Discourse-pragmatic Functions Research Articles

The Uses of the Discourse Marker Zen in Iraqi Arabic Oral Discourse: A Discourse- Pragmatic Analysis

This study examined the discourse-pragmatic functions the DM Zen performs at the interpersonal and textual levels of Iraqi Arabic oral discourse. It also explored whether there is a relationship between the speaker's gender or educational level and the use of the DM Zen from a functional viewpoint. Brinton’s (1996) dual model of functions was employed as a framework of analysis. The results revealed that beside Brinton's (1996) proposed macro- level functions, the DM Zen was found to fulfil extra micro-level functions at both levels of discourse. The results also showed that the speaker's gender and educational level had no effect on the usage of the speech marker Zen in terms of functions.

Pseudo-Coordinated Sitzen and Stehen in Spoken German: A Case of Emergent Progressive Aspect?

This paper investigates the aspectual potential of posture verb pseudo-coordination in spoken German. In a corpus study of sitzen ‘sit’ and stehen ‘stand’, it is shown that despite a preference for activity verbs, verbs of all aspectual classes occur in the second conjunct. The posture verb imposes its durative meaning component on the second verb, thus making a progressive interpretation of the construction possible. Apart from this emergent aspectual function, German posture verb pseudo-coordination has a subjective function (conveying the speaker’s beliefs about the subject referent’s stance), and a discourse pragmatic function (information packaging).*

The Emergence of Tab in Najdi Arabic

This study empirically investigates functional and social variation in the use of TAYYIB (‘okay, well, right’) in light of grammaticalisation. Thirty naturally occurring conversations of 60 Najdi Arabic speakers were recorded in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The analysis demonstrates that TAYYIB has two realisations: full Tayyib [tˁajjib] and reduced Tab [tˁab]. Drawing on the conversation analytic approach within a variationist framework, TAYYIB was used to perform multiple discourse-pragmatic functions: interpersonal, textual and interpersonal–textual. The statistical analysis reveals that variant choice is significantly conditioned by the pragmatic functions. While Tayyib is employed to perform all three functions, Tab is only used for textual and interpersonal–textual meanings. As for social factors, Tab is significantly more likely to be used by younger speakers than adults and also more likely to be used by females than males. This can be interpreted as an indication of ongoing change driven by young people, primarily females, towards the greater use of the innovative Tab. Given the evidence of linguistic change in Tab including semantic bleaching, pragmatic strengthening and phonological reduction, the study suggests that Tab has undergone advanced grammaticalisation.

There as a discourse-pragmatic marker in Irish English

The upper ranks of corpus word frequency lists are primarily populated by functional items, as well as by other small words characterised by their polysemy that reward focussed attention and research. Exploring these items has resulted in rich and fruitful insights from a corpus pragmatic perspective. This paper focuses on the nature and value of there as a discourse-pragmatic marker in Irish English (IrE). We focus on intimate discourse (i.e., the language used between family and friends), and use corpora of IrE to trace and investigate the varietal nuances of there in this context. Our analysis acknowledges the expected existential and locative functions and illustrates that there has specific discourse–pragmatic properties in the intimate sphere in IrE. We argue that there has acquired additional pragmatic dimensions and is used in the language of family and friends as, for example, an involvement marker or mitigator. In the discussion of the development of there as a discourse-pragmatic marker, we consult historical data that matches our focal context, and discuss the processes by which there has come to fulfil a range of discourse-pragmatic functions in IrE.

The rise of what-general extenders in English

Abstract General extenders (ges) are elements such as and so forth occurring at the right periphery. On the referential level, they implicate a set, but they also serve a range of discourse-pragmatic functions, such as hedging and interpersonal relations. Some sociolinguistic studies have seen the development of ges as synchronic grammaticalization involving phonetic reduction, decategorialization, semantic bleaching and pragmatic enrichment, but other studies have found no evidence of ongoing grammaticalization. Historical studies of ges are few. This paper sets out to fill this gap by studying the rise of disjunctive, adjunctive and bare ges formed with what – (or/and) what you will, or what, or/and what else, (or) whatever, (or/and) what not and (or/and) what have you. Despite their apparent similarity, these are shown to have quite different sources and histories. Their development conforms to some of the recognized parameters of grammaticalization but is more fruitfully understood from a constructionist approach.

