Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7fkt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-01T10:41:13.777Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

31 - Variational Pragmatics

from Part III - Approaches and Methods in Sociopragmatics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2021

By
Klaus P. Schneider
Edited by
Michael Haugh ,
Dániel Z. Kádár  and
Marina Terkourafi
Michael Haugh
Affiliation:
University of Queensland
Dániel Z. Kádár
Affiliation:
Hungarian Research Institute for Linguistics, and Dalian University of Foreign Languages
Marina Terkourafi
Affiliation:
Leiden University
Get access

Summary

Variational pragmatics is the study of pragmatic variation, specifically the systematic study of language use conventions across national, regional and social varieties of the same language, spoken (and written) natively and increasingly also spoken (and written) non-natively. Variational pragmatics is focused on the influence on communicative behaviour of such factors as region, social class, ethnicity, gender and age and also investigates the interplay of these factors and their interaction with situational parameters, such as power and distance relations and context and discourse genre. This chapter outlines the original framework of this field of inquiry and its development, introducing recent modifications and extensions of this framework. It also provides a discussion of theoretical issues – most notably pragmatic universals and pragmatic variables and their variants – and of methodological principles, data types and data collection procedures. Finally, an overview is given of work carried out in variational pragmatics, in particular on the formal, actional, interactional, topic, organizational, prosodic, stylistic, non-verbal and metapragmatic levels of examination analytically distinguished in its framework. Detailed reference is made to the languages and language varieties considered, the social factors focused on, the phenomena examined (e.g. the types discourse markers or speech acts) and the methods employed.

Keywords

pragmatic variationsocial variablesvariational pragmaticsspeech actsmethodology
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Sociopragmatics , pp. 663 - 686
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aijmer, K. (2013). Understanding Pragmatic Markers: A Variational Pragmatic Approach. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Al-Ali, M. (2006). Religious affiliations and masculine power in Jordanian wedding invitation. Discourse and Society, 12(6), 691–714.Google Scholar
Anchimbe, E. A. (2018). Offers and Offer Refusals: A Postcolonial Pragmatics Perspective on World Englishes. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anchimbe, E. A. and Janney, R. W. (2011). Postcolonial pragmatics: An introduction. Journal of Pragmatics, 43, 1451–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ash, S. (2002). Social class. In Chambers, J. K., Trudgill, P. and Schilling-Estes, N., eds., The Handbook of Language Variation and Change. Malden, MA: Blackwell, pp. 402–22.Google Scholar
Austin, J. L. (1962). How to Do Things with Words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Barron, A. (2005). Offering in Ireland and England. In Barron, A. and Schneider, K. P., eds., The Pragmatics of Irish English. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 141–77.Google Scholar
Barron, A. (2008). The structure of requests in Irish English and English English. In Schneider, K. P. and Barron, A., eds., Variational Pragmatics: A Focus on Regional Varieties in Pluricentric Languages. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 35–67.Google Scholar
Barron, A. (2017). Variational pragmatics. In Barron, A., Gu, Y. and Steen, G., eds., The Routledge Handbook of Pragmatics. London: Routledge, pp. 91–104.Google Scholar
Barron, A., Pandarova, I. and Muderack, K. (2015). Tag questions across Irish English and British English: A corpus analysis of form and function. Multilingua, 34(4), 495–524.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barron, A. and Schneider, K. P. (2009). Variational pragmatics: Studying the impact of social factors on language use in interaction. Intercultural Pragmatics, 6(4), 425–42.Google Scholar
