Exploring Pragmatics in Contemporary Cross-Cultural Contexts

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue aims to facilitate linguistic, applied linguistic, and interdisciplinary research in the pragmatics of cross-cultural communication. It focuses on cross-cultural communication and the ways it is changing. We address the new challenges that communication faces in IT and AI-driven versus traditional modes, as well as a wide comprehensive understanding of culture.

The development of IT and AI in the twenty-first century has triggered an unprecedented change in how we communicate (e.g., Galinon-Mélénec, 2010; Fukumura et al., 2021). We talk less in person, and the culturally important communication genres, such as dinner talks (Blum-Kulka, 1997), may be fading into the past. Describing these genres within and across cultural and linguistic contexts is of primary importance. 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), like our iPhone Siri (Zeidan et al., 2021) or ChatGPT (Hohenstein et al., 2023). Through these tools, we may befriend any person on the other side of the world, but because we are too engaged with these tools, we may ignore the people around us or face cyberbullying (Wagner, 2019). We no longer need to transmit knowledge or information to each other through language (its primary referential function is undermined) since AI, the Internet, and Wikipedia can do this for us. AI changes the fundamentals of language use and social relationships (Hohenstein et al., 2023). 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 flux. Language teachers are losing ground regarding what pragmatic functions to teach (Kawamura, 2018), as these functions are constantly reinvented. While the consequences of humans’ digital creations are not yet fully evaluated or understood, they are reshaping our communication, language, and use, 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 brings multiple benefits to communication, such as the ability to communicate, trade, receive long-distance education worldwide, make discoveries with researchers people across the world, etc. (Coupland, 2010). However, at the same time, globalization makes us all more vulnerable to crises that may originate in individual countries and regions but have 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 each other, as we have seen, for example, during COVID-19 (Bar-On and Molas, 2021; Thobani, 2022).

Yet, the 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 to find common ground and build bridges over cross-cultural differences while being sensitive and respectful of diversity. Getting to know and understand the other 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 broadly, not only as national cultures but also 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 inspired this volume, hopefully advancing pragmatics one step further in understanding the patterns of the changing contexts and communication patterns across cultures and languages.

The scope of expected contribution

We welcome innovative contributions that explore the above outlined or other specifics of intercultural communication pragmatics in the 21st century. We are particularly interested in original cross-cultural comparisons or intercultural communication studies within and beyond 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 methods 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., those with very few participants. To summarize, we are looking for original research works supported by robust data analysis (quantitative and/or qualitative or both) and contributing to pragmatics theory.

The submissions are expected to follow the steps outlined below. Abstracts will be reviewed by the guest editors to ensure proper fit within the scope of the Special Issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer-review.

Submission steps:

1. Proposal abstract submission (November 1, 2024).

Interested individuals are expected to submit an abstract of the proposed contribution by November 1 to the Languages editorial office ([email protected]) or the editor, Professor Veronika Makarova, at [email protected].  For any questions related to content suitability, tentative proposals, and other content questions, please contact the guest editor at [email protected]. For any technical questions, please contact [email protected].

2. Notification of acceptance (December 1, 2024).

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 (April 1, 2025)

Authors of selected contributions will be requested to provide the full articles of 7000-9000 words maximum by April 1, 2025.

4. Peer reviews (double-blind peer reviews) of the submissions (by June 1, 2025).

5. Revisions (as required) of the articles submitted by authors by September 1, 2025.

6. Publication starting from November 2025.

Please notice in connection with publication that Article Processing Charges (APC)  as per journal policies apply. We may be able to reduce or waive the charges to 2-3 top-ranking articles whose authors cannot afford the full charge.

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.

Hohenstein, J., Kizilcec, R.F., DiFranzo, D. et al. (2023). Artificial intelligence in communication impacts language and social relationships. Scientific Reports, 13, 5487. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-30938-9

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

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• pragmatics
• intercultural communication
• 21st century