Partnership between grammatical construction and interactional frame

Abstract

Building on the seminal work on grammar and frames (e.g. Fillmore 1982), in addition to recent studies that apply a construction grammar approach to the description of genres (Antonopoulou & Nikiforidou 2011; Nikiforidou 2010b; Östman 2005) and spoken discourse (Fischer 2011; Fried & Östman 2005), this paper highlights the importance of extending the analytical boundary of grammar to include interactional frames, e.g. genres and social interactions. Using as an illustrative case the stand-alone noun-modifying construction in Japanese, a grammatical construction that is genre-sensitive, this paper suggests that grammatical constructions and interactional frames are in partnership in the construction of meaning. It is argued that this partnership is mediated by the proficient language users’ knowledge, which is socially and culturally inculcated and fostered, and therefore it is important to keep the theoretical model flexible enough to acknowledge fluidity in grammatical understanding.