Open research questions in Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies

What the literature leaves open

• 1. In terms of institutional training on strategic communication, congressional oversight committees, parliamentary secretariats, and institutional training directorates should develop standardized capacity-building programs and communication handbooks that train lawmakers of all genders to optimize interactional efficiency. While preserving the necessary assertive baseline required for public accountability, these guidelines should encourage concise, direct, and unembellished questioning to maximize clarity and avoid the excessive speech disfluencies and filler reliance that can slow down spontaneous public deliberations. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. A Discourse Analysis of the Philippine Lawmakers’ Spoken Language in Legislative Hearings DOI: https://doi.org/10.56738/issn29603986.geo2026.7.220 GEO Academic Journal Vol. 7 No. 4 2. For the judicial and secretarial simplification of jargon, legal counsel offices, legislative committee secretariats, and parliamentary rules committees must implement strict plain-language protocols during public broadcasts of committee hearings. Because the excessive use of highly dense legal and discipline-specific jargon acts as an institutional gatekeeper that reduces public comprehension, secretarial teams should provide real-time public summaries or ensure that complex procedural terminology is balanced with accessible phrasing to increase democratic transparency and civic engagement. 3. Regarding the reform of interrogation protocols to prevent accountability evasion, house and senate committee chairs, parliamentary ethics committees, and institutional legal panels are encouraged to revise internal rules of procedure to penalize deliberate conversational maxims violations—such as purposeful ambiguity, excessive structural elaboration, and irrelevant digressions—frequently deployed by interrogees as evasive rhetorical tools. Chairs should enforce strict timelines for direct responses, transforming hearings from a tactical battlefield of linguistic obfuscation into a streamlined mechanism that enforces clear, transparent, and fair public accountability.

  A Discourse Analysis of the Philippine Lawmakers’ Spoken Language in Legislative Hearings · 2026 · DOI

• Future studies could investigate the extent to which the verbs in these clauses tend to co- occur by employing a co-varying collexeme analysis (Stefanowitsch and Gries 2005). Where to go from here? There are three main issues that remain to be analyzed by future studies. It remains to be explored how this syntactic feature interacts with the repetition of a phrase or a clause in a when-clause.

  Clarifying when-constructions: Conversation, morphosyntax, lexicon, and mode and their interactions in language use · 2026 · DOI

• sed on social and cognitive — At the same time, the study is limited by the scope of the corpus data employed and does not account for sociolinguistic variables such as regional and generational differences, as discussed above. —the speaker indirectly space,” and shared ces In line with the revisions outlined in Sections 2 and 3, usages 4 and 5 are considered here as sharing the core function of supplementing or elaborating upon prior utterances, rather than being limited to the distinction between information and opinion.

  Usage Patterns of the Japanese Discourse Marker Sorekoso: An Intersubjective Perspective · 2026 · DOI