Beeching, K. and Woodfield, H. (eds.). (2015). Researching Sociopragmatic Variability: Perspectives from Variational, Interlanguage and Contrastive Pragmatics. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bieswanger, M. (2015). Variational pragmatics and responding to thanks – revisited. Multilingua, 34(4), 527–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blum-Kulka, S., House, J. and Kasper, G. (1989). Investigating cross-cultural pragmatics: An introductory overview. In Blum-Kulka, S., House, J. and Kasper, G., eds., Cross-Cultural Pragmatics: Requests and Apologies. Norwood, NJ: Ablex, pp. 1–34.Google Scholar
Brown, P. and Levinson, S. C. ([1978] 1987). Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Burmeister, M. (2013). Variability in death notices from Scotland, Wales and the Republic of Ireland: A comparative perspective. In Bieswanger, M. and Koll-Stobbe, A., eds., New Approaches to the Study of Linguistic Variability. Frankfurt, Germany: Lang, pp. 65–88.Google Scholar
Chen, R. (1993). Responding to compliments: A contrastive study of politeness strategies between American English and Chinese speakers. Journal of Pragmatics, 20, 49–75.Google Scholar
Cheshire, J. (2002). Sex and gender in variationist research. In Chambers, J. K., Trudgill, P. and Schilling-Estes, N., eds., The Handbook of Language Variation and Change. Malden, MA: Blackwell, pp. 423–43.Google Scholar
Clancy, B. (2011). ‘Do you want to do it yourself like?’ Hedging in Irish traveller and settled family discourse. In Davies, B. L., Haugh, M. and Merrison, A. J., eds., Situated Politeness. London: Continuum, pp. 129–46.Google Scholar
Clift, R. (2014). Conversation analysis. In Schneider, K. P. and Barron, A., eds., Pragmatics of Discourse. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 97–124.Google Scholar
Decock, S. and Spiessens, A. (2017). Customer complaints and disagreements in a multilingual business environment: A discursive-pragmatic analysis. Intercultural Pragmatics, 14(1), 77–115.Google Scholar
Dinkin, A. J. (2018). It’s no problem to be polite: Apparent-time change in responses to thanks. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 22(2), 190–215.Google Scholar
Farr, F. and Murphy, B. (2009). Religious references in contemporary Irish English: ‘For the love of God almighty … I’m a holy terror for turf’. Intercultural Pragmatics, 6(4), 535–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Félix-Brasdefer, J. C. (2008). Sociopragmatic variation: Dispreferred responses in Mexican and Dominican Spanish. Journal of Politeness Research, 4(1), 81–110.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Félix-Brasdefer, J. C. (2009). Pragmatic variation across Spanish(es): Requesting in Mexican, Costa Rican and Dominican Spanish. Intercultural Pragmatics, 6(4), 473–515.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Félix-Brasdefer, J. C. (2015). The Language of Service Encounters: A Pragmatic-Discursive Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Flöck, I. and Geluykens, R. (2018). Preference organization and cross-cultural variation in request responses: A corpus-based comparison of British and American English. Corpus Pragmatics, 2, 57–82.Google Scholar
Fuentes Rodríguez, C., Placencia, M. E. and Palma-Fahey, M. (2016). Regional pragmatic variation in the use of the discourse marker pues in informal talk among university students in Quito (Ecuador), Santiago (Chile) and Seville (Spain). Journal of Pragmatics, 97, 74–92.Google Scholar
García, C. (2008). Different realizations of solidarity politeness: Comparing Venezuelan and Argentinean invitations. In Schneider, K. P. and Barron, A., eds., Variational Pragmatics: A Focus on Regional Varieties in Pluricentric Languages. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 269–305.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Georgakopoulou, A. and Charalambidou, A. (2011). Doing age and ageing: Language, discourse and social interaction. In Andersen, G. and Aijmer, K., eds., Pragmatics of Society. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 31–51.Google Scholar
Goddard, C. (2012). Early interactions in Australian English, American English, and English English: Cultural differences and cultural scripts. Journal of Pragmatics, 44(9), 1038–50.Google Scholar
Grant, T. and MacLeod, N. (2016). Assuming identities online: Experimental linguistics applied to policing of online paedophile activity. Applied Linguistics, 37(1), 50–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haugh, M. and Carbaugh, D. (2015). Self-disclosure in initial interactions amongst speakers of American and Australian English. Multilingua, 34(4), 461–94.Google Scholar
