Vol 28, No 3 (2024)

South African English economic discourse remains underexplored despite its significance in shaping public perception and policy in the region. One of its critical understudied facets are euphemisms, which are heavily influenced by historical and social background and play a crucial role in moderating sensitive issues and managing communication across diverse societal norms. This study aims to fill this gap by identifying how euphemisms reflect and respond to South Africa’s socio-cultural setting. The study involved compiling a corpus of approximately 500,000 words sourced from speeches, interviews, and publications by South African specialists with subsequent identification of euphemisms. As a results, 338 euphemisms were found in the corpus. Through continuous sampling, the study then identified, categorized, and quantitatively assessed the socio-cultural aspects of euphemisms across various economic discussions. According to the study results, euphemism in South African English economic discourse correspond to five main thematic groups: Economic and Racial Inequality, Corporate Governance and Ethics, Impact of Migration, Healthcare Economics, and Influence of Globalization. Each thematic group demonstrates patterns of euphemisms occurrence that reflect intentional communication efforts to address or mask sensitive socio-economic issues. The study results posit that euphemisms emerge as a frequently leveraged linguistic device moderating South African English economic discourse. They reflect an adaptive response to South Africa’s socio-cultural setting where managing the multifaceted societal norms and historical sensitivities is imperative for effective communication and policy dissemination. The study argues for closer examination of the linguistic composition of South African English economic discourse. The findings contribute to the fields of sociolinguistics and intercultural communication as they expose how euphemisms function as a tool for managing complex socio-economic processes.

The study aims to explore the affiliation strategies and semiotic resources employed in digital feminist activism by Assault Police ( AP ) within Egypt’s #MeToo movement to construct the identity of sexual-violence victims/survivors (SVVSs). Using Martin and White’s appraisal and Zappavigna’s communing affiliation frameworks, the study investigates how affective positioning is discursively constructed, multimodally materialized and ambiently performed in digital discourses to combat sexual-violence. A qualitative analysis of 104 digital narratives on sexual-violence, encompassing cases of rape, sexual-assault and gender-based violence, reveals how AP fosters a sense of shared values and emotional and moral stances within digital feminist spaces. The results demonstrate how AP constructs the social semiotic identity of Egyptian SVVSs through the utilization of affective-discursive strategies that combine evaluative language, visual cues, digital elements and cultural references as affective instruments to (re)shape and negotiate value- and-feeling-centered affiliations. AP employs a range of evaluative couplings to position SVVS as a credible, subject worthy of empathy and support/justice. This affective stance challenges the gendered semiotic identities and inequalities that pervade the Egyptian context. Additionally, AP facilitates the formation of affiliative bonds of belonging or exclusion around SVVSs through the use of emotional appeals, moral evaluations, affective repetitions, coherent designs, colour schemes, community-centered hashtags and cultural symbols. This study contributes to the field of non-Western digital discourse analysis by offering a model of affect and affiliation from a multimodal perspective that focuses on the distinctive dynamics of Egypt’s feminist landscape and advocates for the inclusion of Arab women’s voices in the global discourse on sexual violence.

Numerous research studies addressing the differences in the use of lexical bundles in academic English by L1 and L2 writers interpret these differences as a deficiency or deviation that L2 writers need to eliminate. In this paper, we argue that this “deviant” use is not essentially the product of insufficient knowledge of English and/or Anglophone norms of academic writing but rather a transfer of the academic conventions of non-native speakers, rooted in their local culture. To confirm this hypothesis, we reviewed some previous studies and analyzed the use of lexical bundles in dissertations and research papers written in English by graduate and post-graduate students from Russia and Cameroon. The Russian corpus (38 texts of 576,186 words) was compiled from publicly available papers and dissertations written by bachelor’s and master’s students at the Higher School of Economics; the Cameroonian corpus (21 papers of 680,146 words) was compiled from papers contributed by students and teachers of the University of Yaoundé I. Using content analysis, corpus analysis, and the comparative method, we found that the most significant differences in the use of lexical bundles were connected with the peculiarities of the Russian and Cameroonian academic writing styles and cultural norms. Our study, therefore, reinforces the need to consider a more inclusive and culturally sensitive approach to the use of lexical bundles by L2 academic writers and take into account their diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds. It will expand our knowledge of the linguistic features of different varieties of English and provide a deeper understanding of academic traditions in different languages and cultures.

In contrast to the requirements for scientific accuracy, terms, particularly in the humanities, often reflect the specific socio-cultural context of their use and seemingly equivalent terms can have significant conceptual differences within multilingual scholarly and professional communities. One such term is native speaker , which is crucial to the English Language Teaching (ELT) academic discourse. The main objective of this study is to explore the structure and meaning of the concept underlying the term native speaker and its dynamic functioning in discourse to identify differences in their understanding. The material consisted of English and Russian-language research articles on ELT from 1970 to 2020. The study was conducted using a linguosynergetic approach, which considers discourse as a self-developing and self-organizing, nonlinear, open and unstable system. The methodology included three stages. First, the authors conducted an axiomatic analysis of the contexts in which the term native speaker is used. Then, they modeled the concept in different synchronous slices. Finally, they compared the data obtained. The results showed that the differences concern not only the periphery of the concepts, but also their very core. In Russian ELT discourse, the concept retains a relatively stable structure. This reflects the role of the native speaker in the educational process, as a learning model and a preferred teacher. In English ELT discourse, the term native speaker has acquired a negative connotation, and conceptually, it acts as an opponent to the term non-native speaker , forming a dual concept with it. The conclusions сan serve as a basis for further comparative studies on interlanguage terminological systems in the humanities field.

Poetic discourse, which engages the poetic function of language as a constitutive one, transforms the postulates of pragmatics of ordinary language. New poetic practices often represent a kind of pragmatic experiment: the effect of linguopragmatic parameters inherent in conventional communication is tested here on the borderline between the norm and the anomaly. The aim of this study is to identify the specific functionality of pragmatic markers in the condition of increased permeability between discourses and to explore the features of trans-discourse interaction of poetic language and colloquial speech in new media. The study is based on a corpus of poetic texts (3 million words), including Russian, English, and Italian subcorpora. It identified new communicative strategies of addressing and clusters of deictic, modal and discourse markers, grouped according to Jakobson’s communicative model (Jakobson 1975). The study identified qualitative differences between the frequency of use of several units in poetic discourse and in colloquial speech. We considered various pragmatic strategies, referring not only to individual units, but also clusters of deictic, modal, and discourse words, etc. We found that Italian and Russian poetry uses discourse markers more often than American poetry. Differences in linguistic structure also affect the specifics of a pragmatic experiment. Thus, in American poetry, a pragmatic experiment often activates the syntactic level; in Russian poetry, experiments with word formation and modality are more frequent; in Italian poetry, the pragmatic experiment is often combined with the structural-syntactic one: pragmatic markers form “clusters” or “chains”, when an increase in the density of use of units leads to an increase in the range of deviations from standard usage. The research based on the poetic corpus of texts contributes to the study of poetic discourse and corpus pragmatics.

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