Titel
Asymmetric use of diminutives and hypocoristics to pet animals in Italian, German, English, and Arabic
Autor*in
Wolfgang Ulrich Dressler
Abstract
This paper investigates diminutives and hypocoristics used in asymmetric verbal communication with pet animals in three European languages and a Semitic language. Italian, German, English, and Tunisian Arabic display different structural and communicative richness of diminutives, as well as dissimilar customs and sociocultural norms. The paper focusses on pragmatic meanings and functions, including the usages where pragmatic functions are supplemented by semantic meanings. Our data were collected by parallel semi-formal interviews of native speakers of the four languages investigated in order to test our hypotheses that different cultural environments exploit the pragmatic potentials of hypocoristics and diminutive forms in different ways when addressing pet animals or speaking about them. Diminutives are often used with pets in analogy to child-directed speech, mainly to express empathy and in familiar contexts.
Objekt-Typ
Sprache
Englisch [eng]
Persistent identifier
phaidra.univie.ac.at/o:2117588
Erschienen in
Titel
Language & Communication
Band
76
ISSN
0271-5309
Erscheinungsdatum
2021
Seitenanfang
136
Seitenende
153
Publication
Elsevier BV
Version
Fördergeber
Datum der Annahme zur Veröffentlichung
2021
Zugänglichkeit
Universität Wien | Universitätsring 1 | 1010 Wien | T
+43-1-4277-0