• Communicative strategy of manipulation is a type of psychological influence, an implementation of which leads to a hidden emergence of intentions in another person that do not coincide with the desire of this person. Depending on the orientation of speakers to communicative cooperation, contradiction of goals or complete opposition of views and ideas, cooperative, confrontational and aggressive aspects of the implementation of the manipulation strategy are distinguished. In the cooperative speech of teenage characters, the manipulation strategy is implemented by tactics: suggestion and distortion of information (52.64), and insincere surprise (7.89%). With a help of an open message addressed to the recipient, a manipulator sends him a "coded" signal, hoping that this signal will activate images necessary for the manipulator in a mind of an addressee. Tactics are implemented in speech of teenage characters by representatives. The main lexicostylistic means of tactics of suggestion and distortion of information are modal words, epistemic and hedging constructions. Among syntactic means, rhetorical and elliptical constructions occupy a dominant place. Turning to rhetoric, teenage characters unconsciously use psychological features of human behaviour in their reactions: a rhetorical question or mockery of a certain fact causes recipients to prove the opposite, thereby pushing them towards a goal necessary for an initiator of speech. Deliberate pauses in speech or broken reactive remarks force an opponent to make hasty conclusions or unconsciously choose an option of communicative behaviour that satisfies the addressee. Within the confrontational aspect, the strategy of manipulation is implemented by tactics: quasi-argumentation (47.73%) and fictitious indignation (29.54%). The main lexical means of giving their statements deceptive inflexibility and truthfulness is the use of vulgarisms. Among morphological means of manipulation, reinforcing 183 Studia Philologica. 2026. Issue 26 DOI: https://doi.org/10.28925/2412-2491.2026.26 ISSN 2412-2491 (Online) particles dominate. Expressive syntax is represented by elliptical, litotes and rhetorical constructions. Within conditions of communicative aggression, the most productive manipulative tactic is the tactic of appealing to the interlocutor's sensory sphere (61.64%). In speech, the tactic of appealing to the interlocutor's sensory sphere is implemented by speech acts of expressives (62.5% of all replicas) and representative (37.5%). The means of lexical expressiveness that implement this tactic in speech include vulgarism, means of epistemic modality and hedging.

  Means of Communicative Manipulation Strategy Implemented by Teenage Characters (Based on American Film Discourse) · 2026 · DOI

• All three positions of the headline, such as the attention-grabbing position, the attention-keeping position, and the attention-nudging position, are significant in allocating readers’ attention. Still, the most effective should be agentive constructs naming people metonymically (51 cases), two-component pairing designating famous people (19) and structures representing inanimate objects (62 items). The analysis has proved that the most frequent predicate constructs are those with verbs of speaking (63) because news texts report views, and pairings indicating social coercion (54), which implies renewal of the basic need of safety. As for the nudger, causal and locative constructs prevail as the former pinpoints the established causeeffect principle and the latter underscores that the event is close to the target audience. The perspective of further research consists in establishing the persuasive potential of communicative constructs body. REFERENCES 1. Bednarek, M., & Caple, H. (2017). The Discourse of News Values: How News Organizations Create Newsworthiness. Oxford University Press. 2. Diessel, H. (2023). The Constructicon: Taxonomies and Networks. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009327848 3. Dykstra, A. (2019). Critical reading of online news commentary headlines: Stylistic and pragmatic aspects. Topics in Linguistics, 20(2), 90-105. https://doi.org/10.2478/topling-2019- 0011 4. Edgerly, S., Mourão, R. R., Thorson, E., & Tham, S. M. (2020). When do audiences verify? How perceptions about message and source influence audience verification of news headlines. 52-71.

  Distribution of Addressee’s Attention in News Headlines · 2026 · DOI

• The quantitative analysis of the first-person singular, first-person plural and second-person pronouns reveals that the speech delivered by J.D. Vance at the Munich Security Conference, 2025, was essentially speaker-centered as more than two-thirds of the pronouns in the speech refer to the first person, with the plural pronouns we and our leading. This would presuppose inclusivity of the speech, yet the further context-based study demonstrated that Vance alternated between his different social roles and the scope of referents of we varied: the Vice President appeared in the speech as an ordinary guest to Munich visiting the city with his spouse; he also spoke on behalf of the USA administration; in several passages he was one of the American people. To finalize the speech, the Vice President used the first-person plural we inclusively to refer to the allies (the USA, the EU and the UK) and to call for consolidating and committing to shared values. The current research may be furthered by exploring how deictic elements are used to construct politicians’ persona and identity, which appears particularly promising in the modern discourse of identity and symbolic politics exercised in dramatically polarized societies. 15 Studia Philologica. 2026. Issue 26 DOI: https://doi.org/10.28925/2412-2491.2026.26 ISSN 2412-2491 (Online) REFERENCES 1. Fortanet, I. (2004). The use of 'we' in university lectures: reference and function. English for Specific Purposes 23 (1), 45–66. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0889-4906(03)00018-8. 2. Goffman, E. (1981). Footing. In E. Goffman & D. Hymes (Eds.), Forms of Talk (pp.124– 159). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 3. Levinson, S. C. (1983). Pragmatics. Cambridge University Press. 4. Lyons, J. (1968). Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics. Cambridge University Press. 5. Muthi’ah, Galib, S. A., Tsuraya, A. S., Abubakar, M., Nur, N. A., & Nawir, M. S. (2022). The different uses of the pronoun ‘we’ by EFL teachers in classroom interaction. Studies in English Language and Education 9 (1), 384–399. DOI: https://doi.org/10.24815/siele.v9i1.21458 6. Polkhovska, M. (2018). Linguo-pragmatic peculiarities of Modern English political discourse organization (a case study of D. Trump’s public speeches). Filolohichni traktaty 10 (1), 66–72. DOI: https://doi.org/10.21272/Ftrk.2018.10(1)-09 7. White House. (2025, February). Vice President J.D. Vance Delivers Remarks at the Munich Security Conference [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCOsgfINdKg 8. Worthington, H. (2024). Discursive Features of United States Foreign Policy Rhetoric the Middle East. Studia Philologica 22, 193–214.

