Introduction

Abstract

The aim of this book is twofold: first, to give an overview of what characterizes teenage talk in general and second to show how the use of pragmatic markers (smallwords) facilitates the smooth run of talk on three levels of conversation, the interactional, interpersonal and textual levels, as reflected in two corpora of spontaneous speech, Corpus Oral de Lenguaje Adolescente de Madrid (COLAm) and The Bergen Corpus of London Teenage Language (COLT). A description of the corpora and the speakers is followed by a definition of ‘pragmatic markers’ KeywordsSpontaneous SpeechTaboo WordDiscourse MarkerTextual LevelMatic MarkerThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.