Abstract Metapragmatic comments are crucial in lawyers’ attempts at managing legal advice communication with asylum seekers. Drawing on linguistic-ethnographic fieldwork the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium, this paper aims to demonstrate how/when/why textual features which tell interactants how interpret ongoing speech used context lawyer-client field immigration law. The data analysis reveals l...

Saussurean and Chomskyan “conduit” views of meaning in communication, dominant in much of expert and lay linguistic semantics, presuppose a simple, closed and linear system in which outcomes can be predicted and explained in terms of finite sets of rules. Summarizing critical traditions of scholarship, notably those driven by Bateson’s view of systems infused with more recent linguistic-anthrop...

On 02.06.2020, the social media team of Deutsche Bahn, German railway company, announced on Twitter that for a three-month launching phase, they would use singular T-form du to address their customers. basis corpus public tweets analyzed as metapragmatic comments, I examine which stances users adopt and what these tell us about how German-speaking Twittersphere metapragmatically assesses approp...

It is now some decades since the study of “linguistic ideology” was first proposed (Silverstein 1979), and time ripe for taking stock. This article considers developments in this field as it has emerged and, respects, become normalized. Yet, normalized can mean backgrounded, taken granted—perhaps obscuring important theoretical issues methodological challenges. I revisit what entailed by “ideol...

Abstract In this paper, I apply a metapragmatics-based approach to visual communication, combined with adapted concepts of Social Semiotics (“visual modality”) and CDA-oriented analysis (“canons use”), reconstruct two registers authenticity which are prevailing within social media photo sample recent Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kurz (Facebook, Instagram; total 84 photos), posted during the pa...