Topic Marker -Nun as an Exploratory Device : Shifting Domains for Stance Management in Pursuit of Intersubjectivity

Abstract

Kim, Kyu-hyun. 2017. “Topic Marker -Nun as an Exploratory Device: Shifting Domains for Stance Management in Pursuit of Intersubjectivity“. The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea 25(2), 29~72. From the conversation-analytic perspective, this paper investigates the interactional import of -nun used in assessment activities. The analysis of naturally-occurring interactions suggests that the domain-shifting function of -nun is closely attuned to shifting, or even reversing, the valence of the speaker's evaluative stance in a way that invokes a hitherto unmentioned domain as grounds for soliciting the interlocutor's agreement/affiliation, expressing partial agreement, or marking oblique disagreement. Often formulated as an overstatement to be retracted and/or as a move to solicit the interlocutor's collaborative uptake through claiming knowledge (or lack thereof), the nun-utterance furnishes the speaker with a resource for obliquely implementing face-threatening actions, pursuing common ground, or upgrading affect. Embodying the speaker's ‘exploratory’ stance, the use of -nun conveys the sense that the speaker is going beyond the ‘appearance’ of the matter at hand (e.g., a sub-domain from which a new generic feature may be drawn and attributed to the referent). This practice, which is further supported by the nun-marked adverbials formulated as a ‘logical guidepost expression’, provides for the basis on which the speaker organizes assessment activities in an other-attentive way, e.g., through upgrading affiliation and downgrading disaffiliation vis-a-vis the interlocutor's prior action, while sustaining his/her baseline stance and epistemic independency.