Michael Haugh
Biographic Data
| ID | 487494 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Michael Haugh |
| GIVEN NAMES | Michael |
| FAMILY NAME | Haugh |
| SIGNATURE | HAUGH M |
| AFFILIATIONS | The University of Queensland |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4870-0850 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 87 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1169 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 87 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2003 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 20 |
Inference and Implicature
Inference and implicature are central to pragmatic theories of meaning and communication. An implicature is a type of speaker meaning that goes beyond what is literally said, while inference refers to the processes by which we reason from evidence to consequences, as well as the products of those reasoning processes. The relationship between inference and implicature has long been debated in the field. The focus was traditionally on deductive, in…
Conversational Implicature
The concept of conversational implicature was introduced by the philosopher Paul Grice to draw attention to instances where speakers imply, hint, or suggest things in addition to what has been said. Grice's theory of conversational implicature is not only considered foundational in the field of pragmatics, it has also been adopted more widely in range of other related fields, including in anthropology and communication, legal studies, natural lan…
Hiniku (‘irony/sarcasm’) and non-propositional irony in Japanese
While it is widely accepted that irony can give rise to various kinds of non-propositional effects, it has generally been assumed that irony itself is a propositional phenomenon since it unfolds through some form of conflict between what is said and what is (taken to be) intended. However, recent work indicates that in some cases, although there is no such propositional conflict, the utterances in question are nevertheless treated by users as ins…
Mobilizing assistance through troubles-complaints in L2 settings
Sometimes we face material or practical troubles that require assistance from others to be resolved. While assistance can be mobilized through requests for assistance, it can also be mobilized through complaints. However, while L2 requests have been the object of numerous studies, there has been very little work examining how complaints can be used by L2 speakers to mobilize assistance. In this article, we examine how troubles-complaints are used…
Negotiating interactional routines in the openings of intercultural first encounters
It is commonly assumed that the openings of first encounters are highly scripted, allowing for little variation. Building on the work of Kecskes on the sociocognitive approach to intercultural pragmatics, it is argued in this paper that in intercultural settings the openings of first encounters are inevitably negotiated by participants in situ in the course of those openings. This is because in intercultural settings participants do not necessari…
Reproducibility and transparency in interpretive corpus pragmatics
In this paper we extend the discussion about reproducibility in corpus linguistics from quantitative to qualitative corpus-based approaches and argue that concerns about reproducibility can be addressed in interpretive research paradigms like corpus pragmatics. We first suggest that in interpretive research traditions, transparency is more important than reproducibility. We then argue that interpretive research can be made more transparent and ac…
Reproducibility, replicability, and robustness in corpus linguistics
This introduction to the special issue Reproducibility, Replicability, and Robustness in Corpus Linguistics calls for more transparent and robust research practices in the field. It situates the discussion within the broader replication crisis in the life and social sciences and explores its relevance for corpus linguistics. The article identifies key areas for improvement — data management, workflows, and reporting — and showcases tools and prin…
How is that unparliamentary?”
(Un)intended offence
A frequent response to someone taking offence in response to conversational humour is to claim the utterances in question were ‘not serious’, ‘taken out of context’, or that any offence taken was ‘unintended’. Yet in some instances such claims are construed as inadequate or irrelevant. In this paper we consider why that is the case. Building on a detailed analysis of incidents in which ostensibly joking utterances are construed as offensive, we p…
Years (Further) On
We must begin by explaining the "20 years" in the title of this special issue.It is, after all, only 19 years since the very first issue of this journal in 2005.We might seem to be jumping the gun somewhat.In fact, the 20 years refers to something different, the lapse of time between the 14th Sociolinguistics Symposium (SS14) in 2002 and 24th Sociolinguistics Symposium (SS24) in 2022.Both of these conferences were held at Ghent University in Belg…
Im)politeness as object, (im)politeness as perspective
The first-second order distinction has dominated theoretical discussions about (im)politeness for the past two decades. However, while there has been a lot of emphasis placed on different perspectives on (im)politeness in the field, what constitutes our object of understanding(s) arguably remains somewhat more elusive. In this paper, I suggest that one of the reasons for this is that we have inadvertently conflated (im)politeness-as-perspective (…
Troubles-Complaints and the Overall Structural Organization of Troubles-Remedy Sequences
