When is it ok to call someone a jerk? An experimental investigation of expressives.

We present two experimental studies on the Italian expressive 'stronzo' (English 'jerk'). The first study tests whether, and to which extent, the acceptability of using an expressive is sensitive to the information available in the context. The study looks both at referential uses of expressives (as...

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Publicado en:Synthese Vol. 198; no. 10; pp. 9273 - 9293
Autores principales: Cepollaro, Bianca, Domaneschi, Filippo, Stojanovic, Isidora
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: Springer Nature Oct2021
Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
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          Cepollaro, Bianca
          Domaneschi, Filippo
          Stojanovic, Isidora
        affil:
          Faculty of Philosophy, Vita-Salute San Raffaele University, Milan, Italy
          Laboratory of Language and Cognition, University of Genoa, Genoa, Italy
          Institut Jean-Nicod, Département d'Études Cognitives, ENS, CNRS, PSL Research University, Paris, France
      sug:
      keyword:
        Contextual felicity
        Expressives
        Pejoratives
        Projective content
      ab: We present two experimental studies on the Italian expressive 'stronzo' (English 'jerk'). The first study tests whether, and to which extent, the acceptability of using an expressive is sensitive to the information available in the context. The study looks both at referential uses of expressives (as in the complex demonstrative 'that jerk Marco') and predicative uses of expressives (as in 'Marco is a jerk'). The results show that expressives are sensitive to contextual information to a much higher degree than the non-expressive control items (such as 'Piedmontese') in their referential use, but also, albeit to a lesser degree, in their predicative use. The second study tests whether the lower acceptability of expressives in their predicative use may be simply due to saying something negative about someone. A comparison between expressives, such as 'jerk', and non-expressive negative terms, such as 'nasty' or 'unbearable', suggests that it is the expressive nature of these terms, rather than the mere negative valence, that affects acceptability. Our studies present a major challenge to the existing accounts of expressives, and raise several theoretical issues that still call for an answer.
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    language: English
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