Publication details
Some discourse markers used to express politeness in spoken academic discourse
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2009 |
| Type | Article in Proceedings |
| Conference | Studies in Language and Methodology of Teaching Foreign Languages, PASE Papers 2008 |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Field | Linguistics |
| Keywords | discourse markers; politeness; spoken academic discourse; pragmatic function; politeness strategies; coherent interpretation |
| Description | Spoken academic discourse, similarly to other genres of spoken English, can be characterized by certain expressions that are typical in particular of the spoken variety of English. The distribution and pragmatic functions of these expressions, frequently labelled discourse markers in the relevant literature, are studied in two different corpora of spoken English, namely LLC and MICASE. Politeness plays a crucial role in all human communication, particularly in that in which participants have to face immediate reactions from their interlocutors. By taking turns and co-operating speakers attempt to establish a social contact with other participants in order to convey their message as smoothly and efficiently as possible, while adhering to conversational maxims, and in harmony with the polite behaviour required by a given communicative situation. Accordingly, the investigation aims to relate the use of discourse markers such as you know and I mean to Grices Co-operative Principle (1975) and Brown and Levinsons politeness strategies (1987), while drawing attention to some current trends in their use. |
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