Jef VerschuerenUniversity of Antwerp | UA · Department of Linguistics
Jef Verschueren
Doctor of Philosophy
About
87
Publications
77,431
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2,260
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Citations since 2017
Introduction
Jef Verschueren is currently Professor Emeritus at the Department of Linguistics, University of Antwerp. Jef does research in Pragmatics, Semantics, Sociolinguistics and Discourse Analysis.
Skills and Expertise
Additional affiliations
June 2004 - September 2004
January 2000 - present
Publications
Publications (87)
Expanded Dutch version of "Complicity in discourse and practice"
It is commonplace to say that we are living in troubled times. Liberal democracy is in crisis. Academic freedom is seriously constrained. The media offers less insight and analysis than could be expected given the proliferation of communication tools. Based on decades of research into the social and ideological functioning of discourse and with a f...
This entry starts out with a discussion, in very broad strokes, of the evolutionary basis of linguistic diversity. What follows is an overview of the many ways in which languages differ and a description of how diversity relates to space and time. The argument is made that even though diversity is not unrestricted, true universals are few and far b...
Este artigo parte das observações de que (i) todo uso de linguagem combina, inevitavelmente, significado explícito e implícito e (ii) todas as línguas têm meios estruturais à sua disposição para marcar significado implícito. Isso parece uma espécie de paradoxo pragmático: se é possível falar sobre “marcadores de implicatura” (um nome geral para tod...
In the context of migration policies in Belgium in the 1990's, this book analyses the discourse of the 'tolerant' majority, as found in news reporting, policy statements, social-scientific research reports, anti-racism campaigns and training programs. The analysis reveals what the authors call a 'homogeneistic' ideology, fundamental non-acceptance...
This epilogue reflects on the notions of ‘irregularity’ and ‘mismatch’ which form the leitmotiv for this issue on perspectivization in language use, and more specifically on perspective shift and perspective persistence. While endorsing the approach, it is suggested that, given the complexities involved (who orients to what aspects of context and h...
This paper focuses on the dynamics of language, more specifically on the role of adaptability in meaning-generating processes in actual language use. From that perspective, the argument will be made that the question "What does x mean?" not only requires the extension "… in context y" (as is commonly accepted in pragmatics and even in certain forms...
It is hard to imagine a text more serious than Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals (1971). It is what its title says, a set of guidelines for those aspiring to become organizers of societal change – revolutionaries of some kind, the 'realistic' kind. The guidelines are 'pragmatic' in its everyday sense, henc...
This article starts from the observation of current changes in the nature of a globalizing public sphere for which older structural boundaries have lost much of their relevance. Though the public sphere has traditionally been a topic for social scientists (and philosophers), a redefinition in terms of the realm of publicly accessible meaning, and o...
Linguistic pragmatics is defined, for the purposes of this article, as the science of language use. Its roots in linguistics, psychology, anthropology, and especially semiotics and the philosophy of language are briefly described. Then some basic notions of pragmatics are reviewed: deixis and indexicality, forms of implicit meaning such as presuppo...
Proceedings of the Twentieth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society: General Session Dedicated to the Contributions of Charles J. Fillmore (1994)
Proceedings of the Seventh Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (1981), pp. 328-335
This article shows that an ethnography of communication approach is not only relevant to an understanding of how ways of speaking and language codes define the social-group boundaries of specific speech communities, but (1) that it can be equally pertinent to the analysis of the ideologies and language use of certain communities of practice, and (2...
The relationship between language and ideology has long been central to research in discourse analysis, pragmatics, sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology, and has also informed other fields such as sociology and literary criticism. This book, by one of the world's leading pragmatists, introduces a new framework for the study of ideology in w...
Proceedings of the 2nd Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (1976), pp. 386-395
This article inquires into the role of meaning in linguistic pragmatics (conceived in its widest interdisciplinary sense as a cognitive, social, and cultural perspective on language and communication). With reference to earlier discussions of the relationship between meaning and intention, especially in the anthropological linguistic literature, tw...
This paper discusses some basic properties of intercultural communication (treated from the point of view of linguistic pragmatics as fundamentally similar to any other form of communication, and emphasising the need to move radically away from any essentialist substantiation of ‘culture’) against the background of contexts of migration. Three fiel...
