You See!

Abstract

The segment you see is employed as a parenthetical comment clause in initial, median and final position, where it may be said both to indicate the argumentative status of the clause it targets, as an explanation or justification for a previous representation, and to function as a politeness marker, in associating the cospeaker with propositions endorsed by the speaker, thereby defusing potential discord before it manifests itself. It is, in this second function, a marker of negative politeness (Brown & Levinson [1978]). Quirk et al [1985] also mention an alternative use of stressed you see to express triumph. In this paper I will propose an enunciative characterisation of you see which will, it is hoped, enable us to derive different, sometimes contradictory, interpretations of you see from the metalinguistic operations of which you see is the trace, and from observable differences in contextual configurations, including the identification of the related propositions or the position you see occupies relative to these propositions. From our study it emerges that you see is not in itself a marker of politeness, but that the operations which you see marks lend themselves to strategies including impoliteness (a Face Threatening Act – FTA) as well as negative and positive politeness, in the terms of Brown and Levinson. In some contexts it also appears to allow an uncertain speaker to elicit manifestations of positive politeness (backchannels) from the co-speaker. We are led to consider how the theory of enunciative operations might contribute to research in the fields of politeness and discourse structure.