The Pragmatic Annotation Scheme of the SPICE-Ireland Corpus

Abstract

This paper builds on the paradox whereby transcriptions are the object of study for investigations into the spoken language but yet omit so much of “what is heard” when an utterance is made. Transcriptions are agnostic with regard to Searlean notions of illocutionary force and perlocutionary effect. The paper proposes that the enhancement of transcriptions with pragmatic and prosodic annotation overcomes that paradox and captures the original utterance more objectively. It argues that annotation is part of transcription. It presents with examples a brief summary of each part of the Pragmatic Annotation Scheme developed for the SPICE-Ireland Corpus: speech acts, tone movements, discourse markers, utterance tags and quotatives.