., Abdelgelil, H. T., Edwin, E., & Alqarni, D. (2021). Apple Siri as communication conduit during COVID-19: between inside and outside the OR. BMJ Simulation & Technology Enhanced Learning, 7(4), 274–275. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjstel-2020-000740

Prof. Dr. Veronika Makarova
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Languages is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• pragmatics
• intercultural communication
• 21st century