Abstract
Abstract In this article we investigate how speakers manage discourse expectations in dialogue by comparing the meaning and use of three Dutch discourse particles, i.e. wel, toch and eigenlijk, which all express a contrast between their host utterance and a discourse-based expectation. The core meanings of toch, wel and eigenlijk are formally distinguished on the basis of two intersubjective parameters: (i) whether the particle marks alignment or misalignment between speaker and addressee discourse beliefs, and (ii) whether the particle requires an assessment of the addressee’s representation of mutual discourse beliefs. By means of a quantitative corpus study, we investigate to what extent the intersubjective meaning distinctions between wel, toch and eigenlijk are reflected in statistical usage patterns across different social situations. Results suggest that wel, toch and eigenlijk are lexicalizations of distinct generalized politeness strategies when expressing contrast in social interaction. Our findings call for an interdisciplinary approach to discourse particles in order to enhance our understanding of their functions in language.
Highlights
Dialogue can be seen as a form of joint action in which the highest goal is to align the mental representations of the discourse participants
Language provides us with specific tools to manage interactive alignment in the form of discourse particles, lexical expressions that do not contribute to the truth-conditional meaning of a sentence, but relate the utterance in which they occur to the widerlinguistic context (e.g. Fischer 2006; Fraser 1999; Schiffrin 1987)
2 We focus on situations with two discourse participants, but more participants may be involved in a conversation; it may be that analyses of certain modal particles require an incorporation of more than two viewpoints
Summary
Dialogue can be seen as a form of joint action in which the highest goal is to align the mental representations of the discourse participants (interactive alignment; Pickering and Garrod 2004). We will give a formal account of the core meaning distinctions between wel, toch and eigenlijk These particles have been discussed in several works that mostly address their meaning and uses We will discuss a number of studies that show that wel, toch and eigenlijk encode a contrast between a proposition expressed in the host utterance and a proposition in the common ground, but differ with respect to the status of this presupposed proposition. We will define this difference in terms of intersubjectivity, a notion used in Cognitive Grammar to refer to the cognitive coordination between the speaker and the addressee Applying the notion of intersubjectivity to the analysis of discourse particles is in line with Zimmermann’s (2012) semantic definition of discourse particles, i.e. expressions that “convey information concerning the epistemic states of the speaker, or her interlocutors, or both, with respect to the descriptive or propositional content of an utterance” (Zimmermann 2012: 2012)
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
