Colloquialization in journalistic writing

2017 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 104-135 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christoph Rühlemann ◽  
Martin Hilpert
Keyword(s):  
Corpus Linguistics ◽  
American English ◽  
Discourse Markers ◽  
Special Focus ◽  
Discourse Marker ◽  
Written Text ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
Diachronic Development ◽  
New Evidence

Abstract Recent analyses of written text types have discovered significant frequency increases of colloquial or conversational elements, such as contractions, personal pronouns, questions or the progressive. This trend is often referred to as colloquialization. This paper presents a new perspective on colloquialization, with a special focus on the discourse marker well. The paper is divided into two parts. In the first part, we present new evidence of colloquialization on the basis of the TIME Magazine Corpus (Davies 2007), which allows analyses of diachronic change in recent written American English. The focus of our analysis is on highly frequent “inserts” (Biber et al. 1999: 56), which are elements such as discourse markers (e.g., well and oh), backchannels (yeah, uh-huh, etc.), and hesitators (uh and um, etc.). We conclude that inserts significantly increase diachronically in TIME. In the second part of the paper, we focus on the element well in its function as a discourse marker. Through a combination of quantitative and qualitative analytical steps, we analyze its diachronic development in terms of its structural contexts and its pragmatic functions, fleshing out how the process of colloquialization has affected its usage in recent written American English. We argue that the integration of corpus linguistic and pragmatic methods in this case study represents a new step towards the field of corpus pragmatics, that is, “the rapprochement between corpus linguistics and pragmatics and an integration of their key methodologies” (Rühlemann and Aijmer 2014: 23).

Outlining a grammaticalization path for the Spanish formula en plan (de): A contribution to crosslinguistic pragmatics

Linguistics ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 58 (6) ◽  
pp. 1543-1579
Author(s):  
Paula Rodríguez-Abruñeiras
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Discourse Markers ◽  
Contrastive Analysis ◽  
Discourse Marker ◽  
Early 21St Century ◽  
Diachronic Study ◽  
Diachronic Development ◽  
The Early 21St Century

AbstractThis article discusses the diachronic development of the Spanish multifunctional formula en plan (with its variant en plan de, literally ‘in plan (of)’ but usually equivalent to English like). The article has two main aims: firstly, to describe the changes that the formula has undergone since its earliest occurrences as a marker in the nineteenth century up to the early 21st century. The diachronic study evinces a process of grammaticalization in three steps: from noun to clause adverbial and then to discourse marker. Secondly, to conduct a contrastive analysis between en plan (de) and the English markers like and kind of/kinda so as to shed new light on the potential existence of a universal pathway of grammaticalization in the emergence of discourse markers.

The role of discourse strategies in the grammaticalization of the Japanese discourse marker dakara

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 592-634
Author(s):  
Koji Tanno
Keyword(s):  
Special Focus ◽  
Argumentative Discourse ◽  
Discourse Marker ◽  
Meaning Change ◽  
Discourse Strategies ◽  
Discursive Strategy ◽  
High Level ◽  
Adverbial Phrase ◽  
Diachronic Development

Abstract The present study examines the diachronic development of the Japanese discourse marker dakara ‘so’ from the perspective of grammaticalization with a special focus on the role of discursive strategy in its semantic-pragmatic meaning change. Stemming from the adverbial phrase soredakara ‘because it is so’, dakara originally emerged as a causal connective that introduces a consequence. Subsequently, it gained several non-causal uses, i.e. the point-making use that refers back to what has been said or inferable in the discourse to stress the point that the speaker has been trying to make, the point-clarification use that points out that the preceding interlocutor’s statements need more elaboration, and the point-denying use that indicates the speaker’s opposition to the interlocutor’s claim. Among the new non-causal uses, it is found that the point-making use emerged from the retrospective use of causality as a result of employing the discourse strategy of justification in argumentative discourse, while the point-clarification and the point-denying uses arose due to its use as a device for delaying disagreement. It is argued that these new uses developed because the expression was repeatedly used for these two discourse strategies and over time the readings associated with these contexts became conventionalized and turned into the expression’s encoded meaning. This low-level generalization seems to better explain the process of grammaticalization than the high-level generalization of (inter)subjectivity for the developments of dakara.