If that’s what she said, then that’s what she said: a usage-based, constructional analysis of pleonastic conditionals in English

This paper investigates so-called pleonastic conditionals (PCs) in Present Day English, e.g. If you have to, you have to or When duty calls, duty calls. PCs are rhetorical statements in which the antecedent and the consequent are formally and semantically identical. The construction is characterized by stylistic reduplication and semantic redundancy. It is exactly this tautological nature which has a considerable effect on the discourse-pragmatic functions of the construction. The paper analyzes the construction’s frequency, form and functions by looking at data from three BYU corpora: the Movie Corpus (Davies, 2019), the TV Corpus (Davies, 2019), the Corpus of American Soap Operas (Davies, 2011). 2151 examples of if- and when-PCs are analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively. It is argued that PCs are functionally too different to be classified as default conditionals in the strict sense simply because they do not express a condition or inference. PCs are constructions used to express acceptance, indifference or certainty of the proposition. On top of that, they also code prototypicality which is a function completely overlooked in the literature so far. A Logistic Regression Model is fitted to predict the choice of the connector if or when. The statistical analysis confirms that the two types have different constructional profiles. With regards to theoretical modeling, the paper analyzes PCs from a usage-based, cognitive, construction grammar point of view and sketches the constructions’ form-meaning parings as well as their horizontal and vertical connections in the constructicon.

Discourse-pragmatic functions of wellah and wellahi in spoken Kurdish

This study explores the discourse-pragmatic functions of the lexical items wellah and wellahi by twenty-four Iraqi Kurdish-speaking adults (24 first and fourth-year undergraduate students). All the participants studied in the English department at the University of Raparin in Kurdistan. As a qualitative research, Brinton’s (1996) binary classification is adopted as a theoretical framework in defining the functions wellah and wellahi have at the textual and interpersonal levels. Using empirical data, five individual functions related to the use of wellah and wellahi: including three textual functions (elaboration, filler and; topic shift) and two interpersonal ones (response marker [politeness marker] and confirmation marker) are demonstrated. Throughout, the findings link to those identified in previous Arabic studies. The data analysis demonstrates that the use of wellahi in Kurdish is similar to its use in Arabic. In addition, the current study indicates that both wellah and wellahi function as discourse markers interchangeably in most of the cases. The results suggest that principles of grammaticalisation, such as phonetic-reduction and layering, could explain the development of interchangeability of the discourse markers. This study contributes to our understanding of the pragmatics of Kurdish language, the functions of discourse markers, language variation and grammaticalisation

Multilingual pragmatic markers in South African English

This article provides a descriptive account of five multilingual pragmatic markers – nje, mara, kanti, vele and kaloku – which are borrowed from indigenous South African languages into South African English, with a view to investigating their frequencies, spelling stability, syntactic positioning, distribution across text types, collocational patterns and discourse-pragmatic functions. The data, which are extracted from the South African component of the Global Web-based English corpus, are analysed quantitatively and qualitatively, from a postcolonial corpus pragmatic perspective. The results show that the multilingual pragmatic markers are generally infrequent compared to their English counterparts, their spellings are generally stable and their positions in the utterances are based on their functions. The article identifies nje as an attitudinal marker, a focus particle, an emphasis marker, an intensifier and a marker of shared knowledge, mara as a contrastive marker and kanti as a contrastive marker, an inferential marker and an emphasis marker. Vele is an emphasis marker, while kaloku is an attention marker, a topic orientation marker and an inferential marker. In conclusion, these multilingual pragmatic markers contribute to the distinctive nature of South African English at the pragmatic level.

Discourse-Pragmatic Functions of Ya3ni in Najdi Arabic Interaction

The Arabic discourse-pragmatic feature ya3ni occurs frequently in natural interactional settings. Several studies have reported that ya3ni (lit. ‘I mean/it means’) has developed a wide range of discourse-pragmatic functions in many spoken Arabic varieties such as Egyptian Arabic (Elshimi, 1992; 1993; Marmorstein, 2016, 2021a), Gulf Arabic (Owens & Rockwood, 2008), Libyan Arabic (Gaddafi, 1990), and Syrian Arabic (Alkhalil, 2005; Habib, 2021). Although the formal and functional variability of ya3ni has been documented in the literature, ya3ni has not been studied in the context of spoken Najdi Arabic. This paper examines discourse-pragmatic uses of ya3ni in Najdi Arabic (NA) in the interactional situation and how the functional variation is constrained by its turn position. A total of 376 ya3ni tokens were extracted from a corpus of five hours of audio-recorded dyadic natural conversations with twelve native speakers of NA. Drawing on the conversation analytic approach within a variationist framework, multiple discourse-pragmatic functions of ya3ni are attested. For interpersonal meaning, speakers recruit ya3ni to introduce assessment and minimise the effect of disagreement, whereas recipients use it to check their understanding. For the textual meaning, it can be used by speakers to introduce expansion and elaboration, explain intention, change the topic, sum up, and hold the floor.

