Language Research

Abstract Discourse marker is a functional-pragmatic category, not affecting truth conditions of the sentence. These linguistic elements encode procedural rather than representative or propositional meanings. Discourse markers have been the subject of increasing attention in recent years, and have been investigated in different theoretical frameworks. Among the vast variety of approaches toward interpreting the role of discourse markers, one major approach is rooted in Grice's suggestion. By elaborating the concept of conventional implicature along the previously well-known concept of conversational implicature, Grice (1989) treats some discourse markers as being instances of the former. He also conceptualized the concept of non-central or higher-level speech acts to account for the contribution of these discourse markers to the meaning of their host sentence. In this article, we will initially describe the characteristics of the discourse marker "magar" (‘unless’/’but’) in terms of prototypical characteristics of discourse markers proposed by Brinton (1996) and Heine (2013). We then present a diachronic exposition of its semantic development from having a propositional meaning to a word with a textual and expressive function in contemporary Persian. This explanation is in accordance with Traugott’s (1986) analysis of semantic change toward more subjectification. Ultimately, we have applied a Gricean interpretation to this Persian discourse marker, as a higher-level speech act. It is argued that "magar" (‘unless’/’but), in addition to its function as a connective element (which connects two textual units or encrypts the connection between the propositional content of an utterance and its previous context), can help with the performance of a non-central speech act with the illocutionary force of indicating opposition. Given the fact that speech acts, in Searl's terms, are the subject of the quadruple felicity conditions, namely Preparatory, Sincerity, Propositional content and Essential conditions we have shown how these conditions can be actualized (or applied) when it comes to higher-level speech acts.

Abstract Apology has been mostly studied from a pragmatics standpoint and as a frequent speech act, especially in Persian language. This paper, however, aims at a discourse analysis of apology, taking as its framework, the interdisciplinary approach introduced in Lakoff (2015). The data are collected form official apologies in the Iranian media between 2015- 2018. The results show that firstly, without taking an interdisciplinary stance many interactional aspects of this speech act is neglected. This is because apology is one of the face- saving speech acts in the representation of which contextual and interpersonal factors, and the speaker’s and addressee’s perspective play an important role in the ways preferred by the speaker to apologize. Moreover the nature of public and political discourse multiplies the complexities and forces the speakers get the benefit of all linguistic and extra- linguistic means at different levels to achieve their communicative goals. Secondly, the prototypical explicit apologies in public discourse are rare, so that most of the cases studied are instances of non- apology rather than apology. The reason behind this fact can be traced back to the nature of public and political discourses in which apology would bring about negative consequences for the apologizer. Also, one of the main presuppositions of this speech act is that the apologizer implicitly accepts the responsibility of the wrongdoing and her reluctance to apologize explicitly in public and political discourse is a conscious or unconscious attempt to avoid the negative consequences of shouldering the responsibilities in these formal settings. Accordingly, different representations of apology can be placed somewhere on a continuum with prototypical apology at one end and non- apology at the other one. This paves the way for considering apology as a radial category at the level of discourse and for adding a cognitive level of analysis to the framework at hand.

Abstract In spite of the significance, frequency, and function of swearing in many discourse communities and cultures, swear speech act has not been adequately studied with regard to Linguistics and Sociolinguistics theories and concepts such as “Speech Act Theory” and “Communities of Practice.” The current qualitative and quantitative study investigated swearing in the modern computer and cellphone market of Iran. We employed interviews and specially-developed questionnaires (with reference to sociolinguistic variables such as age, gender, appearance and membership status in the community) to tap into the swearing types and functions in the modern market as well as its members’ linguistics behaviors, perceptions and approaches. The results of content and statistical analyses of both religious and non-religious types of swearing suggest that, despite the high frequency of swearing in this community of practice, this speech act does not usually have a commissive, (per)-locutionary function; it can even backfire and suggest dishonesty and infelicity. The findings, the conclusions and possible applications are elaborated and discussed considering the literature, religious and cultural explanations, and the requirements of the modern market community of practice.