Discourse Markers

9 Key excerpts on "Discourse Markers"

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  Historical Pragmatics

  • Andreas H. Jucker, Irma Taavitsainen, Andreas H. Jucker, Irma Taavitsainen(Authors)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  Finally, it has been ob-served that Discourse Markers, because of their lack of semantic content, pose difficulties for translation. If Discourse Markers are not a formal grammatical class, they must be under-stood as constituting a functional class (Hansen 1998: 357; Bazzanella 2006: 451; Diewald 2006: 406; Waltereit 2006: 64). Classic definitions of Discourse Markers have focused on the text-connective functions of Discourse Markers; for example, Schiffrin (1987: 31) defines Discourse Markers as “sequentially dependent el-ements which bracket units of talk” (see also Fraser 1988), while Schourup (1999: 234) comes to the conclusion that the “typical” discourse marker “is used to relate [an] utterance to the immediately preceding utterance”. Günthner and Mutz argue that Discourse Markers “contextualize how the following utterance or longer epi-sode is to be interpreted in relation to the preceding discourse” (2004: 83). Many definitions of Discourse Markers also include reference to speakers and/or hearers. For example, Brinton (1996: 35–40) argues that Discourse Markers can be under-stood as serving “interpersonal” as well as “textual” functions. In their textual role, Discourse Markers assist in structuring discourse as text, by, for example, initiating or closing discourse; marking topic shifts, episodic boundaries, or turns; constrain-ing the relevance of adjoining clauses; or introducing repairs or reformulations. In their interpersonal role, Discourse Markers may focus either on the speaker or on the relation between the speaker and hearer. The former – a subjective function – involves, for example, expressing responses, reactions, attitudes, evaluations or continuing attention. The latter – an intersubjective function – ranges from atten-tion getting to expressions of cooperation, shared knowledge, solidarity or inti-macy (positive politeness) to deference and other face-saving devices (negative politeness) (see López-Couso, this volume).

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  The Handbook of Discourse Analysis

  • Deborah Tannen, Heidi E. Hamilton, Deborah Schiffrin(Authors)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  Thus, vocalizations that have no inherent meaning at all, and that occur elsewhere for very different reasons (see, e.g., Fromkin 1973 on the role of filled pauses, and other “speech errors” in language production), can also provide markers through which to structure discourse (for a parallel argument about gestures, see Kendon 1995). In sum, research on Discourse Markers has spread into many areas of linguistic inquiry, drawing scholars from many different theoretical and empirical orientations. 19 Although this welcome diversity has led to an abundance of information about dis- course markers, it has also led to knowledge that is not always either linear or cumu- lative. The result is that it is difficult to synthesize the conclusions of past research into a set of coherent and consistent findings and, thus, to integrate scholarly findings into an empirically grounded theory. Our conclusion in the next section thus returns to a very basic issue still confronting discourse-marker analysis: What are Discourse Markers? 3 Conclusion: Markers, Discourse Analysis, and Grammar Discourse Markers are elements of language that scholars wish to study, even if they do not always agree on what particular elements they are studying or what to call the object of their interest. Not only have Discourse Markers been called by various names but also, like the definition of discourse itself (see Introduction, this volume), what often opens books and articles about markers is a discussion of definitional issues. Rather than try to resolve these issues, we here take a more modest approach that addresses the definitional problem from the outside in: we suggest that the way one identifies markers is a direct consequence of one’s general approach to language. We do so by considering the status of four words that are often, but not always, viewed as markers: and, y’know, and their Hebrew “equivalents”: ve- and taydea, respectively.

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  The Handbook of Discourse Analysis