Reporting troubles can be used as a vehicle for accomplishing many different kinds of actions. In some cases, troubles may be raised to engender practical courses of action—that is, to mobilize some form of remedy or assistance from the recipient to deal with those troubles. In this article, we focus on instances of troubles reports in institutional encounters that are hearable as delivering troubles-complaints. We illustrate how the extended tro…
The role of inference and inferencing in pragmatic models of communication
Exposing and avoiding unwanted inferences in conversational interaction
Utterances give rise to many potential inferences. They can be communicated explicitly or implicitly, they may or may not be intended, and they may or may not even be inferred. In this paper, we focus on how speakers orient to ‘unwanted inferences’: potential inferences (or inferables) that can - but need not - be inferred from what has been said. Such inferences can be ‘unwanted’ in different ways: as secondary propositions that the speaker does…
Utterance-final conjunctive particles and implicature in Japanese conversation
According to the received view, connective particles are characterised as “bound grammatical markers” that connect two clauses into a ‘sentence’ (Matsumoto, Yo 1988: 345). As Fukushima (2005) points out though, these conjunctions have other functions that go beyond intra-sentential usage. Utterance-final conjunctive particles have been analysed thus far, for the most part, as a type of (clausal) ellipsis or as particles that give rise to various …
The intuitive basis of implicature
The notion of implicature was first introduced by Grice (1967, 1989), who defined it essentially as what is communicated less what is said. This definition contributed in part to the proliferation of a large number of different species of implicature by neo-Griceans. Relevance theorists have responded to this by proposing a shift back to the distinction between explicit and implicit meaning (corresponding to explicature and implicature respective…
Doing deference”
In this paper we examine a key relational practice found in interactions in online discussion boards in Mainland China and Taiwan: ‘doing deference’. In drawing attention to a relational practice that has received attention in quite different research traditions, namely, linguistic pragmatics and conversation analysis (CA), we mean to highlight the possible advantages of an approach to analysis that draws from both in analysing relational work in…
Offence and morality
(Online) public denunciation, public incivilities and offence
Non-serious answers to (improper) questions in talk shows
Teasing and claims to non-serious intent in Chinese talk shows
While teasing can sometimes cause offence, the limits of what counts as acceptable teasing is a function of the localised sequential environment and broader socio cultural context in which it occurs. In this article, we examine the sequential and moral implications of claims to non-serious intent in teasing sequences arising in television talk shows. Drawing from an analysis of over 28 hours of variety shows broadcast in Mainland China and Taiwan…
The metalinguistics of offence in (British) English
Offence is a central concept in impoliteness, aggression and conflict research, yet has received only passing mention in definitions of impoliteness and related concepts. Janicki (2017) argues that impoliteness and language aggression scholars are needlessly worried about definitions. We use Janicki’s (2017) work as a springboard into a discussion of definitions of impolite or taboo language, airing potential problems and suggesting that the stud…
Taking it too far
While teasing can cause offence, participants on television variety or game shows are generally expected to tolerate it. In this paper, we examine comments posted on YouTube in response to reports of a leaked recording of a television host in Taiwan swearing at and insulting a guest who teased the host about his “inability to take a defeat”. In so doing, we examine both the perceived limits of teasing (i.e. what is considered allowable and what g…
(Non-)propositional irony in Japanese – Impoliteness behind honorifics
Analysing discourse around Covid-19 in the Australian Twittersphere
Public discourse about the COVID-19 that appears on Twitter and other social media platforms provides useful insights into public concerns and responses to the pandemic. However, acknowledging that public discourse around COVID-19 is multi-faceted and evolves over time poses both analytical and ontological challenges. Studies that use text-mining approaches to analyse responses to major events commonly treat public discourse on social media as an…
Jocular mockery, (dis)affiliation, and face
Mock impoliteness, jocular mockery and jocular abuse in Australian and British English
Im/politeness, social practice and the participation order
Impoliteness and taking offence in initial interactions
Jocular Mockery as Interactional Practice in Everyday Anglo-Australian Conversation
Teasing in everyday interactions, which combines elements of (ostensible) provocation and (ostensible) playfulness in a figurative cutting down or diminishment of a target, has been the subject of a growing body of studies. However, what has arguably not been as well studied to date is the interactional mechanics of the different kinds of social actions through which teasing is accomplished. In this paper, the way in which teasing as mocking/ridi…
Face in interaction
The discursive challenge to politeness research
The discursive approach to politeness represents one of the most coherent challenges to the dominance of Brown and Levinson's politeness theory to date, and indeed to the continuing viability of the field of politeness research itself. However, while the discursive approach advocates the displacement of politeness as the focus of research, upon closer examination of the epistemological and ontological assumptions underlying this approach, a numbe…
Just kidding
A metalinguistic approach to deconstructing the concepts of 'face' and 'politeness' in Chinese, English and Japanese
