Papers by Jonathan Culpeper
Please refer to published version for the most recent bibliographic citation information. If a pu... more Please refer to published version for the most recent bibliographic citation information. If a published version is known of, the repository item page linked to above, will contain details on accessing it.
Choice Reviews Online, 2012
This study investigates the emotions one experiences when one participates in impolite discourses... more This study investigates the emotions one experiences when one participates in impolite discourses. Specifically, it addresses the question of whether different cultures experience different emotions in the light of discourses deemed impolite. We begin by discussing the nature of impoliteness, pointing out that key concepts such as face and sociality rights seem to be closely connected to particular emotions. We discuss the role of cognition in the mediation of emotion, arguing that it is essential in the explanation of impoliteness, and indeed cultural variation. We analyse 500 reports of impoliteness events generated by undergraduates based in England, Finland, Germany, Turkey and China. We extract emotion labels from our data and classify them into emotion groups. Our results suggest that there is less cultural variation at higher level emotion categories, but more at lower level. For example, our Chinese and Turkish data suggests that our informants contrast with the other datasets in experiencing sadness to a greater degree.
The Palgrave Handbook of Linguistic (Im)politeness, 2017
This chapter maps out the space occupied by phenomena that do not belong to either politeness or ... more This chapter maps out the space occupied by phenomena that do not belong to either politeness or impoliteness, but in some sense fit both. It focuses on mixed or mismatching interpersonal messages that are incongruous on at least one level of interpretation or generate a sense of interpretive or evaluative dissonance. They encompass phenomena that typically attract labels such as sarcasm, banter and teasing. The authors discuss the pragmatic background of such mixed messages, especially drawing on approaches to irony, how they figure in classic politeness theories, and, in particular, how they work. This part of the chapter considers their metapragmatics, the constituents of the ‘mix’ of messages, how particular ‘mixes’ become conventionalised, their functions and also how they are perceived.
Methods in Pragmatics, 2018
Have some of the prosecutions for religiously aggravated offences going before the courts amounte... more Have some of the prosecutions for religiously aggravated offences going before the courts amounted to attempts to apply unjust prohibitions against freedom of speech? Is there any evidence that the provisions for religiously aggravated offences have been applied to suppress criticism of religion? This paper applies an analysis of Crown Prosecution Service records on religiously aggravated offences to address these questions.
We will address the strangeness of early modern English for contemporary readers and audiences an... more We will address the strangeness of early modern English for contemporary readers and audiences and consider how significant changes in the meanings of many words present challenges to teachers (at school and university) and performers. We will report on a pilot study investigating some of the problems do twenty-first century readers encounter when confronted with Shakespeare’s texts, and offer some suggestions as to how the new corpus techniques used in the Encyclopedia and becoming freely available to teachers can help to address these in the future.
In: Denis Jamet and Manuel Jobert (eds.) Aspects of Impoliteness
In this paper we focus on automatic part-of-speech (POS) annotation, in the context of historical... more In this paper we focus on automatic part-of-speech (POS) annotation, in the context of historical English texts. Techniques that were originally developed for modern English have been applied to numerous other languages over recent years. Despite this diversification, it is still almost invariably the case that the texts being analysed are from contemporary rather than historical sources. Although there is some recognition among historical linguists of the advantages of annotation for the retrieval of lexical, grammatical and other linguistic phenomena, the implementation of such forms of annotation by automatic methods is problematic. For example, changes in grammar over time will lead to a mismatch between probabilistic language models derived from, say, Present-day English and Middle English. Similarly, variability and changes in spelling can cause problems for POS taggers with fixed lexicons and rulebases. To determine the extent of the problem, and develop possible solutions, w...
In: Jonathan Culpeper, Francis Katamba, Paul Kerswill, Ruth Wodak and Tony McEnery (eds.) .) Engl... more In: Jonathan Culpeper, Francis Katamba, Paul Kerswill, Ruth Wodak and Tony McEnery (eds.) .) English Language: Description, Variation and Context
Affirmatives and negatives raise interesting issues for both grammar and pragmatics. This paper f... more Affirmatives and negatives raise interesting issues for both grammar and pragmatics. This paper focusses on the Early Modern English negatives no and nay, and their role in the question-response system. Using data from Shakespeare’s plays and corpus methods, we note the demise of 'nay', and the specific uses and pragmatic meanings of 'no' and 'nay'. We conclude by discussing our key findings in a broader theoretical and cross-linguistic perspective.
The Palgrave Handbook of Linguistic (Im)politeness, 2017
This chapter elaborates on how concepts and theories from linguistic pragmatics (notably, speech ... more This chapter elaborates on how concepts and theories from linguistic pragmatics (notably, speech act theory and conversational implicature) have shaped early politeness theories. It critically examines key politeness notions (e.g. face threatening acts; politeness principles, maxims and implicatures; politeness strategies; indirectness), highlighting how their linguistic pragmatic underpinnings led to specific problems, yet also how developments in pragmatics (e.g. Neo-Gricean pragmatics, Relevance theory) have promoted positive developments in politeness research (e.g. the frame-based approach to politeness; the various proposals for strengthening and extending Grice’s account of implicature in the context of politeness). The chapter concludes by noting how recent pragmatics researchers have taken a renewed interest in (Im)politeness phenomena because of what they can contribute to experimental and formal pragmatics research.
