Functions of Language - Volume 27, Issue 2, 2020

Abstract

This paper studies practices of indexing discrepant assumptions accomplished by turn-constructional units with ich dachte (‘I thought’) in German talk-in-interaction. Building on the analysis of 141 instances from the corpus FOLK, we identify three sequential environments in which ich dachte is used to index that an assumption which a speaker (has) held contrasts with some other, contextually salient assumption. We show that practices which have been studied for English I thought are also routinely used in German: ich dachte is a means to manage epistemic incongruencies and to contrast an incorrect with a correct assumption in narratives. In addition, ich dachte is also used to account for the speaker’s own prior actions which may have looked problematic because they built on misunderstandings which the speaker only discovered later. Moreover, ich dachte-practices may also be used to create comic effects by reporting an earlier, absurd assumption. The practices are discussed with regard to their role in regaining common ground, in managing relationships, in maintaining the identity of a rational actor, and in terms of their exploitation for other conversational interests. Special attention is paid to how co-occurring linguistic features, and sequential and pragmatic factors, account for local interpretations of ich dachte.

Abstract

This paper examines nominalisation in scientific discourse in English, focusing on a distinction between what I will refer to as ‘live’ and ‘dead’ grammatical metaphors. Live metaphors refer to a nominal realisation of an ideational discourse semantic figure; dead metaphors are found in the same nominalisations as live metaphors, but they realise an entity rather than a figure. The distinction is made by drawing on a tristratal approach that is informed by Systemic Functional Linguistics and that considers nominalisation simultaneously from the perspectives of field, discourse semantics, and lexicogrammar. Although the paper focuses on nominalisation, it illustrates a broader line of argumentation that can be extended to the analysis of ideational discourse semantic meanings in general.

Abstract

This paper quantitatively measures the distribution of dialogic elements across structural units in the introductory chapters of history theses with the aim of uncovering the roles of dialogic elements in constructing texts. The research was designed to test Bakhtin’s perspective on genre, which holds that viewpoints introduced into a discourse dialogise the text in such a way as to fulfil the text’s goals and structure the text. Results showed significant differences in the densities of dialogic elements across structural units; units that review previous research are highly dialogic, whereas units that present the author’s new research are seldom dialogised. Specifically, previous viewpoints tended to be dialogically endorsed in units that assert the importance of the research topic and dialogically disclaimed in units that indicated problems with previous research. The paper concludes that genre research and pedagogy need to emphasise the strategic deployment of dialogic elements that enable the successful structuring of texts. This study is intended to be one of the first methodological attempts to test the text structuring function of dialogic elements from a corpus-based investigation.

Abstract

Exclamative expressions like What an enormous crowd came! and How wonderful this journey is! have been described as forming one of the four basic sentence (or clause) types of English. The present paper discusses the main features of this type and analyzes them with reference to the framework of Discourse Grammar. It is argued that the structure of exclamatives can be related to other sentence types in terms of discourse strategies that are used for constructing texts, in particular by means of cooptation, a cognitive-communicative strategy that enables speakers to use existing text pieces for new discourse functions.

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