Speaker meaning and accountability in interaction
Emic conceptualisations of (im)politeness and face in Japanese
Intention in pragmatics
The role of emic understandings in theorizing im/politeness
Strategic embarrassment and face threatening in business interactions
Interpersonal pragmatics
The co-constitution of politeness implicature in conversation
The Importance of “Place” in Japanese Politeness
It has long been the contention of various scholars that Brown and Levinson's notion of face, in particular the concept of personal autonomy associated with negative face, is not appropriate for explaining politeness in Japanese. However, there has been little work on what might constitute a suitable alternative. In this paper, it is proposed that the concept of “place,” which has long occupied an important position in Japanese philosophy and lan…
Disentangling face, facework and im/ politeness
It is generally assumed in pragmatics that face is essentially a "socially attributed aspect of self", and that politeness is one kind of facework, alongside other forms of facework such as impoliteness, mock impoliteness, mock politeness, self politeness and so on. In this paper, the assumed necessary link between face and im/politeness is questioned. Drawing from emic studies of face and im/politeness, it is argued that face and im/politeness s…
Self-disclosure in initial interactions amongst speakers of American and Australian English
Getting acquainted with others is one of the most basic interpersonal communication events. Yet there has only been a limited number of studies that have examined variation in the interactional practices through which unacquainted persons become acquainted and establish relationships across speakers of the same language. The current study focuses on self-disclosure practices in initial interactions between first language speakers of English from …
Epilogue
The papers in this special issue on Chinese 'face' and im/politeness collectively raise very real challenges for the ways in which the now well-known distinction between first order and second order approaches is conceptualized and operationalized by face and politeness researchers. They highlight the difficulties we inevitably encounter when analyzing face and im/politeness across languages and cultures, in particular, those arising from (1) the…
Getting stuff done
The apology seemed (in)sincere
Evaluations of im/politeness of an intercultural apology
This study examines variation in evaluations of im/politeness of a recording of a naturally occurring intercultural apology, focusing in particular on potential cultural differences in these evaluations across speakers of (Australian) English and (Mandarin) Chinese. We first closely analyze the apology itself as a form of social action, and suggest in the course of this analysis that evaluations of im/politeness are closely tied to converging and…
When is an email really offensive
The analysis in this paper centres on an email exchange between a lecturer and a student at the University of Auckland which resulted in the dismissal of that lecturer. This dismissal gave rise to significant controversy, both off- and online, as to whether the email itself was simply "intemperate" and "angry", or more seriously "offensive" and "racist". Through a close analysis of the interpretations of the emails by the lecturer and student, as…
Agency, accountability and evaluations of impoliteness
It is now well recognized that the recipients’ evaluations need to be given serious consideration when theorizing impoliteness. Yet despite the importance placed on evaluations by recipients, the role of the recipient in interaction has been reduced through theorizing within the field to the ascribing of (perceived) intentions or interpreting of (perceived) social norms and expectations. We suggest, in this paper, that this under-theorizes the ro…
Anticipated versus inferred politeness
A number of researchers have recently argued that politeness is not always inferred in the form of an implicature as claimed by Brown and Levinson (1987), but rather can be anticipated by addressees when it involves expected behaviour. The distinction between anticipated and inferred politeness is thus an important area for further development of politeness theory. In this paper, the way in which the notion of 'expectations' is related to politen…
A metalinguistic approach to deconstructing the concepts of 'face' and 'politeness' in Chinese, English and Japanese
Revisiting the conceptualisation of politeness in English and Japanese
The issue of what in fact constitutes politeness remains a source of considerable debate amongst researchers. There is mounting evidence that although there may be common underlying elements, politeness is conceptualised differently across cultures. A comparison of the notions of politeness in English and teinei, reigi tadashii and keii hyoogen in Japanese indicates that these respective terms encompass somewhat different conceptual ranges. Polit…
The Importance of “Place” in Japanese Politeness
It has long been the contention of various scholars that Brown and Levinson's notion of face, in particular the concept of personal autonomy associated with negative face, is not appropriate for explaining politeness in Japanese. However, there has been little work on what might constitute a suitable alternative. In this paper, it is proposed that the concept of “place,” which has long occupied an important position in Japanese philosophy and lan…
The discursive challenge to politeness research
The discursive approach to politeness represents one of the most coherent challenges to the dominance of Brown and Levinson's politeness theory to date, and indeed to the continuing viability of the field of politeness research itself. However, while the discursive approach advocates the displacement of politeness as the focus of research, upon closer examination of the epistemological and ontological assumptions underlying this approach, a numbe…
