1st Edition

Common Discourse Particles in English Conversation

By Lawrence C. Schourup Copyright 1985
    188 Pages
    by Routledge

    188 Pages
    by Routledge

    First published in 1985, this book studies several common items in English conversation known variously as ‘discourse particles’, ‘interjections’, ‘discourse markers’, and, more informally, ‘hesitations’ or ‘fillers’. While the analysis primarily focuses on ‘like’, ‘well’ and ‘you know’, the larger concern is the entire set of items of which these are members and as such ‘I mean’, ‘now’, ‘oh’, ‘hey’, and ‘aha’ are also examined. These discourse particles are analysed at length and then a framework is proposed in which their use individually makes sense and allows revealing comparisons to be made between them. This book will be of interest to students of linguistics

    Preface; List of Symbols; 1 Introduction; 1.1 General Remarks 1.2 Covert Thinking in Conversation 1.3 Three ‘Worlds’ of the Speaker 1.4 Routinization 1.5 Use of speech Materials 1.6 Outline of Remaining Chapters; 2 Evinces; 2.1 Interjections and Evincives 2.2 Evincives in Quotations 2.2.1 ‘Well’ and ‘Oh’ in quotations 2.3 Enquoting 2.4 Quotation 2.5 Summary; 3 ‘Like’; 3.1 ‘Like’ in conversation 3.2 ‘Like’ Introducing Direct Discourse 3.3 ‘Like’ After Questions 3.4 The ‘For Example’ Use 3.5 ‘Like as an Interjection 3.6 ‘It’s Like’ 3.7 conclusion; 4 ‘Well’; 4.1 Introduction 4.2 ‘Well’ Before Exclamations 4.3 ‘Well’ Introducing Direct Discourse 4.4 Topic Shifting 4.5 ‘Well’ Before Answers 4.6 ‘Well’ Before Questions 4.7 ‘Well’ and Self-Repair 4.8 ‘Well’ and Other-Repair 4.9 Sentence-Final ‘Well’ 4.10 Reduced ‘Well’ 4.11 ‘Well’ and Narrative Elision 4.12 ‘Well’ and ‘Intension’ 4.13 Conclusion; 5 ‘You Know’; 5.1 Preliminary Remarks 5.2 YK as a Truth Parenthetical 5.3 YK and Properties of Truth Parentheticals 5.4 Evidence for two Types of YK 5.5 The Use of YKb 5.6 A Third YK? 5.7 Discourse Functions of YKb 5.7.1 Topic Introduction 5.7.2 Topic Tracking 5.7.3 YKb and Repair 5.8 YKb as a ‘Sociocentric Sequence’ 5.9 Interrogative YK 5.10 YK and Turn Taking 5.11 Distribution of YK: Some Quantitative Results 5.12 Conclusion; 6 The Role of Discourse Particles in Conversation; 6.1 General Remarks 6.2 ‘Now’ 6.3 ‘I Mean’ 6.4 ‘Mind You’ 6.5 ‘Sort O(f)’, ‘Kind O(f)’, ‘An(d) Stuff’, ‘An(d) Everything’, ‘An(d) so on’, etc. 6.6 Interjections 6.7 Types of Disclosure Functions 6.8 General Summary; Footnotes; References

    Biography

    Lawrence C. Schourup