The pragmatics of ‘it is well’ in Nigerian English

Abstract This paper explores the pragmatics of the comment clause, it is well, with a view to examining its origin, frequency, structural features, and extended discourse-pragmatic functions in Nigerian English, from a grammatical-pragmatic approach. The data for the study are collected from the Global Web-based English corpus (Davies, Mark. 2013. Corpus of Global Web-Based English: 1.9 billion words from speakers in 20 countries (GloWbE). Available at: http://corpus.byu.edu/glowbe/) and questionnaires, and are analysed quantitatively and qualitatively. The results show that the origin of the clause in Nigerian English is the Bible. The clause occurs most frequently at utterance-final position, and collocates with other discourse-pragmatic features. The results also reveal that the clause performs both textual and interpersonal functions. Textually, it is used as a silence filler and to terminate discourse. Interpersonally, it is employed as a part of a prayer, to express hope, offer comfort, indicate resignation, show (reluctant) acceptance of other people’s actions, and to express sarcasm, amongst other functions. The study shows that the use of it is well is related to the cultural and religious beliefs of Nigerians as well as to the political and economic situation in Nigeria.

A discourse-pragmatic functional study of Chinese epistemic markers haoxiang “seem” and keneng “probably”

Abstract This study investigates the discourse-pragmatic functions of the epistemic markers haoxiang “seem” and keneng “probably” in natural conversations of Mandarin Chinese. By examining 107 cases of haoxiang and 152 cases of keneng in sequential contexts, it demonstrates that both haoxiang and keneng are hedge expressions showing the speaker’s attitude of lack of commitment to the truthfulness of their own utterance, which is often driven by an intersubjective motivation. As epistemic markers, haoxiang tends to mitigate informational certainty that is based on the speaker’s personal but vague experience, while keneng is often used to mitigate the assertiveness of the speaker’s personal speculation deduced from background knowledge, general knowledge or commonly accepted logic. Further, this study claims that both haoxiang and keneng often serve as politeness devices to mitigate various Face Threatening Acts (FTAs) such as disconfirmation, disagreement or negative assessment. In either case, haoxiang and keneng are not merely epistemic markers revealing the speaker’s subjective uncertainty, but also serve as politeness markers for the purpose of intersubjectivity, and their multiple discourse-pragmatic usages are rooted in their semantic meanings, respectively.

Insubordinateif-clauses in FDG: Degrees of independence

AbstractThe so-called insubordinate clauses have received an increasing amount of attention in recent years in a wide variety of typologically different languages and from different analytical perspectives. This article concerns itself with one particular type of insubordination, namely insubordinateif-clauses (e.g. If you’ll just come next door,if you hadn’t noticed,if I may ask). So far, the extensive literature on these clauses has concentrated mainly on their discourse-pragmatic functions, their degree of autonomy, and their degree of conventionalization. Relatively little work has been done on the formal (syntactic and prosodic) features of these clauses, nor on the relationship between these formal features and the functions they perform. The aim of this article is to investigate insubordinateif-clauses from the perspective of Functional Discourse Grammar (FDG) in order to establish a taxonomy reflecting (and linking) their functional and formal properties. It is argued that FDG is ideally suited for this task as (i) it takes a function-to-form approach; (ii) it does not take the clause or sentence as its basic unit of analysis, but rather the (independent or subsidiary) Discourse Act; and (iii) it recognizes a range of interpersonal and representational modifiers. The basis for the classification proposed is corpus data from a range of corpora of spoken and written English and Dutch.

“This word no get concrete meaning oo”: Pragmatic markers in Nigerian online communication

This paper deals with Nigerians’ use of pragmatic markers in their computer-mediated communication. The investigated items originate from various languages but now seem to be used across ethnic boundaries in online interactions that take place in Nigerian Pidgin and Nigerian English. Relying on a large corpus from a Nigerian web forum, the study focuses on a set of common interjections and other textual and interpersonal pragmatic markers and their discourse-pragmatic functions. Their semantic flexibility allows these items to perform different functions depending on the context. I argue that they are vital in indicating emotional involvement and response and in contextualizing (Gumperz, 1982) the forum contributions. Furthermore, the particularities of employing, interpreting, and researching such items in text-based online communication are addressed. This paper contributes to a description of “pragmatic borrowing” (Andersen, 2014) in Nigeria, as well as to the rising field of pragmatics of computer-mediated communication.