Ara⁠ʾaytum: The Exegetical Implications of a Qurʾānic Stance Marker

2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 170-192
Author(s):  
Emad Mohamed
Keyword(s):  
Corpus Linguistics ◽  
Historical Linguistics ◽  
Discourse Markers ◽  
Semantic Content ◽  
Main Function ◽  
Oral Discourse ◽  
Discourse Marker ◽  
Satanic Verses ◽  
The Way

Abstract Discourse markers are lexical items that play the role of conveying the speaker’s attitude towards the topic of conversation. Although discourse markers have this function, they have little semantic content, yet their importance for understanding (oral) discourse can hardly be overestimated. As such, they have been widely studied in English. While the Qurʾān has a number of these discourse markers, none of them seem to have been properly noticed, let alone studied, by Arabic linguists and Qurʾān commentators. This article introduces what I believe to be the most frequent of these in the Qurʾān: araʾaytum (literally: “have you seen?”) in its various morphological manifestations. This article uses concepts from historical linguistics, pragmatics, and corpus linguistics – and in particular lexical co-occurrences – to examine the development of this form from a sense verb that simply means “to see” to a pragmatic attitudinal marker that is semantically vacuous and whose main function is to express the speaker’s dissatisfaction with, resentment at, or disapproval of the topic of conversation. While the analysis provided in this article is mainly linguistic, the findings will affect the way we read the Arabic-Islamic heritage, especially as regards the authenticity of what are known as the Satanic Verses, also known as the episode of the High-Flying Cranes (Qiṣṣat al-ġarānīq). This article also provides suggestions for the translation of this discourse marker.

Bricolage assembling

2011 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 345-370 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carmen Santamaría García
Keyword(s):  
Conversation Analysis ◽  
Corpus Linguistics ◽  
American English ◽  
Contextual Information ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
Santa Barbara ◽  
Contrastive Study ◽  
Near Future ◽  
Sound Files

This article illustrates the use of spoken corpora for a contrastive study of casual conversation in English and Spanish. It models an eclectic methodology for cross-linguistic comparison at the level of discourse, specifically of exchange structures, by drawing upon analytic resources from corpus linguistics (CL), conversation analysis (CA) and discourse analysis (DA). This combination of perspectives presents challenges and limitations which will be discussed and exemplified through a case study that explores agreement and disagreement sequences. English data have been retrieved from the Santa Barbara Corpus of Spoken American English (SBCSAE; cf. Du Bois et al. 2000, 2003) and Spanish data from Corpus Oral de Referencia del Español Contemporáneo (CORLEC). The case study reveals the need for spoken corpora to include complete conversations, discourse annotation, sound files and detailed contextual information. This means a step forward from corpora of spoken language to discourse corpora and a challenge for CL, CA and DA in the near future.

Discourse markers as stance markers

2013 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-116 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tomoko I. Sakita
Keyword(s):  
American English ◽  
Discourse Markers ◽  
Conversational Interaction ◽  
Discourse Marker ◽  
Du Bois ◽  
Topic Shift

Stance is inherent in conversational interaction and is interactional in nature. When speakers take a stance, they pay attention to both prior stances and stance relations, as well as to the anticipated consequences of their stancetaking. They manage stance relations as a way of dealing with the “sociocognitive relations” of intersubjectivity (Du Bois 2007). Using the dialogic framework proposed by Du Bois, this paper shows that the discourse marker well in American English works as a resource for the management of relationships among stances. With its referential and grammatical flexibility, it is uniquely characterized as a meta-stance marker because, rather than indexing a specific stance, it negotiates and regulates stance relations. Well is analyzed in two contextual categories: first, at stance divergence among utterances, and second, at stance shifts embedded in topic shift.

