Discourse Markers

In our everyday speech we represent events and situations, but we also provide commentary on these representations, situating ourselves and others relative to what we have to say and situating what we say in larger contexts. The present volume examines this activity of discourse marking from an enunciative perspective, providing the first English-language study of the highly influential Theory of Enunciative and Predicative Operations. This semantic/pragmatic theory is popular among academics who specialize in linguistics, discourse analysis, translation studies and didactics in France, but has not yet been widely adopted elsewhere. The tools of this theory are applied to a variety of specific discourse markers in contemporary English and semantic hypotheses are tested using the data-based approach of corpus linguistics. This book therefore provides an English-speaking readership with the keys to understand the theory underlying the author's analysis of a selection of markers ('anyway', 'indeed', 'in fact', 'yet', 'still', 'like' and 'I think'). This book will provide a valuable resource for students and researchers in linguistics with an interest in discourse markers, natural language argumentation, formal semantics, the interfaces between syntax, semantics and pragmatics, linguistic theorisation and French or poststructural models of discourse analysis.

Provides a theory that explains the various occurrences of discourse markers in a unified way Takes into account the flexibility of language Offers an invaluable translation and adaptation of French terminology

Autorentext

Graham Ranger is Professor of English Linguistics at the Université d'Avignon et des Pays de Vaucluse, France.

Inhalt
1 Introduction.- 2 The Theory of Enunciative and Predicative Operations.- 3 Anyway: configuration by target domain.- 4 Indeed and in fact: the role of subjective positioning.- 5 Yet and still: a transcategorial approach to discourse phenomena.- 6 Discourse marker uses of like: from the occurrence to the type.- 7 I think: further variations in subjective endorsement.- 8 General conclusion.