  ‘Changing Hats’ and Deixis of First-person Plural Pronouns in J.D. Vance’s 2025 Munich Speech · 2026 · DOI

• Therefore, future studies are recommended to analyze more extensive data from different movie genres, examine other suprasegmental features such as sentence stress, rhythm, and intonation, and investigate the effectiveness of movie-based pronunciation learning in classroom contexts. First, the data were limited to selected words from one movie, so the findings cannot be generalized to all types of spoken English.

  An Analysis of Word Stress in The Devil Wears Prada Movie · 2026 · DOI

• The present study has several important limitations that should be acknowledged. First, the size of the corpus is relatively small (175 tokens of Mʕliʃ). Second, the data were collected through face-to-face interactions but did not include data from digital modes of communication (i.e., social media or instant messaging), in which the use of Mʕliʃ may have different pragmatic functions. Third, several identified functions are represented by a small number of tokens, which limits the strength of conclusions that can be drawn regarding their distribution and interactional significance. These categories should therefore be considered preliminary and subject to confirmation in future research with larger datasets. Additionally, future studies may explore prosodic features and regional variations of Mʕliʃ. Future studies may also examine how this discourse marker is used on social media as a means of expressing social solidarity, harmony, and deference. Acknowledgment Statement: I would like to thank my institution (Al-Balqa Applied University) for providing research facilities, including access to online academic databases and library resources. Conflicts of interest: The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper. Funding statements: As no external funding was received for this research. Data availability statement: Data is available upon request from the corresponding author. Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and contributor(s) and do not necessarily reflect JICC's or editors' official policy or position. All liability for harm done to individuals or property as a result of any ideas, methods, instructions, or products mentioned in the content is expressly disclaimed. Declaration of generative AI and AI-assisted technologies in the writing process: During the editing of this work, we used AI tools for copy-editing. After using this tool/service, the author(s) reviewed and edited the content as needed and take(s) full responsibility for the content of the publication.

  Multifunctionality of mʕliʃ in Jordanian Arabic: A Discourse-Pragmatic Perspective · 2026 · DOI

• Our research revealed that in IM, where non-verbal cues were insufficient, directness was predominantly adopted to convey certainty, clarity, and efficacy, implying directness as non-imposed.

