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doi: 10.1515/zgl-2026-2002pmid: N/A
AbstractThis paper investigates practices of person-deictic shifts–a phenomenon traditionally associated with the narrative construction of reported talk. In contrast to previous studies that focus on reported talk of Self and Others, I examine how speakers animate the addressee’s thoughts and feelings in co-present interaction. In what I term origo inversion, the speaker deploys the first-person singular pronoun not to refer to themselves (ego), but to shift deictically to the addressee (alter) in the shared here-and-now and animate their ego-perspective.The analysis draws on video recordings of 25 sessions of a psychodynamic therapy with a depressed client. In the sequences under investigation, the therapist deictically adopts the client’s first-person perspective and animates, based on the client’s telling, their problem-related thoughts and feelings. The findings show that animations of the addressee’s ego-perspective are an interactionally delicate practice. They invert the participant roles of speaker and addressee, or ego and alter, impinging on the addressee’s epistemic rights and face concerns, and thus rarely occur in everyday talk. In psychotherapy, by contrast, this practice is (partially) licensed by the institutional role and task of the therapist, though not without interactional risks. On the one hand, the (non-canonical) therapeutic practice of animating the client’s feelings and thoughts provides an interactional resource for demonstrating understanding, affiliation, and empathy through perspective-taking. On the other hand, it risks encroaching on the client’s personal territory and eliciting resistance. Notably, clients‘ reactions also depend on the extent to which their own view of their inner experiences is transformed by the therapist’s rendering. Accordingly, client responses range from explicit affirmation, elaboration, and self-animation to dispreference marking, silence, and overt rejection.
Schönfelder, Nora; Kinalzik, Noelle; Heller, Vivien
doi: 10.1515/zgl-2026-2003pmid: N/A
AbstractThis study examines the interplay of self-reference, epistemic stance, and gaze in children’s argumentative decision-making. Drawing on video recordings of peer discussions among first- and sixth-graders, we employ multimodal interaction analysis to investigate (i) how I as a form of self-reference is combined with multimodal epistemic markers and gaze practices to perspectivize positions in different ways; (ii) what consequences these perspectivizations have for the management of responsibilities in (joint) decision-making; and (iii) how perspectivizations of positions with I differ across age groups. Our findings show that the person reference I is used in two variants: I-for-myself and I-as-part-of-us. With I-for-myself, positions are presented with epistemic certainty, thereby limiting opportunities for interlocutors to negotiate the position. In contrast, I-as-part-of-us marks positions as uncertain, engages recipients through gaze, and provides self-initiated justifications, thus inviting further negotiation. The age-related comparison reveals substantial differences in the use of these variants. These findings suggest that referential, epistemic, and gaze practices are closely interrelated and constitute an integral part of argumentative competence.
doi: 10.1515/zgl-2026-2004pmid: N/A
AbstractThe lexical item man is characterized by a combination of specific morphosyntactic and semantic properties and a broad range of usages. It is argued that this is due to a process of grammaticalization that in the earliest stages of German started with its separation from the noun meaning ‚man‘/‘human being‘ and is not completed in present-day German. Focussing on today’s most frequent usage of man – its personal usage – it is argued that man has taken on the function of a role variable, thus having entered the paradigm of dialogue roles in opposition to the functions of the first and second person. The semantic features inherent in the lexeme man in this paradigm are identified as [+human] and [unspecified role in the communicative event]. The latter feature provides the distinctive value against first person [speaker role], sesond person [hearer role] as well as against the central value of all third person nominals, which is defined as [-dialogue role].
doi: 10.1515/zgl-2026-2005pmid: N/A
AbstractIn this article, we argue that not only personal pronouns, but also formats that defocus participants, such as the impersonal pronoun man/ein-, passive and infinitive constructions, are resources for the interpersonal perspectivization of situations. In a case study of 17th-century balneological texts, a historical genre of medical treatise and instruction, we use quantitative and qualitative analyses to show how different resources are used throughout the text to achieve different perspectivization effects (including the typification of discourse roles, the focusing on action steps, and the establishment of deontic authority). The concept of perspectivization proves to be a suitable overarching concept for different communicative practices of viewing events and involving participants in observation arrangements.
Gubina, Alexandra; Deppermann, Arnulf
doi: 10.1515/zgl-2026-2006pmid: N/A
AbstractThis article examines the hyperbolic, non-referential use of the universally quantifying personal pronouns alle (‚all‘) and jeder (‚everyone‘) in social interaction. The results of the analysis suggest that the two expressions are used in argumentative actions (e. g., normalizing one’s own or others‘ behavior, contradicting opposing positions) as well as in evaluative actions (e. g., praise, reproach, criticism). The reference to jeder and alle indicates or claims intersubjective agreement and unquestionable evidence. It is used to intensify the communication of evaluative and emotional stances, which are at the same time contextualized as objectively grounded. References to jeder and alle occur in different positions within turns and sequences. The pronouns are not always interchangeable; differences in the use of jeder and alle are rooted in the distinct semantics of the two pronouns. The non-referential character of these hyperbolic uses becomes apparent when speakers refer to indeterminate reference populations and use them in a speaker-exclusive way. The data are based on telephone and video recordings of naturally occurring interactions in German from the FOLK corpus.
Krasselt, Julia; Dreesen, Philipp; Stücheli-Herlach, Peter; Lemmenmeier-Batinić, Dolores; Geckeler, Sooyeon; Rothenhäusler, Klaus; Fluor, Matthias
doi: 10.1515/zgl-2026-2008pmid: N/A
AbstractSwiss-AL (Swiss Applied Linguistics) is a language data platform for the applied sciences developed at ZHAW Zurich University of Applied Sciences. It enables multilingual and comparative discourse analyses with a focus on Switzerland. Accessible at www.swiss-al.zhaw.ch, the platform contains publicly available documents from collective actors in politics, industry, civil society, science and journalistic media in all four language regions of Switzerland. The documents are processed as linguistic corpora and made available as an open research data resource using corpus linguistic methods in a specially developed browser-based workbench. Swiss-AL is intended for researchers from various scientific disciplines who work with language data to address practical problems (e.g. applied linguistics, social sciences, psychology, public health and strategic communication). The following article first outlines the purpose and genesis of Swiss-AL, then presents its theoretical foundations and composition, including the corpora hosted on the platform and their technical implementation, before discussing Swiss-AL as a resource for open research data with particular attention to the implementation of the FAIR principles and to the functionalities, access conditions and usability of the browser-based workbench. Finally, it describes the accompanying documentation and open educational resources as well as selected usage scenarios.
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