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Unlike the study of phonetic or morphological variation, which can be carried out on small samples of speech, the investigation of discourse variation requires samples of talk in action with speakers interacting with each other. The aim of this work is to explore the extent to which variation in the use of certain linguistic features correlates with extralinguistic categories, in this case, age, gender, and social class, and to determine whether there are differences in discourse style. Unlike many studies of discourse markers or pragmatic particles, the aim is not to attempt an explanation of the meaning of such features in a particular context but rather to examine how the frequency of use of such features affects the discourse as a whole.

This chapter introduces the theory of “cultural scripts” and shows how it can help to explain miscommunication between “Anglos” and people from other cultural backgrounds. The notion of “cultural script” refers to a technique for articulating culture-specific norms, values, and communication practices using the metalanguage of universal human concepts. The use of this technique allows cultural scripts to be clear and precise, and accessible to both insiders and outsiders. The chapter approaches Anglo cultural scripts from the point of view of the subjective experience of immigrants to English-speaking countries — specifically Middle Eastern immigrants. The analysis of Anglo cultural scripts is based on linguistic evidence, but it is enriched by the testimony of immigrants, based on their cross-cultural experience.

The chapter zooms into the specific linguistic devices that are employed for the signalling of discourse organisation in narrative and non-narrative texts. Such devices include discourse markers, participant chains (which are formed by reference ties), time chains/shifts, and extensive lexical and sentence structure patterning. Lexical patterns involve both grammatical and lexical words, as well as metalinguistic elements, anaphoric nouns and other prediction pairs. Sentence structure patterns involve repetition in its various forms and the more extended thematic progression. All these devices are analysed in a large number of texts and according to various models of analysis in the literature, while their co-occurrence in discourse is emphasized.

One of the most interesting phenomena in the history of the English language is the remarkable rise of the word right, in its many interrelated senses and uses. This chapter tries to trace the changes in the meaning and use of this word, as well as the rise of new conversational routines based on it, and raises questions about the cultural underpinnings of these semantic and pragmatic developments. It explores the hypothesis that the “discourse of truth” declined in English over the centuries; that the use of “right” and “wrong” as parallel concepts (and opposites) increased; and it notes that the use of right as an adjective increased enormously in relation to the use of true. Furthermore, the chapter explores the role of the word right as a conversational response and its role in modern Anglo discourse of cooperation and mutual concessions. The chapter traces the transition from the Shakespearean response “Right”, described by the OED as “you are right; you speak well”, to the present-day “Right” of non-committal acknowledgement, and it links the development in semantics and discourse patterns with historical phenomena such as Puritanism, British empiricism, the Enlightenment, and the growth of democracy in America and in other English-speaking countries.

One of the most striking features of English from a cross-cultural perspective is the proliferation of various linguistic tools for qualifying one's statements, hedging one's assertions, and differentiating the strength of one's assent to a proposition. This applies in particular to epistemic verbal phrases like I suppose, I gather, I imagine, I presume, and so on. This chapter traces the rise of such epistemic qualifiers in the history of English, linking it, in particular, with the enormous influence of Locke's ideas concerning degrees of probability, degrees of assent, the limitations of human knowledge, and the need to always distinguish between knowledge and judgment. The chapter undertakes a fine-grained semantic analysis of a large number of expressions like I suppose, I gather, I presume, I assume, I bet, I guess, and so on, and discusses their cultural underpinnings, in a cross-cultural and historical perspective.

This methodological chapter is intended as a contextualizing and theoretical introduction. It aims to establish the premises for the theoretical and methodological framework adopted in the volume, as it gives an overview of research on the rise of pragmatic markers in Romance and other languages, at the same time introducing notions and terminology relevant for the discussion in the book. The developments of functional markers have been studied from very different theoretical positions, and such studies call into question widely debated notions as grammaticalization and pragmaticalization, as well as subjectification and intersubjectification. Similarly, the terminological choices made by different scholars to refer to functional markers (e.g. ‘discourse marker’ and/or ‘pragmatic marker’) also subsume diverging theoretical approaches, which are described in detail.

