Discourse and Interaction

A discursive pragmatic study of emotional blackmail in American movies

Nawal Abbas — 2025-12-11

This study examines emotional blackmail from a discursive pragmatic standpoint to gain insights into how this psychologically manipulative phenomenon is revealed in the discourse of some American movies. Five extracts from five American movies are purposely selected and analyzed using an eclectic model based on a discursive pragmatic approach to navigate this unexplored study area. The model incorporates Halliday’s (2014) transitivity system, Martin and White’s (2005) attitude system, Forward and Frazier’s (1997) types and tools of emotional blackmail, and Mayfield’s (2010) informal fallacies. The present study is guided by four research questions that identify the types and tools of emotional blackmail employed in the selected data, investigate the informal fallacious appeals emotional blackmailers employ to perform emotional blackmail, analyse how emotional blackmailers use the transitivity system to influence their victims and explore how emotional blackmailers use the attitude categories to influence their victims. The analysis revealed the appearance of only the sufferer and punisher emotional blackmailers in the data, with the most common type of emotional blackmailers being the ones utilizing the guilt tool. This is because emotional blackmailers reveal their pain to their victims in an attempt to incite guilt in order to obtain what they desire. Besides, blackmailers adopted all types of informal fallacies in the selected data. Only mental, material, and relational processes were used. Finally, the extracts showed negative and positive attitudes ranging from blackmailers to victims for gaining control.

Exploring the construction of academic authorial presence within diverse disciplinary and cultural contexts

Ghada AlGhamdi — 2025-12-09

This study explores how academic authorial presence is constructed across disciplines and cultural contexts, focusing on differences between Arab Academic English Authors (AAEAs) and Academic English Authors (AEAs). Despite previous studies examining authorial roles and self-representation in academic writing, there still is a gap in comparisons between AAEAs and AEAs. This study investigates the authorial roles assumed by AAEAs and AEAs and how these roles intertwine to construct authorial presence. A taxonomy of authorial representation developed by Tang and John (1999) was employed, with further additions of new authorial roles due to the nature of the genre of research articles (RAs). Thus, authorial roles were analyzed in terms of their functional distribution in order to determine how they shape authorial presence. The analysis showed that AEAs had a higher authorial presence than AAEAs across disciplines, with political science exhibiting the most authoritative presence, followed by law and journalism. There was a difference in authorial presence based on cultural background, disciplinary norms, and the argumentative nature of the RA genre, with roles such as recounter of procedures and originator being more prevalent, while claimers and asserters were less prevalent. This study sheds light on the complex interrelationship between culture, discipline, and conventions of academic writing. In this way, we gain a deeper understanding of how authors establish authority and credibility in various academic contexts.

Lexical bundles in academic articles from arts disciplines

Hana Atcheson — 2025-12-09

This paper studies lexical bundles in academic articles in the fields of photography, product/industrial design and audiovisual arts disciplines. The comparative corpus study presents a quantitative and qualitative analysis of formal and functional types of 4-grams used in published articles by expert authors in the three arts disciplines. The analysis was based on Biber et al.’s (1999) formal taxonomy and Hyland’s (2008a, 2008b) functional taxonomy of lexical bundles. The results show that both photography and audiovisual arts disciplines have similar utilisation of formal and functional types of bundles, prioritising content-oriented rhetorical functions. However, the discipline of product/industrial design shows a stronger preference for participant-oriented functions that utilise a distancing, hedging type of bundle. The findings help teachers of academic writing to identify the objective language needs of PhD students for writing in these disciplines. Writing instruction can be more precise with respect to disciplinary conventions in the creative arts disciplines. These disciplines have been overlooked in most of the English for Specific Academic Purposes teaching materials.

The power of stance: Linguistic strategies in Donald Trump’s election campaign

Olga Boginskaya — 2025-12-09

Language is the primary tool for shaping public discourse and driving political engagement. This research investigates how Donald Trump, as a Republican candidate, manipulates power dynamics and persuades audiences by strategically employing stance features as language resources in his election speeches. The analysis relies on the transcripts from rev.com and applies Hyland’s (2005) stance framework. The study utilizes a mixed-method approach to analyze the frequency, function, and linguistic realization of specific linguistic features in Trump’s speeches. The balanced use of stance markers suggests a deliberate effort to project confidence, express emotions, and cultivate a particular image. The article concludes that Trump’s straightforward, emotional, and personal language style effectively communicates his ideas with clarity and conviction.

Uncertainty markers in spoken learner discourse

Petra Huschová — 2025-12-09

The paper discusses linguistic forms conveying epistemic stance in L2 spoken production, focusing on expressing uncertainty. The source of stance markers is a subset of the Corpus of Czech Students’ Spoken English, particularly informal student-student discussions on a given topic. The main aim of the corpus analysis is to identify a variety of grammatical devices indicating the speaker’s uncertainty about the truth-value of a proposition and to examine their distributional patterns and positional preferences. Additionally, the paper explores roles of the construction I think, the most frequent stance marker in the discussions analysed. The findings indicate that Czech learners of English tend to employ a restricted set of items recurrently and use I think not only to express uncertainty but also to mitigate potential disagreement and signal turn-taking.

A functional analysis of metadiscourse markers in political discourse: Persuasive strategies in Netanyahu’s speeches

Bahram Kazemian — 2025-12-09

This study aims to examine the persuasive impact of metadiscourse (MD) markers in political speeches. It seeks to determine the extent to which MD practices contribute to the construction of persuasive discourse within this genre. To achieve this objective, a discourse analysis is applied to ten political speeches delivered by Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel. Hyland’s (2005a, 2005b) interpersonal models of MD are employed to investigate the frequency and persuasive impact of interactive and interactional devices utilized in speeches. The research has revealed that the persuasive intent conveyed through MD was largely dependent on the context. Consequently, Netanyahu often employed a combination of techniques to structure his discourse, influence audiences, capture their attention, and engage them in arguments. In addition, interactional devices were employed more frequently than interactive ones, indicating that engaging audiences in arguments and demonstrating one’s stance and assessment of propositions were more likely to contribute to the construction of a persuasive political speech. The research results can be shared with foreign and second language learners, instructors, and speakers to enhance their understanding of the linguistic and pragmatic conventions employed in political discourse. Additionally, it can shed light on how persuasive discourse is constructed using MD markers.

Tinga, T. (2025). The Africa Rising Discourse: Tropes, Trophies and Social Actors. Routledge.

Nguyen Huu Chanh — 2025-12-09