Borrowed Swahili discourse-pragmatic features in Kenyan and Tanzanian Englishes

Abstract This study explores five Swahili discourse-pragmatic features – ati/eti, yaani, pole, sasa and sawa – which are borrowed from Swahili into Kenyan and Tanzanian Englishes, with a view to investigating their meanings, frequencies, positioning, collocational patterns, syntactic distribution and discourse-pragmatic functions. The data, which are extracted from the International Corpus of English-East Africa and the Kenyan and Tanzanian components of the corpus of Global Web-based English, are analysed quantitatively and qualitatively, from a variational and postcolonial corpus pragmatic framework. The study reveals that the Swahili discourse-pragmatic features occur more frequently in the Kenyan corpora than in the Tanzanian corpora, except in the case of sasa, which occurred with the same frequency in the online corpus. The paper identifies ati/eti as an attention marker, a quotative marker, a hearsay marker, an inferential marker, and an emotive interjection, yaani as an emphasis and elaborative marker, while pole is an attitudinal marker that expresses sympathy and sarcasm. While sasa is only an attention marker, sawa is an agreement and attention marker. The paper shows that these borrowed discourse-pragmatic features contribute to the distinctive nature of East African Englishes.

Reassessing Clarification Request Strategies within English-Speaking Japanese Business Discourse: Clarification of Message Delivery and Pragmatic Ambiguity

Objectives: English communication skills are becoming more important in the business context of Japan. To realise smooth communication, the use of clarification requests is considered facilitative. Many companies in Japan have introduced corporate in-house English training as a part of their English-speaking Human Resources development, and many focus on training in the use of clarification requests. However, not much has been understood about how the pragmatics are employed within the English-speaking discourse community by Japanese businesspeople. This study looks at how clarification requests are used by Japanese businesspeople and addresses how they can contribute to realising effective communication in English-speaking business discourse in Japan. Methods: The researcher analyses data retrieved from stimulated role-play. The participants are requested to engage in collective decision-making in their corporate in-house English training. There were 24 participants involved in this study, and they were placed into four teams for cross-sectional comparison. The interaction of the participants was videorecorded and later transcribed to allow for text-based discourse analysis. Results: Our data show that the use of clarification request strategies was observed in all teams. Participants used clarification requests for various kinds of discourse pragmatic functions. Conclusions: It was concluded that teaching clarification request strategies is beneficial for many Japanese businesspeople who wish to develop their English communication competence. However, the potential face-threatening aspect of the use of clarification requests by Japanese speakers of English has been overlooked. This aspect should be taken into consideration when designing/implementing corporate in-house English training in Japanese companies in the future.

Borrowed Discourse-Pragmatic Features in Kenyan English

This article explores five discourse-pragmatic features—si, sijui, eish, kumbe, and kweli—which are borrowed from African languages into Kenyan English, in order to examine their sources, meanings, frequencies, spelling adaptation, collocational patterns, positioning, syntactic distribution, and discourse-pragmatic functions. The data, which are extracted from the Kenyan components of the International Corpus of English-East Africa and the Global Web-based English corpus, are analysed quantitatively and qualitatively, from a postcolonial corpus pragmatic framework. The results show that the borrowed discourse-pragmatic features are infrequent, orthographically stable, favour clause-initial position, and rarely co-occur with other discourse-pragmatic features. Si, sijui, and kweli are pragmatic markers used to request confirmation of shared knowledge, indicate uncertainty, and emphasise the truth value in a proposition, respectively. Eish and kumbe are interjections which are mainly used to express emotions of irritation and surprise, respectively. This study extends the research on the discourse-pragmatic features of Kenyan English.