In comparing the discursive functions of the French temporal-aspectual adverb déjà ‘already’ to its cognate form già in the regional variety of northwestern Italian, this chapter focuses on their uses as backchecking strategies in direct questions, and places them within the general system of discursive and pragmatic developments of the Romance descendants of Latin (de)iam. Some functional discrepancies between French and northwestern Italian are interpreted in a diachronic perspective as indicative of different stages of the same pragmaticalization path, starting from discursive marking of information state (‘given’ information in backchecking questions) and eventually leading to more extensive pragmatic marking of illocutionary force, which suggests a gradual evolution from discourse grammar to pragmatics.

This introductory chapter gives an overview of topics discussed in this volume, and of its basic motivations. The development of functional markers, in the form of discourse and pragmatic markers, have been studied from very different theoretical positions, and call into question widely debated notions as grammaticalization and pragmaticalization. These issues have to do with the diachronic development of pragmatic functions of markers in genealogically related languages, and with the relationship between the functions performed (discourse-organizational vs pragmatic-interactional) and the morphosyntactic properties of source lexemes. Similarly, the terminological choices made by different scholars to refer to discourse markers and/or pragmatic markers, and the diverging theoretical approaches reflected in such choices, are presented as a starting point.This first chapter explains how this volume contributes to these different lines of discussion and to new insights, based on the study of languages which have all developed from a common ancestor, Latin.

The chapter analyses theoretical implications and linguistic peculiarities of developments of Sp. o sea lit. ‘or be-CONJ’ from a free construction into a reformulative and modal marker. Synchronic synchronic descriptions of pragmatic functions of the marker in Modern Spanish are integrated with diachronic analysis of its development from Early Spanish.The emergence of reformulative values is best explained by multicausality. Multicausality involves changes in syntax and in the semantics of the disjunctive marker, polyphony, discourse genres, the existence of a previous paradigm of reformulative markers, and the position of o sea in the sentence. A theory of discourse positions becomes a valuable tool to account for changes in the evolution of discourse markers. This theory proposes a framework for the diachronic evolution of o sea and a model for more thorough description of other pragmaticalization paths.

On the basis of an electronic corpus, this chapter analyses elements such as Fr. assez ‘enough’, ça suffit ‘that’s enough’, tais-toi ‘be quiet’, arête tes bêtises ‘stop talking nonsense’, or Rom. destul/de ajuns ‘enough’, gata! ‘plenty’, lasă prostiile ‘stop talking nonsense’, taci din gură ‘shut up’, încetează ‘stop it’. These discourse markers, expressing disagreement or exasperation, seem to conflict with Grice’s conversational theory, which omits any confrontational and non-cooperative conversations such as police cross-examinations, political debates, trials, and lawsuits. Examples gathered represent the following situations: (a) the speaker protests against the purpose and the direction taken by the conversation or against the violation of conversational maxims; (b) the addressee rejects the conversational topic or refuses to respect the maxims; (c) disagreement markers express the speaker’s protest against the addressee’s non-verbal behaviour. This study concludes that the Cooperative Principle, as Grice stated it, is too strict.

This chapter concentrates primarily on vocabulary, discussing a range of lexical items that together characterise New Zealand English (NZE). It also looks briefly at distinctive discourse features of NZE – including the use of particular discourse markers (e.g., ‘eh’), as well as some conversational strategies New Zealanders use in interaction.

This chapter considers the diachronic development of the Modern Portuguese alias ‘by the way, or better’, whose source is an adverb, to understand its synchronic polyfunctionality and, eventually, to question the theoretical framework of grammaticalization. This study shows that this particular marker does not follow the regular cline posited for many discourse markers in grammaticalization studies, as it does not show a horizontal pathway of diachronic development . Aliás is clearly a recalcitrant case concerning the key idea of a linear path of meanings ordered in a continuum, with transition periods where two interpretations generally overlap. The polyfunctionality of aliás seems throughout its history to have been an inherent aspect of its semantic-pragmatic behaviour. Empirical evidence highlights the need to rethink the hypothesis of a single path in the development of discourse markers, and to find alternative accounts.