Text & Talk, 2021
This paper focusses on compliment responses in the context of group undergraduate student project... more This paper focusses on compliment responses in the context of group undergraduate student projects, in a university in Hong Kong. It applies Geoffrey Leech’s model of politeness. Although less well known than some other politeness models, it has proved relatively popular in studies of compliment responses, which are often said to involve a clash between the Maxim of Agreement (achieved by agreeing with the complimenter) and the Maxim of Modesty (achieved by mitigating the compliment, thereby disagreeing with the complimenter). This study deploys Leech’s most recent work on politeness in the study of compliment responses. Using an innovative variant of the discourse completion task adapted to WhatsApp to collect text messages and metapragmatic comments from undergraduate students in Hong Kong on their messages, it reveals that acceptance strategies are overwhelmingly the most frequent type. This finding adds to the small body of work on compliment responses in Hong Kong cultures, and...
Discourse & Society, 2020
This paper applies the notions of impoliteness and shameless normalisation to potentially impolit... more This paper applies the notions of impoliteness and shameless normalisation to potentially impolite behaviours produced by Donald Trump and Silvio Berlusconi in official press conferences. Press conferences, as an activity type, involve relatively clear expectations and norms, so that impolite behaviours theoretically constitute particularly salient violations. We present two case studies involving racist and misogynist insults on the part of Berlusconi and Trump, respectively, analysed in their co-textual, interactional, socio-political as well as historical contexts. We describe the kinds of impoliteness that each politician employs, without any apology, and argue that they involve violations of the traditional moral order that are part of a far-right populist agenda of shameless normalisation. In each case, we examine comments posted in response to YouTube videos of each incident and provide evidence of polarised responses, but with substantial proportions expressing positive eval...
Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 2018
In this chapter, we first discuss the role that pragmatics has played in the development of (im)p... more In this chapter, we first discuss the role that pragmatics has played in the development of (im)politeness theory, and the recent move towards a middle ground that integrates classic and discursive approaches to (im)politeness. We outline the key tenets of integrative pragmatics that afford such a move, before illustrating how these can be implemented through a case study focusing on an incident in Big Brother UK where the (ostensibly) jocular use of a racial slur by a contestant caused offence and the subsequent removal of that contestant from the show. Our analyses draw from multiple methods, including those of interactional pragmatics and corpus pragmatics. In this way, we aim to both highlight the fundamentally pragmatic basis of (im)politeness, as well as the need for a nuanced and complex theorisation that integrates multiple perspectives and methods of analysis.
Language and Literature: International Journal of Stylistics, 2020
Teaching and learning Shakespeare takes place across the world. Pedagogical matters have been the... more Teaching and learning Shakespeare takes place across the world. Pedagogical matters have been the subject of much discussion in the last few decades. This article begins by reviewing that discussion, showing how different approaches – textual, contextual and active (or performance) – connect with the language of the plays. No study, it is pointed out, has conducted an empirical investigation as to what exactly students find problematic when they read the language of Shakespeare’s plays, an obvious first step, one might think, in designing an approach. The main aim of this article was to describe a study designed to do exactly this. It was conducted with two groups of Shakespeare students, one with English as a first language and one with English as an additional language. Participants were asked to identify difficulties in extracts from plays, rate specific linguistic forms according to difficulty and discuss what they think of Shakespeare’s language. Common areas of difficulty incl...
Uploads
Papers by Jonathan Culpeper
•examines the history of the English language in order to explain the English that is used today
•introduces key linguistic concepts
• provides 'discussion points' to generate debate
• involves readers in collecting and analyzing their own data
• contains a 'mini-corpus' of texts, used for exercises and to illustrate points raised in the commentary.
Revised throughout, this updated edition contains a new internet resource section and an updated further reading section, to help readers take their study further.
The contributors demonstrate the validity of analysing the text of a play, as opposed to focusing on performance. Divided into four broad, yet interconnecting groups, the chapters:
* open up some of the basic mechanisms of conversation and show how they are used in dramatic dialogue
* look at how discourse analysis and pragmatic theories can be used to help us understand characterization in dialogue
* consider some of the cognitive patterns underlying dramatic discourse
* focus on the notion of speech as action.
there is also a chapter on how to analyse an extract from a play and write up an assignment.
Written by a team of experts in diverse fields, English Language: Description, Variation and Context:
• Covers both traditional topics and topics that have more recently come to prominence, notably concerning language use in context
• Includes 'Advances' boxes, designed to give readers a sense of controversies, debates and further research in the area, and 'Illustrations' boxes, which contain extended and additional examples
• Employs a research-led approach, making the latest developments in the field highly accessible for an undergraduate audience, yet fruitful for more advanced readers.
Comprehensive and engaging, this invaluable textbook provides an ideal starting point for those new to the subject, straightforward progression for those who have studied it before and cutting-edge insights for more seasoned scholars."
involving discussion of the words ‘horrid’, ‘good’, ‘ah’ and ‘and’, multiword units, and linguistic profiles for characters and plays. Through these, the aim is to demonstrate the characteristics of the dictionary and raise pertinent issues, including, for example, how many and what kind of words to include in the dictionary, whether the dictionary should include only words (and how they should be defined), how word-senses should be distinguished, how stylistic and social meanings should be captured, and what approach to grammar should be taken.