Haugh, M. and Schneider, K. P. (2012). Editorial: Im/politeness across Englishes. Journal of Pragmatics, 44(9), 1017–21.Google Scholar
Holmes, J. (1995). Women, Men and Politeness. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Jautz, S. (2013). Thanking Formulae in English: Explorations across Varieties and Genres. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jucker, A. (2009). Speech act research between armchair, field and laboratory: The case of compliments. Journal of Pragmatics, 41(8), 1611–35.Google Scholar
Jucker, A. and Taavitsainen, I. (2012). Pragmatic variables. In Hernández-Campoy, J. M. and Conde-Silvestre, J. C., eds., The Handbook of Historical Sociolinguistics. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 293–306.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kasper, G. (1990). Linguistic politeness: Current research issues. Journal of Pragmatics, 14(1), 193–218.Google Scholar
Kachru, B. (1985). Standards, codification and sociolinguistic realism: The English language in the outer circle. In Quirk, R. and Widdowson, H., eds., English in the World: Teaching and Learning the Language and Literatures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 11–30.Google Scholar
Lázaro Ruiz, H. and Ramajo Cuesta, A. (2015). Compliment responses in peninsular Spanish: Exploratory and contrastive study conducted on women from Madrid, Valencia, Catalonia, Andalusia and Castile-Leon. Procedia: Social and Behavioral Sciences, 212, 93–8.Google Scholar
Lin, C.-Y. (2015). The role of gender in Taiwan and Mainland Chinese compliments. In Beeching, K. and Woodfield, H., eds., Researching SocioPragmatic Variability: Perspectives from Variational, Interlanguage and Contrastive Pragmatics. Houndmills, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 49–71.Google Scholar
Lin, C.-Y., Woodfield, H. and Ren, W. (2012). Compliments in Taiwan and mainland Chinese: The influence of region and compliment topic. Journal of Pragmatics, 44(11), 1486–1502.Google Scholar
Márquez Reiter, R. and Placencia, M. E. (2005). Spanish Pragmatics. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Merrison, A. J., Wilson, J. J., Davies, B. L. and Haugh, M. (2012). Getting stuff done: Comparing e-mail requests from students in higher education in Britain and Australia. Journal of Pragmatics, 44(9), 1077–98.Google Scholar
Muhr, R. (2008). The pragmatics of a pluricentric language: A comparison between Austrian German and German German. In Schneider, K. P. and Barron, A., eds., Variational Pragmatics: A Focus on Regional Varieties in Pluricentric Languages. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 211–44.Google Scholar
Mukherjee, J. and Hundt, M. (eds.). (2011). Exploring Second-Language Varieties of English and Learner Englishes: Bridging a Paradigm Gap. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Mulo Farenkia, B. (2014). Speech Acts and Politeness in French as a Pluricentric Language: Illustrations from Cameroon and Canada. Münster: LIT Verlag.Google Scholar
Mulo Farenkia, B. (2015). Invitation refusals in Cameroon French and Hexagonal French. Multilingua, 34(4), 577–603.Google Scholar
Murphy, B. (2011). Gender identities and discourse. In Andersen, G. and Aijmer, K., eds., Pragmatics of Society. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 53–77.Google Scholar
Murphy, B. (2012). Exploring response tokens in Irish English – a multidisciplinary approach: Integrating variational pragmatics, sociolinguistics and corpus linguistics. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 17(3), 325–48.Google Scholar
Nilsson, J., Norrthon, S., Lindström, J. and Wide, C. (2018). Greetings as social action in Finland Swedish and Sweden Swedish service encounters – a pluricentric perspective. Intercultural Pragmatics, 15(1), 57–88.Google Scholar
Norrby, C. and Kretzenbacher, H. L. (2014). Address in two pluricentric languages: Swedish and German. In Soares da Silva, A., ed., Pluricentricity: Language Variation and Sociocognitive Dimensions. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 243–67.Google Scholar
Ogiermann, E. (2018). Discourse completion tasks. In Jucker, A., Schneider, K. P. and Bublitz, W., eds., Methods in Pragmatics. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 229–55.Google Scholar