  • Deborah Schiffrin, Deborah Tannen, Heidi E. Hamilton, Deborah Schiffrin, Deborah Tannen, Heidi E. Hamilton(Authors)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  Others include a cognitive ability to represent concepts and ideas through language and a textual ability to organize forms, and convey meanings, within units of language longer than a single sentence. Discourse Markers – expressions like well , but , oh and y’know – are one set of linguistic items that function in cognitive, expressive, social, and textual domains. 1 Although there were scattered studies of Discourse Markers in the 1980s, their study since then has abounded in various branches of linguistics and allied fields, leading Fraser (1998: 301) to call discourse marker analysis “a growth market in linguistics.” Markers have been studied in a variety of languages, including Chinese (Biq 1990; Kwong 1989; Or 1997), Danish (Davidsen-Nielsen 1993), Finnish (Hakulinen and Seppanen 1992; Hakulinen 1998), French (Cadiot et al. 1985; Hansen 1998; Vincent 1993), German (W. Abraham 1991), Hebrew (Ariel 1998; Maschler 1997, 1998; Ziv 1998), Hungarian (Vasko 2000), Indonesian (Wouk 2000), Italian (Bazzanella 1990; Bruti 1999), Japanese (Cook 1990, 1992; Fuji 2000; Matsumoto 1988; Onodera 1992, 1995), Korean (Park 1998), Latin (Kroon 1998), Mayan (Brody 1989; Zavala in press), Portuguese (Silva and de Macedo 1992), and Spanish (Koike 1996; Schwenter 1996; see also section 3 below). They have been examined in a variety of genres and interactive contexts, for example, narratives (Norrick forthcoming; Koike 1996; Segal et al. 1991), political interviews (Wilson 1993), health care consultations (Heritage and Sorjonen 1994), games (Greaseley 1994; Hoyle 1994), computer-generated tutorial sessions (Moser and Moore 1995), newspapers (Cotter 1996a), radio talk (Cotter 1996b), classrooms (de Fina 1997; Chaudron and Richards 1986; Tyler et al. 1988), and service encounters (Merritt 1984), as well as in a number of different language contact situations (Cotter Discourse Markers 55 1996b; de Fina 2000; Gupta 1992; Heisler 1996; Maschler 1994; Sankoff et al.

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  The Rise of Discourse Markers

  • Bernd Heine, Gunther Kaltenböck, Tania Kuteva, Haiping Long(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  Whether, or to what extent, the linguistic factors mentioned can account for the contribution of DMs to bilingual discourse is still largely unclear and in need of more research. In the following sections, attention will also be drawn to the metatextual role in shaping the language use of bilinguals. By being anchored in the situation of discourse rather than in the structure of a sentence, DMs allow interlocutors to view discourse in a wider context and relate it to the entire pragmatic space of linguistic communication. For example, in the borrowing of Spanish DMs in Mayan languages it is not only their detachable nature but also their general function of structuring discourse that is said to make Spanish DMs eligible for borrowing (Brody 1987: 513). A survey of the literature on bilingual discourse suggests that it is almost invariably the following functional components of the situation of discourse listed in Kaltenböck, Heine, and Kuteva (2011: 861) that are sensitive to language contact: Text organization, attitudes of the speaker, and speaker– hearer interaction. This tripartite division of components largely correlates with an alternative terminological distinction proposed by some authors (e.g., Fedriani and Sansò 2017: 2; Goria 2017: 440), according to which markers devoted to text organization tend to be referred to as DMs, those related to speaker–hearer interaction as pragmatic markers (PMs), while markers related to the attitudes of the speaker tend to be referred to as modal particles (MPs). 6 7.3.2 Text Organization Work on DMs has been shaped to quite some extent by Schiffrin (1987), who defines the English particles oh, well, and, but, or, so, because, now, then, 6 For example, Goria (2017: 440) writes: “PMs are related to the management of an ongoing interaction, and include markers like attention getters and turn yielding devices.

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  Discourse and Pragmatics in Functional Grammar

  • John H. Connolly, Roel M. Vismans, Christopher S. Butler, Richard A. Gatward, John H. Connolly, Roel M. Vismans, Christopher S. Butler, Richard A. Gatward(Authors)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  Discourse Markers, discourse structure and Functional Grammar Caroline Kroon 2.1. Introduction 1 One of the more recent trends in Functional Grammar research concerns attempts to transform the current, sentence-oriented FG model into a more discourse-oriented model, or even into a full-fledged formal FG model of discourse (cf. Hengeveld, this volume). The necessity of such an undertaking emerges from the existence of a considerable number of linguistic phenomena that cannot be adequately accounted for in a model that restricts itself to the grammatical sentence. One of these phenomena is formed by the category of expressions that is usually referred to by the name of Discourse Markers. The label Discourse Markers applies to a heterogeneous group of expressions (for the greater part, particles), which have in common that they indicate, in one way or other, how a unit of text is integrated into the verbal or non-verbal discourse context. They signal, for instance, how the speaker or author intends a message to relate to the foregoing or following discourse, or to (a particular aspect of) the communicative situation. As such, Discourse Markers may form a useful starting point for attempts to gain more insight into the various types of structures that in general underlie coherent discourse. Examples of Discourse Markers in English are, for instance, well, y 'know, because, but and so. In the present paper I will give an account of discourse structure as it emerges from an elaborate study of the functions of a number of Latin Discourse Markers. For details of this study I refer to Kroon (1995). I will first give an overview of the various concepts that are, in my opinion, relevant to the issue of discourse structure (at least as far as the functions of Latin Discourse Markers are concerned), and then briefly discuss them in the light of the question whether and how they can be integrated into the current FG model, or at least made compatible with it.