Through a synchronic and contrastive approach, the chapter outlines the pragmatic behaviour of the Romanian adverb atunci ‘then’ and of its French correspondent, alors. The chapter describes contrastively the pragmatic values of Rom. atunci vs Fr. alors in different contexts. Moving from a primary temporal value, in both languages the adverbs are frequently used in argumentative structures, where they also perform pragmatic functions related to discourse structuring. It is shown that the anaphoric temporal meaning leads to multiple pragmatic values as a result of a radial evolution, which is traced intra- and inter-discursively. Although Rom. atunci shows cognitive, interactive, and metatextual functions, it is less pragmatically marked than Fr. alors, especially in its metatextual values. The chapter concludes that the multiple meanings associated with the two lexemes, in conjunction with the context of occurrence, determine functional (and language-specific) differences.

This chapter documents and reflects on some of the cultural significance of discourse markers in kapsen Mwoshulók (Mortlockese) storytelling (tittilap) at Pakin Atoll of the Federated States of Micronesia. It shows how fieldwork on tittilap cannot merely be accomplished by using a voice recorder alone. Discourse analysis provides the tools for understanding how speakers of a language both access bodies of knowledge (such as abstract grammatical patterns and generalizations based on previous conversations) and create and interpret new instances of that knowledge, and “discourse” in this case refers to the intricate nuances of the tittilap. A grammatical technique of particular interest in the tittilap are its use of discourse markers, which are the words used to move talk along, whose meaning heavily depends on the context around them.

This chapter is dedicated to the syntax of spoken French. Section 1, which focuses on ‘orality’, presents some phenomena related to ‘oral’ situational parameters with reference to spoken French: speech production processes, ‘ellipsis’, the use of deictics, and discourse markers. Section 2 considers whether we speak in sentences or not, and examines the use of tenses, moods, and voices in spoken French, the frequent non-use of negative ne, as well as the use of interrogative constructions. Section 3, entitled ‘Between syntax and discourse’, evokes the so-called ‘syntax of spoken French’, and mentions some preferred constructions in spoken French, i.e. left detachment (or dislocation) and presentational structures, before closing with a brief reflection on whether spoken French can be considered as an illustration of syntactic variation.

This chapter describes the practice of questioners accounting for their questions after receiving responses. These accounting turns specifically involve the ani (“no”) preface in Korean conversation. The study shows that questions can be “vulnerable” actions, the motives of which can be questioned, and that questioners can account for their motives retroactively. One way questioners account for their own questions is to preface their accounts with ani (“no”). This chapter shows that this third-positioned, ani-prefaced accounting shows speakers’ orientations to accountability and suggests an explanation for why the token may have developed such uses in natural conversation. This chapter contributes to our understanding of the types of actions (implemented through questions) that speakers orient to as being possibly accountable, and how speakers manage such accountability.

Although the different ways in which yes and no can be used have received some attention in recent years, most literature is limited to English. This chapter examines the uses of ja ‘yes’ and nee ‘no’ in Dutch. By analyzing the ways in which ja and nee are used in the Corpus Gesproken Nederlands (Spoken Dutch Corpus), different categories can be established. The uses of ja and nee, though different, have certain common features. The interpretation of ja or nee by hearers is explained by means of an Optimality Theory analysis of word interpretation, along the lines of Hogeweg (2009). Through two possibly conflicting constraints, it is determined which possible interpretation of ja or nee is arrived at by the hearer. Finally, a bidirectional OT account of the Dutch positive–negative answering system is proposed and compared to the English answering system to demonstrate the generalizability of the model.