O’Keeffe, A. and Adolphs, S. (2008). Response tokens in British and Irish discourse: Corpus, context and variational pragmatics. In Schneider, K. P. and Barron, A., eds., Variational Pragmatics: A Focus on Regional Varieties in Pluricentric Languages. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 69–98.Google Scholar
Owen, M. (1983). Apologies and Remedial Interchanges: A Study of Language Use in Social Interaction. Berlin: Mouton.Google Scholar
Pichler, H. (ed.). (2016). Discourse-Pragmatic Variation and Change in English: New Methods and Insights. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Placencia, M. E. (2008). Requests in corner shop transactions in Ecuadorian Andean and Coastal Spanish. In Schneider, K. P. and Barron, A., eds., Variational Pragmatics: A Focus on Regional Varieties in Pluricentric Languages. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 307–22.Google Scholar
Placencia, M. E., Fuentes Rodríguez, C. and Palma-Fahey, M. (2015). Nominal address and rapport management in informal interactions among university students in Quito (Ecuador), Santiago (Chile) and Seville (Spain). Multilingua, 34(4), 547–75.Google Scholar
Plevoets, K., Speelman, D. and Geeraerts, D. (2008). The distribution of T/V pronouns in Netherlandic and Belgian Dutch. In Schneider, K. P. and Barron, A., eds., Variational Pragmatics: A Focus on Regional Varieties in Pluricentric Languages. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 181–209.Google Scholar
Queen, R. (2013). Gender, sex, sexuality, and sexual identities. In Chambers, J. K. and Schilling, N., eds., The Handbook of Language Variation and Change, 2nd ed. Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 368–87.Google Scholar
Ren, W. (2015). Sociopragmatic variation in mainland and Taiwan Chinese refusals. In Beeching, K. and Woodfield, H., eds., Researching Sociopragmatic Variability: Perspectives from Variational, Interlanguage and Contrastive Pragmatics. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 72–93.Google Scholar
Schegloff, E. A. and Sacks, H. (1973). Opening up closing. Semiotica, 8, 289–328.Google Scholar
Schlieben-Lange, B. and Weydt, H. (1978). Für eine Pragmatisierung der Dialektologie. Zeitschrift für Germanistische Linguistik, 6(3), 257–82.Google Scholar
Schneider, K. P. (1988). Small Talk: Analysing Phatic Discourse. Marburg, Germany: Hitzeroth.Google Scholar
Schneider, K. P. (2003). Diminutives in English. Tübingen, Germany: Niemeyer.Google Scholar
Schneider, K. P. (2005). ‘No problem, you’re welcome, anytime’: Responding to thanks in Ireland, England, and the USA. In A. Barron, and Schneider, K. P., eds., The Pragmatics of Irish English. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 101–39.Google Scholar
Schneider, K. P. (2008). Small talk in England, Ireland, and the USA. In Schneider, K. P. and Barron, A., eds., Variational Pragmatics: A Focus on Regional Varieties in Pluricentric Languages. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 99–139.Google Scholar
Schneider, K. P. (2010). Variational pragmatics. In Fried, M., Östman, J.-O. and Verschueren, J., eds., Variation and Change: Pragmatic Perspectives. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 239–67.Google Scholar
Schneider, K. P. (2012a). Appropriate behaviour across varieties of English. Journal of Pragmatics, 44(9), 1022–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schneider, K. P. (2012b). Pragmatics. In Hickey, R., ed., Topics in English Linguistics: Areal Features of the Anglophone World. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 463–86.Google Scholar
Schneider, K. P. (2012c). Pragmatic variation and cultural models. Review of Cognitive Linguistics, 10(2), 346–72.Google Scholar
Schneider, K. P. (2014). Comparability and sameness in variational pragmatics. In Mergenthal, S. and Nischik, R. M., eds., Anglistentag 2013 Konstanz: Proceedings. Trier, Germany: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, pp. 361–72.Google Scholar
Schneider, K. P. (2017). Pragmatic competence and pragmatic variation. In Giora, R. and Haugh, M., eds., Doing Pragmatics Interculturally: Cognitive, Philosophical, and Sociopragmatic Perspectives. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 315–33.Google Scholar
Schneider, K. P. (2018). Methods and ethics of data collection. In Jucker, A., Schneider, K. P. and Bublitz, W., eds., Methods in Pragmatics. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 37–93.Google Scholar