  Group Communication in Work-related Instant Messaging (IM): Request Strategies Among Adult Malay Speakers of English · 2026 · DOI

• Based on these findings, the study puts forward the following recommendations: 1. Enhanced interpreter training: Interpreter training programs should be intensified in institutions, and emphasis should be placed on the cultural and pragmatic competence of interpreters in addition to language proficiency. Additionally, focused training on political colloquial expressions and the meanings they imply in relation to ideology can help interpreters maintain pragmatic force and stance positioning in delicate diplomatic contexts, including UNGA meetings. 2. Context familiarity: Professional interpreters employed by institutions like the UN should be briefed on relevant cultural contexts and idiomatic expressions, which may help minimize the omission and modulation of culturally marked expressions observed in this study. Page | 24 JPDA 5(2): 11-26 3. Institutional awareness: Institutions (like the UN) may benefit from being aware of the power of culturally and ideologically salient forms of expression in diplomatic speech and also from supporting interpretive practices that retain the evaluative stance of speakers in institutional communicative practices. 4. Further research: Future studies might investigate meaning-making in more political situations and across other language combinations in order to determine whether the same patterns of stance attenuation and discursive neutralization occur. Moreover, the use of SAT and CDA frameworks in the analysis of interpreting strategies and cognitive processing could further elucidate the mediating role of interpretation in agency, responsibility attribution, and ideological positioning in diplomatic speech. Funding: This research received no external funding. Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest. Publisher’s Note: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers.

  Ideological Loss and Pragmatic Dilution in Political Interpreting: A SAT–CDA Analysis of English Interpretations of Abbas’s UN Speeches · 2026 · DOI

• I have tried to briefly show in this paper how an interactional perspec- tive, mainly from conversation analysis, has played an important role in furthering our understanding of conflict talk and how Helmut’s work (and others including my own) have contributed to this endeavor: How is arguing accomplished? Which resources are commonly used in arguing? How can arguing be managed in ways to keep emotions in check and prevent a rupture in the social relationship? How can arguments be avoided or minimized, in contexts where other activities may be more productive? There are still many avenues that conversational arguing research may pursue, and space restricts me from elaborating on this. I will mention just a few that I feel are important. How can the CA concepts of epistemics and affiliation, which have received a lot of attention in the past decade, shed more light on how speakers argue? CA’s attention to institutional talk may also add significantly to the discussion on how arguments are managed, avoided or intensified. But also, how can these institutional practices inform everyday practices and vice versa? Can CA studies also help us to better understand global conflicts, how they are occasioned and how they may be effectively dealt with through talk? These questions, in naming but a few, can serve as a beginning agenda for conflict talk research in the 21st century.

  Accusation-response sequences in couples therapy from the perspectives of conversation analysis and argumentation analysis · 2026 · DOI

• Of course, the debate was not limited to a quarrel between pluralists and monists; it expanded to include critics from numerous emerging “fields” that have since become institutional mainstays (like feminist studies, postcolonial studies, African American studies, queer studies, and comparative literature) who criticized it for various alleged ideological blind spots.

  Introduction: On the Desirability of Speaking to Others · 2025 · DOI

• Most studies on CA in sign languages have been done on the basis of signed storytelling, and little is known about how the use of CA varies in different discourse types.

  Variation in the use of constructed action according to discourse type and age in Finnish Sign Language · 2022 · DOI

• Equally, if not more importantly, this book draws data from various languages and cultures, including Hungarian, English, Chinese and Japanese, extending the scope to cross-linguistic and cross-cultural comparisons and intercultural appropriation of ritual practices, the latter of which is a particularly under-researched area to date.

  Dániel Z. Kádár, <i>Politeness, Impoliteness and Ritual: Maintaining the Moral Order in Interpersonal Interaction</i> · 2019 · DOI

• Social disclosure enhances the FAB and listener responsiveness during social disclosure is an important facet; however, little is known about the nature of listener verbal responses that facilitate an enhanced FAB.

  Conversational Patterns and Listener Responses Associated With an Enhanced Fading Affect Bias After Social Disclosure · 2019 · DOI

• However, this relationship between question and social identity remains relatively under-explored in the theoretical territory (Kao & Weng, 2012; Tracy & Naughton, 1994).

  NEGOTIATING SOCIAL IDENTITY THROUGH QUESTIONS IN CASUAL CONVERSATIONS: A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS · 2017 · DOI

• Although intonation has been traditionally associated with the expression of attitudes and intentions on the part of the speaker, little is known about whether sociopragmatic factors, such as power or social distance, or situational ones, like physical distance or insistence, can constrain the use and felicity of pitch contours.

