{"id":17187,"date":"2025-06-02T06:01:55","date_gmt":"2025-06-02T10:01:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/whamit.mit.edu\/?p=17187"},"modified":"2025-06-02T13:10:03","modified_gmt":"2025-06-02T17:10:03","slug":"wang-defends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/2025\/06\/02\/wang-defends\/","title":{"rendered":"Wang defends!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last week, <a href=\"https:\/\/ruoanwang.wordpress.com\/\">Ruoan Wang<\/a> successfully defended her dissertation entitled <span data-olk-copy-source=\"MessageBody\"><em>Proxies and Social Meaning<\/em>! Below is Ruoan&#8217;s abstract:<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><span data-olk-copy-source=\"MessageBody\">This dissertation presents an analysis of polite meaning as part of a pragmatic calculus, without dedicated features in the core grammar. I present a purpose-built typology (n&gt;200) showing that polite pronouns often have no inherent form of their own, instead piggybacking on certain phi-featural values targeted for recruitment, resulting in recruitment asymmetries in the shapes of polite proxies (PL but not SG; 3 but not 1\/2; INCL but not EXCL). I argue asymmetries result because only certain grammatical forms are well-suited for linguistically manifesting the anthropological notion of negative politeness (Brown &amp; Levinson 1987): respecting an interlocutor\u0092s right \u0093to freedom of action and freedom from imposition\u0094. A polite context is thus a context where speakers avoid making assumptions about their interlocutor(s), where only number- and\/or person-neutral forms may surface.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-olk-copy-source=\"MessageBody\"> <br clear='none'\/>\nSuch a pragmatic approach is shown to deliver results. First, the number- and\/or person-neutrality of polite proxies is independently supported by the shapes of semantic defaults. Second, the machinations of the recruitment mechanism are illuminated by an Optimality-Theoretic analysis which delivers a factorial typology that perfectly mirrors the typological nuances within recruitment asymmetries.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Here are photos of Ruoan during the defense and her with three members in her committee (from left to right: Norvin Richards, Adam Albright, Kai von Fintel):<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/whamit.mit.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/IMG_0839.jpeg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-17188\" src=\"http:\/\/whamit.mit.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/IMG_0839.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/whamit.mit.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/IMG_1127?.jpeg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-17195\" src=\"http:\/\/whamit.mit.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/IMG_1127?.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Congratulations, Ruoan!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last week, Ruoan Wang successfully defended her dissertation entitled Proxies and Social Meaning! Below is Ruoan&#8217;s abstract: This dissertation presents an analysis of polite meaning as part of a pragmatic calculus, without dedicated features in the core grammar. I present a purpose-built typology (n&gt;200) showing that polite pronouns often have no inherent form of their [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-student-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17187"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17187\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17198,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17187\/revisions\/17198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}