Schneider, K. P. (2019). Re-thinking pragmatic variation: The case of service encounters from a modified variational pragmatics perspective. In Félix-Brasdefer, J. C. and Placencia, M. E., eds., Pragmatic Variation in Service Encounter Interactions across the Spanish-Speaking World. Oxford: Routledge, pp. 251–62.Google Scholar
Schneider, K. P. and Barron, A. (2008a). Where pragmatics and dialectology meet: Introducing variational pragmatics. In Schneider, K. P. and Barron, A., eds., Variational Pragmatics: A Focus on Regional Varieties in Pluricentric Languages. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 1–32.Google Scholar
Schneider, K. P. and Barron, A. (eds.). (2008b). Variational Pragmatics: A Focus on Regional Varieties in Pluricentric Languages. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Schneider, K. P. and Placencia, M. E. (2017). (Im)politeness and regional variation. In Culpeper, J., Haugh, M. and Kádár, D., eds., The Palgrave Handbook of Linguistic (Im)politeness. London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 539–70.Google Scholar
Schneider, K. P. and Schröder, A. (2014). Comparison and comparability in language studies. In Mergenthal, S. and Nischik, R. M., eds., Anglistentag 2013 Konstanz: Proceedings. Trier, Germany: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, pp. 303–7.Google Scholar
Schölmberger, U. (2008). Apologizing in French French and Canadian French. In Schneider, K. P. and Barron, A., eds., Variational pragmatics: A focus on regional varieties in pluricentric languages. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 333–54.Google Scholar
Schröder, A. and Schneider, K. P. (2018). Variational pragmatics, responses to thanks, and the specificity of English in Namibia. English World-Wide, 39(3), 338–63.Google Scholar
Schröder, A. and Schneider, K. P. (forthcoming). A variational pragmatics approach to responses to thanks in Namibian English: From quantitative to qualitative analysis. In Schröder, A., ed., The Dynamics of English in Namibia. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Schubert, C. and Sanchez-Stockhammer, C. (eds.). (2016). Variational Text Linguistics: Revisiting Register in English. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Schüpbach, D. (2014). German or Swiss? Address and other routinised formulas in German-speaking Switzerland. In Hajek, J. and Slaughter, Y., eds., Challenging the Monolingual Mindset. Bristol: Multilingual Matters, pp. 63–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Searle, J. R. (1969). Speech Acts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Staley, L. (2018). Socioeconomic Pragmatic Variation: Speech Acts and Address Forms in Context. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Szmrecsanyi, B. and Kortmann, B. (2009). Vernacular universals and angloversals in a typological perspective. In Filppula, M., Klemola, J. and Paulasto, H., eds., Vernacular Universals and Language Contacts: Evidence from Varieties of English and Beyond. New York: Routledge, pp. 33–54.Google Scholar
Terkourafi, M. (2012). Between pragmatics and sociolinguistics: Where does pragmatic variation fit it? In Félix-Brasdefer, J. C. and Koike, D. A., eds., Pragmatic Variation in First and Second Language Contexts: Methodological Issues. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 295–318.Google Scholar
Wagner, L. and Roebuck, R. (2010). Apologizing in Cuernavaca, Mexico and Panama City, Panama: A cross-cultural comparison of positive- and negative-politeness strategies. Spanish in Context, 7(2), 254–78.Google Scholar
Warga, M. (2008). Requesting in German as a pluricentric language. In Schneider, K. P. and Barron, A., eds., Variational Pragmatics: A Focus on Regional Varieties in Pluricentric Languages. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 245–66.Google Scholar
Wierzbicka, A. (1985). Different cultures, different languages, different speech acts. Journal of Pragmatics, 9(2–3), 145–78.Google Scholar
Wolfram, W. and Schilling, N. (2016). American English: Dialects and Variation. 3rd ed. Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Zahler, S. L. (2016). Pragmalinguistic variation in electronic personal ads from Mexico City and London. IULC Working Papers, 15(1), 208–30.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×