  Vocative Intonation Preferences are Sensitive to Politeness Factors · 2015 · DOI

• We focus on one variable, Distance, whose operationalization has produced mixed results, and argue that introducing another variable (Relationship Affect) does not solve this problem, as further variables, such as the Speaker’s Emotional State, can override the latter, leading to an unnecessary proliferation of variables.

  The Role of the Speaker’s Emotional State in Im/politeness Assessments · 2014 · DOI

• It is argued that it is insufficient to rely solely on an analysis of lexis and morpho-syntax as deployed by speakers within one turn to describe the sociopragmatic abilities of L2 learners.

  L2 requests: Preference structure in talk-in-interaction · 2010 · DOI

• Drawing on a corpus of talk produced by novice language teachers during mentoring sessions, the analysis indicates that teachers' direct reports of their own speech tend to foreground their accomplishments and developing expertise, whereas direct reports of their mental states tend to highlight uncertainty, gaps in knowledge, or negative feelings and emotions.

  Reported Speech and Reported Mental States in Mentoring Meetings: Exploring Novice Teacher Identities · 2009 · DOI

• By focusing on a relatively understudied speaker group such as the Chinese, typically regarded as having rules of speaking and social norms very different from those of Westerners, this paper aims at illuminating the fact that, in cross-cultural communication, foreign language speakers have to pay close attention to sociolinguistic rules of the target language in addition to structure and discourse rules to meet the needs of linguistic accuracy and fluency.

  Sociolinguistic Competence in the Complimenting Act of Native Chinese and American English Speakers: A Mirror of Cultural Value · 2005 · DOI

• Little research has been done on business discourse (Drummond, 1989), and relatively few studies have attempted cross-cultural and/or cross-linguistic comparisons (Murata, 1994; Makri-Tsilipakou, 1994).

  Interruptive strategies in British and Italian management meetings · 1996 · DOI

• To date, relatively little is known about the discourse-level patterns typically found in the English of nonnative speakers, how they diverge from discourse produced by native speakers, or how differences in nonnative discourse patterns affect native English listeners' understanding of the discourse.

  Discourse Structure and the Perception of Incoherence in International Teaching Assistants' Spoken Discourse · 1992 · DOI

• 23 Context is not limited to the words immediately surrounding the idea presented; it entails many more elements, manifestations both verbal and non-verbal.

  The role of debate in speech communication · 1972 · DOI

• Results of this study are limited by the num- ber of individuals studied and the fact that the sample was not selected randomly. The following conclusions are warranted: 1) The overt struggle component of stuttering can be altered by manipulating the thematic con- tent of stutterers' language.

  Abstracts of dissertations in the field of speech, 1968 · 1969 · DOI

Most-cited papers in Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies

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• Against Constructionism: The Historical Ethnography of Emotions · Current Anthropology · 1997 · 215 citations
• Dialogic Teaching and Dialogic Stance: Moving beyond Interactional Form · Research in the Teaching of English · 2015 · 126 citations
• The Contact Space: A Novel Framework for Intergroup Contact Research · Journal of Language and Social Psychology · 2010 · 122 citations
• Claiming Insufficient Knowledge · Human Communication Research · 1997 · 117 citations
• Women Are More Likely Than Men to Use Tentative Language, Aren’t They? A Meta-Analysis Testing for Gender Differences and Moderators · Psychology of Women Quarterly · 2011 · 114 citations
• The Principle of (Im)politeness Reciprocity · Journal of Pragmatics · 2021 · 113 citations
• The Development of Argumentive Discourse Skill · Discourse Processes · 2001 · 106 citations
• Longitudinal Conversation Analysis - Introduction to the Special Issue · Research on Language and Social Interaction · 2021 · 90 citations

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