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  Conversational Routines in English

  Convention and Creativity

  • Karin Aijmer(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  In the relevance-theoretical framework, conversational uptake changes the speaker’s and hearer’s common knowledge basis in specific ways constrained by the principle of relevance. Special Discourse Markers have the function of signalling the effect of context on the discourse. The speaker signals how the speaker’s and hearer’s knowledge is affected by the message, e.g. that the message supports that knowledge, contradicts it or that what is said is valid only with certain restrictions. The signalling of the reliability of what is said, the source of information, etc by means of markers (what Chafe 1986 calls evidentiality) is a condition for successful communication. However, this is not enough. The hearer, who could only interpret what is said on a sentence-to-sentence basis, would be seriously disadvantaged as a conversational partner. In the relevance-theoretical analysis we can also explain how the hearer is given sufficient clues to interpret the macro-structure of the discourse.

  In this work, Discourse Markers have been treated as a distinct linguistic category which can be analysed as a cognitive frame. A key to understanding what features they have is that they are metalinguistic and placed in a special discourse marker slot.

  The problem of how and why certain elements in language develop discourse-structuring or cohesive functions in a historical perspective has not been discussed in this chapter. Investigating this process, which involves ‘delexification’, phonological weakening and ‘pragmatic enrichment’ of content elements under certain conditions, is another study.10

  Notes

  1   Erman wants to distinguish between ‘connective’ and items typical of impromptu speech, ‘It is true that pragmatic expressions may serve to connect pieces of discourse, and could in such contexts be called “con nective”, but since van Dijk uses the term mainly to cover conjunctions and the logical relations they impose, I think we ought to look for other terms to refer to items typical of spoken language and more specifically of impromptu speech’ (Erman 1987: 7).

  Õstman (1982) distinguishes between connectives (conjunctions) and ‘particles’. Of particular interest is his attempt to establish a class of prototypical discourse particles by means of explicit criteria.

  2   It is common to try to make some functional distinctions between different types of marker. Chaudron and Richards (1986) distinguish between micro-markers and macro-markers, corresponding to the distinction between local and global markers (see section 5.9.1).

  3   See section 5.9 for a more detailed discussion of the two classes of markers.

  4   Originally taken from Blakemore (1987:117).

  5

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  A Contrastive View of Discourse Markers

  Discourse Markers of Saying in English and French

  • Laure Lansari(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  1.2.5 .

  1.1 Defining DMs in the Pragmatic Tradition

  1.1.1 Historical Landmarks: The Rise of a “Non-syntactic” Functional Class

  Historically speaking, the class of DMs was first defined in the 1980s within pragmatic studies that took an interest in items such as well or I mean used in oral interaction in English, as in Schiffrin’s (1987 ) pioneering study. Originally, “discourse” thus referred to oral interaction and responded to the crucial need to set up a new referential frame that went beyond sentences or clauses and could accommodate linguistic markers that were hard to analyse through well-established syntactic categories (adverb, conjunct, etc.). Ranger (2018 : 23) notes that the term “discourse” may refer either to an extra-sentential level of analysis, or to language use (“discourse” being opposed to abstract language structures). In original pragmatics-based works, it corresponds to the former definition with an additional emphasis on dialogical spoken interaction. In enunciative approaches, discourse more simply refers to any language activity and does not have a specific meaning in terms of genre (see Sect. 1.2 ).