Emic conceptualisations of (im)politeness and face in Japanese
The co-constitution of politeness implicature in conversation
Intention and diverging interpretings of implicature in the “uncovered meat” sermon
The standard model of communication in linguistic pragmatics is founded on the assumption that “successful” communication involves the addressee making inferences about the intentions of the speaker. Miscommunication of implicatures thus presumably arises when the addressee does not correctly infer the speaker's intention. In this paper, however, it is argued that this view of the (mis)communication of implicatures does not adequately account for…
Intention in pragmatics
The discursive negotiation of international student identities
Research about identity has undergone a discursive turn in recent years, with a shift from conceptualising identity as an essentialistic, pre-existing construct that drives social interaction, to a more fluid and hybrid construct that is constituted through discourse. As a result, a number of recent studies investigating the construction of international student identities have supposedly adhered to this latter, postmodernist-inspired notion of i…
Intention(ality) and the Conceptualization of Communication in Pragmatics
It is commonly assumed in (linguistic) pragmatics that communication involves speakers expressing their intentions through verbal and nonverbal means, and recipients recognizing or attributing those attentions to speakers. Upon closer examination of various pragmatic phenomena in discourse, however, it appears the situation is actually much more complex than the standard conceptualization of communication in pragmatics allows. In particular, it i…
Examining Conceptualizations of Communication
Language is a fundamental part of human communication systems, and linguistics, as the study of human language, is ultimately concerned with questions of communication. The extent to which communic
When is an email really offensive
The analysis in this paper centres on an email exchange between a lecturer and a student at the University of Auckland which resulted in the dismissal of that lecturer. This dismissal gave rise to significant controversy, both off- and online, as to whether the email itself was simply "intemperate" and "angry", or more seriously "offensive" and "racist". Through a close analysis of the interpretations of the emails by the lecturer and student, as…
Jocular mockery, (dis)affiliation, and face
Face in interaction
Evaluations of im/politeness of an intercultural apology
This study examines variation in evaluations of im/politeness of a recording of a naturally occurring intercultural apology, focusing in particular on potential cultural differences in these evaluations across speakers of (Australian) English and (Mandarin) Chinese. We first closely analyze the apology itself as a form of social action, and suggest in the course of this analysis that evaluations of im/politeness are closely tied to converging and…
Strategic embarrassment and face threatening in business interactions
Conversational Implicature
Speakers are often assumed to mean more than the literal sense of the words that they have spoken. For example, if I am in a café with a friend who is eating some cake with her coffee, and I comment that the cake looks really nice, my friend might respond by offering me some of her cake. By making this offer, my friend has shown that she thinks I was implying that I would like to try some of her cake. Since I did not actually say I wanted to try …
Inference and Implicature
An implicature is a type of speaker meaning that goes beyond what is literally said. Inference, in contrast, refers to the cognitive processes by which participants figure out meaning beyond what is said. Consider the following conversation
Epilogue
The papers in this special issue on Chinese 'face' and im/politeness collectively raise very real challenges for the ways in which the now well-known distinction between first order and second order approaches is conceptualized and operationalized by face and politeness researchers. They highlight the difficulties we inevitably encounter when analyzing face and im/politeness across languages and cultures, in particular, those arising from (1) the…
On understandings of intention
In a recent paper, Wedgwood (2011) launches a simultaneous defence of intention recognition and a critique of the alleged neglect of cognition in interactional approaches to communictive interaction. In this paper, I argue that this simultaneous critique and defence is deeply flawed on a number of counts. First, the “looser ” notion of intention which Wedgwood proposes glosses over and even confounds various levels or types of intention, and for …
The functions of self‐initiated self‐repair in the second language Chinese classroom 1
Self‐repair analysis has often been used to gauge a learner's proficiency level, language acquisition or monitoring ability. This study questions these presumed links by examining the self‐initiated self‐repair practices of second language learners of Mandarin Chinese drawing from both classroom interaction data and stimulated recall interviews. While this link may not be as strong as previously suggested, self‐repair behaviour can reveal other i…
Getting stuff done
Mock impoliteness, jocular mockery and jocular abuse in Australian and British English
Im/politeness across Englishes
Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies (67 works) · Psychology (67 works) · Linguistics (61 works) · Philosophy (47 works) · Discourse Analysis in Language Studies (44 works) · Sociology (41 works) · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition (38 works) · Social Psychology (37 works) · Computer Science (36 works) · Philosophy (34 works)