Latin corpus linguistics and the study of language change

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lieven Danckaert
Keyword(s):  
Corpus Linguistics ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Latin Text ◽  
Latin Language ◽  
Reliable Source ◽  
S Curve ◽  
Diachronic Development ◽  
Methodological Aspects ◽  
Empirical Foundation

This chapter discusses some methodological aspects of the corpus work that constitutes the empirical foundation of this book. It starts by addressing the question why one would want to use corpus methods in the first place. Next, the Latin text corpus, which is reported on in the upcoming chapters, is presented on. To show that this corpus can indeed be considered a reliable source of information on how the Latin language evolved in the period from 200 BC to 600 AD, a case study is offered on the diachronic development of a particular type of periphrastic construction with esse ‘be’. Specifically, it is shown that the spread of future perfects of the type amatus fuero can be nicely fitted onto an S-curve, suggesting that the corpus reliably reflects the actual spoken language. The chapter concludes with some remarks on the distinction between synchronic and diachronic variation.

A quantitative approach to the grammaticalization of discourse markers

2015 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 232-259 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Koops ◽  
Arne Lohmann
Keyword(s):  
American English ◽  
Discourse Markers ◽  
Quantitative Approach ◽  
Syntactic Category ◽  
Discourse Marker ◽  
Corpus Data

This article takes a quantitative approach to the grammar of English two-part discourse marker sequences like oh well, you know I mean, etc. We investigate the internal ordering preferences of such sequences in spoken American English corpus data from the perspective of grammaticalization. From this perspective, the development of many discourse markers can be understood as involving a process of increasing syntactic de-categorialization (Hopper 1991) as the grammaticalizing element loses its original grammatical constraints and comes to function as a marker at the level of discourse. We test the hypothesis that discourse marker grammaticalization results in largely unconstrained ordering possibilities. Our analysis shows that, on the contrary, discourse marker sequencing is highly constrained. We interpret these constraints in terms of Auer’s (1996) model of discourse marker grammaticalization. Discourse marker sequencing is characterized by strong persistence of a marker’s original syntactic category and reflects its specific grammaticalization trajectory.

Pseudoquotation in current English communication: “Hey, she didn't really say it”

1989 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 343-359 ◽  
Author(s):  
Betty Lou Dubois
Keyword(s):  
American English ◽  
Discourse Markers ◽  
Conversational Interaction ◽  
Discourse Marker ◽  
Rhetorical Question ◽  
English Only ◽  
Expository Discourse

ABSTRACTTo investigate discourse and interactive functions ofquote formula+hey+pseudoquotation, that is, invented quotation, in current English communication, tokens were collected from public and commercial broadcasts and miscellaneous readings during a four-month period. In addition, all instances ofheywith context were extracted from the Brown Corpus of American English. Only 26 possible tokens, the majority from radio and television, were located; one instance inBrownindicates existence as early as 1961. A speaker uses quote formula +hey+ pseudoquotation to dramatize and thereby give emphasis to an important point (in these examples, generally in an expository discourse), a practice reported for both sophisticated and folk discourse. Instead of a rhetorical question, the device makes arhetorical answerto an unasked question. Although pseudoquotation can be found either without discourse marker or with other discourse marker,heyis an appropriate marker for pseudoquotation, simultaneously to mark an important point in a discourse and to bind listeners to the ongoing interaction by (re)capturing their attention. (Discourse markers, conversational interaction, pragmatics, dramatization,hey, quotation)

New evidence of metallurgical production during the Ptolemaic period in the ancient harbor of Berenike (Eastern Desert) in Egypt

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joan Oller Guzmán
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Desert ◽  
Roman Period ◽  
Special Focus ◽  
Hellenistic Period ◽  
Metallurgical Furnace ◽  
Metallurgical Production ◽  
First Results ◽  
Southwestern Area ◽  
Productive Structure ◽  
New Evidence

This paper tries to explain the first results obtained on trench 102, located on the southwestern area of the ancient harbour of Berenike. Chronologically the trench runs from the Late Hellenistic to Roman Period, showing different uses of this area during Antiquity. Some of the data recovered are quite interesting in order to understand the evolution of this scarcely known area of Berenike’s harbor. The identification of a metallurgical furnace related to the Late Hellenistic Period is especially remarkable, as it provides some insights about the structure of this zone under the last Ptolemaic rulers. So, the main objective of the paper is to offer new data about the productive structure of this site during the Ptolemaic period with special focus on the metallurgical production.

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