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This paper lies in a poorly-researched area of interlanguage pragmatics, that of reporting discourse, and more specifically speech-acts. We present a small-scale study measuring L2 (non-native, of Greek L1) TEFL-training students’ ability in indirect speech, i.e., in reporting speech acts containing less conventionalized meaning modulators. The hypothesis that, despite their high linguistic competence in English, the students’ performance, and especially that of ‘freshers’, would drop significantly in reporting speech-acts containing such modulators was confirmed. The findings contribute to the persuasion that in EFL/ESL contexts, we need to focus on problems generated by poor understanding of functions in language use. The implications of this study are that rather than follow traditional ‘recipes’, i.e. technicalities such as backshifting, etc. in indirect-speech tasks, teaching methodologies need to develop students’ pragmatic competence, in this respect too, that will profitably also inform and complement technical aspects of reporting. In view of the findings, it is suggested that developing strategies of reporting speech-acts, and identifying utterance-force modulation vis-à-vis propositional (sentence) meaning can provide a platform for scaffolding reflective learning and developing metapragmatic awareness in L2. The article also provides modest evidence that courses raising pragmatic awareness should be included in EFL teacher-training curricula. The notion of utterance-type is also proposed as a useful level in accommodating pragmatic meaning in impoverished contexts of language teaching.

The existing theories of meaning are classifiable into semantic and foundational categories. After a brief overview of these categories, the current paper will dwell on a discussion of what has urged pragmaticists to endorse a dovetailing of semantics and pragmatics in their attempts at presenting a comprehensive and exhaustive account of meaning. The paper then uses Balkhi’s analogy of ‘the elephant in the dark room’ to argue that (a) all of the existing theories of meaning are inadequate, and that (b) the Gricean vicious cycle is also the product of pragmaticists’ mistaking complimentary distribution for inclusional distribution. Arguing in favor of a physiological theory of meaning, the paper concludes that a comprehensive theory of meaning has to be a theory of human brain and/or mind and should be foundational.

The 2019-2020 Hong Kong (HK) protest movement, which was initially triggered by the HK government’s proposed bill, eventually turned into a prolonged civil resistance. Collective action frames (CAFs), which can bring legitimacy to civil disobedience and mobilise collective actions, were manifested through protest signs that “blossomed” throughout HK. The study examined intertextuality in the expression of grievances of the 2019-2020 HK protests in signs. A total of 246 protest signs from the “Lennon Walls” and social media sources from the 2019-2020 HK protests were collected for analysis of CAFs using qualitative content analysis. The analysis shows three primary CAFs: (1) “unified pro-democracy Hongkongers” which emphasises the solidarity and unity among movement actors to maintain collective actions for the protests; (2) “police brutality” which stresses HK police’s abuses of human rights in order to mobilise the readers to respond in ways that are in favour of the protests; and (3) “conscience before politics” which highlights the importance of having a conscience in view of human rights violations. The study showed that the language of the protest signs marks the target audience and further reinforces the solidarity of Hongkongers to resist the undemocratic government and fight for freedom.

This study aims to analyze the meanings of metaphorical greetings to children in the Acehnese lullabies, Ratéb Dôda Idi, when mothers or elders cradle them to sleep. Traditional lullabies were collected from a book and were further verified by 12 Acehnese speakers, aged 50-55 years old, who had used these lullabies to cradle their children or grandchildren to sleep. The metaphor analysis technique and thematic analysis were used to analyze the data. The results showed that the metaphorical greetings for children in Ratéb Dôda Idi corresponds to (1) fruit pistils, (2) flowers, (3) leadership, (4) the white color, (5) anatomy, (6) good fortune, and (7) the cosmos. The meaning of affection, pampering, appreciation, praise, prayer, and motivation are embedded in the phrases, and the children are anticipated to grow into mature human beings who are devoted to their religion, parents, family, community, nation, and with the hope that they become wise and brave leaders. This form of culture through greetings should be preserved in the Acehnese daily communication because greeting children with metaphorical expressions are among the forms of an educational tradition that is beneficial to modern pedagogical values.

One of the greatest challenges and concerns in Higher education is the recognition of the factors affecting the language learners’ academic performance. The main objective of the present study is to scrutinize the relations between mobile technology usage, autonomy, self-efficacy, and academic performance. The sample consisting of 305 language learners from a Higher Educational Institute in India (48 females, and 257 males) was collected during the academic year 2020-2021. SmartPLS version 3.2.9 was used for Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) and hypothesis testing. The results revealed that the learners believed that mobile technology was useful and could help them in enhancing their academic performance. Mobile Technology (MT) usage has an affirmative and significant effect on autonomy, self-efficacy and academic performance of the language learners. Self-efficacy and autonomy mediate the effect of usage on academic performance. The study offers theoretical and practical implications for the use of mobile technology for language learning.

According to the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) for Languages, when mediating, speakers need to apply a series of strategies such as condensation, reformulation, and translation to transmit the content of a text. Differences between trained translators and learners are quite frequent. The pedagogical challenge that arises here can be addressed by using textual mediation activities to help students define a ‘skopos’ and to avoid interferences from the source text. In this study, we compared the results of 15 translation and 15 mediation activities carried out by two groups of university students (L1 Spanish, L2 German) in an economic translation course. Results showed that linguistic mistakes decreased in some cases in the mediation activity, as students were able to detach themselves from the original structures with greater confidence. The pedagogical implications of these results may help open a new pathway in the design and application of activities and courses in the initial stages of translation training in higher education.