Edited by Zohar Livnat, Pnina Shukrun-Nagar and Galia Hirsch
Indirectness has been a key concept in pragmatic research for over four decades, however the notion as a technical term does not have an agreed-upon definition and remains vague and ambiguous. In this collection, indirectness is examined as a way of communicating meaning that is inferred from… read more
The article examines the pragmatic functions of the Hebrew graphic laughter marker “hhh” in a particularly turbulent public-political discursive arena – online readers’ comments to Facebook posts by the two leading contenders for the post of Israeli prime minister during the 2020 election… read more
This article discusses “specified compliments” consisting of a positive evaluation of an ability or achievement; a preposition; and an area of expertise or excellence, e.g. “experts in security”. An analysis of 74 examples in comments on politicians’ Facebook posts during 2020–2021 revealed that… read more
This paper discusses readers’ comments on posts written by the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on his Facebook page in November 2017. It focuses on the use of ironic echoes (Sperber & Wilson 1981) of compliments and accusations, including multi-stage ones, to either enhance or damage… read more
This study examines the news broadcasts of the Israeli TV Channel 2. It focuses on coverage of instances in which Haredi ‘Jewish ultra-Orthodox’ individuals are accused of committing immoral acts such as child abuse, hit and run accident and rape. I argue that in all of these instances, the… read more
The chapter examines readers’ comments on a Facebook post in which the Israeli politician Yair Lapid positions himself as an ordinary person. Based on Sacks (1984), it is argued that such positioning is characterized by themes, perspectives, and communicative patterns typical of ordinary people,… read more
This paper discusses the potential of semantic, pragmatic and grammatical devices used in the Israeli television news coverage of a dispute to promote one agenda, negate a contradictory one and position the correspondent as a participant in the dispute. Moreover, I argue that viewers of news… read more
This study examines the pragmatic-rhetorical functions of turn-initial Hebrew ki ‘because’-clauses in readers’ comments on politicians’ Facebook posts. An analysis of 100 ki-clauses, responding to either politicians’ posts or comments by other commenters, reveals that they provide explanations… read more