Abstract This paper describes how political discourse, as manifested in the policy statements of two Flemish political parties which assign to themselves the epithet ‘social’, contributes to the erasion of group-based or classrelated forms of social inequality. A brief comparison with the academic defense of ‘Third Way’ politics (in the work of Ant...
In this article, some of the pitfalls of critical analyses in socially relevant forms of linguistic research or discourse analysis are spelled out. Though the point of reference is Norman Fairclough’s version of critical discourse analysis, the observations can easily be extended to various related types of work. The argument is made that, in order...
Abstract Against the background of a general theory of pragmatics, reflections are formulated on the central role of metapragmatic awareness as a specific manifestation of salience, the status of processes of meaning generation in language use in relation to the cognitive apparatus. First the notions of metalanguage and metapragmatics, as used in l...
This contribution reflects on the status of pragmatics as a ‘critical’ discipline. First some aspects of the institutionalization of pragmatics are considered. Then the ways in which authority is established and maintained in relation to basic concepts and ideas are investigated. Finally, some conclusions are formulated on the future of the field.
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Les As. examinent un episode de la rhetorique publique slovene qui se situe entre avril 1992 et mars 1993 et qui concerne la politique sur les refugies bosniaques. Grâce a une analyse textuelle pragmatique, ils soulignent les aspects implicites de la construction du probleme des refugies en termes de surnombre et de menace pour l'ordre public et ex...
This article investigates some methodological problems involved in a discourse-centered exploration of societal ideologies, and in particular in an ongoing research program studying publicly accessible discourse in a number of European countries related to interethnic conflicts, the construction of ethnic or national identities, and nation-building...
L'A. prend les racines semiotiques de la pragmatique, et en particulier les vues exprimees par Morris (1938), comme point de depart pour montrer combien une perspective semiotique generale peut fournir le type de coherence dont a tant besoin le champ de la pragmatique linguistique
In this article we summarise the methodological principles and research results of an extensive investigation of four types of discourse about ‘the migrant problem’ in Belgium: news reporting, political policy documents, social‐scientific research reports, and a training programme. The analysis, which shows a fundamental similarity between the ideo...
pdf van het boek dat in 1992 en daarna heelwat discussie veroorzaakte, en helaas niets van zijn relevantie verloren heeft.
Newspaper reports, political policy papers, and investigations by social scientists concerning issues related to the presence of a community of migrant workers in Belgium are subjected to a systematic, pragmatic analysis. The analysis reveals an eminently coherent world of beliefs and attitudes with respect to (1) perceptions of the “other,” (2) th...
Linguistics and crosscultural communication (Review article)* - Volume 13 Issue 4 - Jef Verschueren
Some of the central problems of (comparative) lexical semantics are dealt with: (i) How does one decide which word groups if any should be treated as lexical items and which ones should not? (ii) What are the limitations of componential analysis and semantic field theory as methods to describe the internal semantic structure of lexical items and th...
An ‘integrated theory of pragmatics’ is defined as the study of the appropriateness conditions on the use of natural language. In search of such a theory, the recent work by Peter Harder and Christian Kock, The theory of presupposition failure, is subjected to a detailed investigation. Its theoretical apparatus is shown to contain some of the eleme...
Projects
Project (1)
The main aim of the Project GENDER, HUMOR AND IDENTITY: DEVELOPMENT, CONSOLIDATION AND APPLICABILITY OF LINGUISTIC MECHANISMS IN SPANISH (GENHUMID) is to investigate the linguistics of humor in the frontier of the knowledge. Firstly, the metapragmatic abilities in humorous discourse will be analyzed. Secondly, the humorous competence in children’s language (8-12 years old) will be connected to the adult humorous discourse. This connection will be established through the analysis of identity-building processes, the influence of gender aspects and the use of different metapragmatic clues. Thirdly, some applied possibilities of the results will be exploited, such as didactic (v. g. Foreign Language Learning and Teaching) or therapeutic (v. g. the Asperger’s and other autism spectrum disorders) ones, for instance.