Discourse functions of Korean ‘yes’ words

Abstract This study examines discourse functions of Korean ‘yes’ words from an interactional perspective based on naturally-occurring conversation data. Tokens of yey, ney, ey, ung, um, and e in Korean are widely recognized as affirmative responses. A close examination of these tokens, however, reveals wide-ranging interactional functions through which speakers express active engagement, share information, negotiate meaning, and maintain discourse coherence. The present study identifies a total of fifteen discourse-pragmatic functions of Korean ‘yes’ words: (1) affirmative answer, (2) confirmation, (3) acceptance, (4) agreement, (5) answer to summons, (6) acknowledgement, (7) change-of-state, (8) change-of-activity, (9) response solicitation, (10) reinforcement, (11) other initiation of repair, (12) closing of phone call, (13) continuer, (14) proposal to discontinue the on-going action for the sake of a larger course of action, and (15) arguably hesitation marker. This study demonstrates that the interactional approach enables the discovery of varied discourse functions of a type of linguistic items, which may not be readily available in dictionaries or grammar reference guides.

Afrikaans discourse-pragmatic features in South African English

This study discusses the use of six Afrikaans discourse-pragmatic features – ag, ja, mos, né, nogal, and sommer - in South African English, with a view to exploring their meanings, frequencies, syntactic positioning, syntactic distribution, collocational patterns, and discourse-pragmatic functions. The data, which are extracted from the South African component of the corpus of Global Web-based English, are analysed quantitatively and qualitatively, using the theories of pragmatic borrowing and Fusion. The paper shows that ja is the most frequent discourse-pragmatic feature while sommer is the least used among these features. The paper also reveals that ja is used to show agreement, emphasise one’s own message, signal recollection of one’s own discourse, show understanding of an interlocutor’s message and it is used as an exclamation that indicates interest in a matter. Né functions as a question tag, while ag expresses emotions of irritation, resignation, sympathy, pleasure, dislike, disappointment, and lack of knowledge. Mos affirms or emphasises knowledge that is shared while nogal emphasises something as a remarkable thing; sommer signals something that is a simpler or obvious solution to a matter. In all, the study foregrounds the influence of Afrikaans on South African English at the discourse-pragmatic level.

Pragmatic Inferences of Locative Enclitics in Luganda

This paper examines the non-locative functions of locative enclitics in Luganda (JE 15). Locative enclitics are words which cannot stand alone but attach on a verb to make meaning. Their status is ambiguous between free word and affix, hence motivating their analysis as enclitics. The enclitics are attached on the post final position of their hosts. Although the locative enclitics occur regularly in some Bantu languages (Luganda, Runyankore-Rukiga, Runyoro- Rutooro, Lunda, Ikizu, Fwe, Chichewa, Kinyarwanda among others), they have not been widely studied in the literature. The paper looks at verbal locative enclitics only but the locative enclitics also appear in other word categories such as adjectives in Luganda. This study is descriptive, with a qualitative approach. The data used in this study comes from reviewing texts in Luganda - novels and plays but also spoken discourses. The enclitic in Luganda serves many non-locative discourse pragmatic functions which include showing urgency, politeness, showing the idea of ‘instead of’ and also emphasis. It has also been observed that enclitics are widely used in the urban youth languages (‘Luyaaye’) but this is not the focus of the current study. The results from the study offer explanations of key areas of syntax, morphology and pragmatics relating to the form and functions of locative enclitics and the whole system of locative marking in Luganda and other Bantu languages.

“No” and “net” as response tokens in English and Russian business discourse: In search of a functional equivalence

The literature on English suggests that turn-initial no fulfils a variety of discourse-pragmatic functions beyond its use as a negative response to polar questions. We cannot assume that the same range or distribution of functions is realised by its nearest Russian equivalent, net . Hence, investigating the contrasts and similarities in the nomenclature and distribution of functions of no and net should pose an important research problem for various discourses, and especially for business discourse with its focus on goal-orientation and productive interpersonal relations requiring adequate interlingual interaction. The study examines how no and net occur in two corpora of spoken business/professional discourse in order to establish their functional comparability and reveal the differences in their use. The article draws on data from the Cambridge and Nottingham Spoken Business English Corpus and the Russian National Corpus analysed using a combination of corpus linguistics, conversation analysis and discourse analytical approaches. Study results show some overlap between the functions of the response particles in English and Russian, and some differences. The findings suggest that no / net display a number of functions connected with conversational continuity, topic management, turn-taking and hedging. The distribution and functions of no/net in the English and Russian data are similar, with the Russian data showing a preference for floor-grabbing no -initiated turns. Translation equivalence is not always fully applicable between no and net . A mixed methodology generates results which suggest that fruitful insights can be gained from English and Russian corpus data. The issues of the use of no and нет in English and Russian business discourses can be further investigated using the suggested data and conclusions.