  The emergence of this research field may be seen as an important epistemological turn in linguistics, as it opened up new research paths in areas that had been overlooked by the dominant linguistic theories of the time, i.e. structuralism and generative grammar (Celle and Huart 2007 : 1–2). Coining a new term—“discourse marker”—was a way to expose the inadequacy of syntax to account for such linguistic items. The class of DMs is thus intrinsically “non-syntactic”, and this has two major consequences. First, from a semasiological viewpoint, the “non-syntactic” approach explains the heterogeneity of the members of this class (Dostie and Pusch 2007 ; Lewis 2006 ; Beeching 2016 ), which gathers very different markers that developed through a decategorisation/recategorisation process (i.e. adverbs, interjections, clauses that came to be recategorised as DMs). The four DMs compared in the present study went through that very process: they started out as full clauses and gradually acquired a new status as DMs, possibly as “comment clauses ” (Brinton 2008 ). I shall leave this question open for now: the syntactic behaviour of the four DMs of saying under scrutiny and their possible recategorisation as specific DMs called “comment clauses ” (or “reduced parenthetical clauses” in other theoretical categorisations, see Schneider 2007 ) will be discussed in relation to the corpus findings in Chapters 4 and 5

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  Pragmatics and Corpus Linguistics

  A Mutualistic Entente

  • Jesús Romero-Trillo(Author)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  The commentary markers are ‘lexical expressions which have both a representational meaning specifying an entire message [the proposi-tion], and a procedural meaning signalling that this message is to function as a comment on some aspect of the basic message’ (Fraser 1996). In Fraser’s analysis disjuncts are different from conjuncts which would be analyzed as Discourse Markers. In contrast to commentary markers, dis-course markers do not contribute to representational meaning but only to procedural meaning. ‘They provide instructions on how the utterance to which the discourse marker is attached is to be interpreted’ (Fraser 1996: 186). However commentary markers and Discourse Markers can be difficult to distinguish from each other. While we have a fairly clear idea of what Discourse Markers mean (and the type of coherence relations between utter-ances they can express) commentary markers are more complex since the speaker’s and writer’s attitudes and feelings are also aspects of the context and part of their pragmatic interpretation. For example, the markers can also have the function to signal coherence with the preceding discourse in certain positions and they can be used strategically for argumentation with functions going beyond the commentary one. Thompson and Zhou (2000: 131) note for example that disjuncts (com-mentary markers) can signal a conjunct (discourse marker) relation and ‘that their removal would often result in a sense of incoherence’. One of their examples is: All of these sports and many others are dominated by the human urge to aim at something. Surprisingly , this aspect of sport is often overlooked when underlying motivations are being discussed. (Thompson and Zhou 2000: 131) Surprisingly relates to expectation and is necessary to show how the sen-tence it introduces is associated with the preceding discourse. To begin with we need to consider commentary markers as a class.

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  Corpus Pragmatics

  A Handbook

  • Karin Aijmer, Christoph Rühlemann(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  They can also draw attention to changes taking place in the context. According to Verschueren (1999: 189), pragmatic markers are ‘“indicators of metapragmatic awareness” tracing changes in the context as the speaker progresses through discourse’. 198 Karin Aijmer They may for example indicate the speaker ’s reflection on the process of finding the right word. Their reflective or metalinguistic character is especially import- ant in specific social situations where speakers have to make it clear from moment to moment what is going on, and in helping the hearer to understand the utterance by referring to shared sociocultural knowledge. 7.1.2.2 Indexicality Another property needed to explain the role of pragmatic markers in the communication is their indexicality. Already Schiffrin (1987) recognized the indexical character of pragmatic markers, which she described in terms of their (discourse) deictic properties. She focused above all on their property to point forwards and backwards in discourse. However, pragmatic markers have a rich indexical meaning, as evidenced by the fact that they can be used to index the speakers’ social or professional identity, social relations and activities (e.g. whether the context is a conversation or a debate): see Ochs 1996. (See also Rühlemann, this work, on discourse deixis.) 7.1.3 Defining pragmatic markers Schiffrin (1987) discussed a restricted number of lexical elements referred to as Discourse Markers (oh, well, and, but, or, so, because, now, then, I mean, you know). Her definition of Discourse Markers as ‘sequentially dependent elements which bracket units of talk’ (Schiffrin 1987: 31) has been influential ever since. However, the field of study has expanded, and many more lexical items are now considered to be pragmatic markers. 1 The broadening of the field has also opened the way to a renewed discussion of what we mean by Discourse Markers (or pragmatic markers) and what lexical items belong in this category.

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