Pragmatic Markers and the Sociolinguistic Variation

English Department / College of Education for the Humanities/ University of Kerbala

hajaralbayati90@gmail.com 

Introduction

Different scholars have approached Pragmatic Markers (PMs) also called discourse markers through the years. However, it is interesting how Archer et al. heavily depend on previous studies and yet add their own view. They highly rest on the social aspect within the interpretation of pragmatic markers.

There is much diversity with respect to this class of expressions; discourse markers (Schiffrin, 1987), Pragmatic Marker (Brinton, 1996; Fraser,1996), Discourse Connectives (Blakemore, 1989), Discourse Operators (Redeker, 1991), Cue Phrases (Knott, 1993), Discourse Particles (Abraham, 1991; Kroon, 1995; Schourup, 1985), Pragmatic Particles (Ostman,1983) and Pragmatic Expressions (Erman,1987). This diversity has continued up to the present moment as is claimed by Fenge (Feng, 2008).

1. Schiffern’s Five-Plane Model 

Deborah Schifrin in her book Discourse Markers develops a theoretical model as she attempts to present the DMs contribution to the coherence of conversation discourse by creating links between units of talk, depending on where it appears in conversation. Schiffrin’s study is criticised on the basis of the quantity of her corpus which she based her analysis on. It is argued that she uses the same transcription to illustrate the use of yet another DM. In other words, since her sample is so small, making a quantitative statement or generalisation seems senseless. Lenk (1998) argues that there is a noticeable gap in Schiiffrin’s five-panel model of talk; it ceases to discriminate between the DMs. He argues that “while DMs can function on more than one structural level at once, how a hearer be certain that his interpretation of that DM’s function in that particular instance is correct?” (Lenk, 1998). 

2. Fraser (1999) Model of Discourse Markers

Fraser states that his main concern while dealing with pragmatic markers is “the ways in which the linguistically encoded information of sentence meaning provides an indication of the direct, literal messages intended by the speaker” (Fraser B. , 1999, p. 321). Fraser (1996) cuts things short and argues that under this umbrella are four subtypes: (i) basic markers (e.g., sentence mood and performative expressions) which signal more or less specifically the force of the basic message of the sentence, (ii) commentary markers (e.g., frankly, reportedly) which comment on some aspect of the basic message, (iii) parallel markers (e.g., titles, vocatives) which signal an entire message in addition to the basic message of the sentence, and (iv) discourse markers (e.g., however, therefore) which mark the relationship between the message they introduce and the foregoing message. So discourse markers are a subset of pragmatic markers. These pragmatic markers, taken to be separate and distinct from the propositional content of the sentence, are the linguistically encoded clues which signal the speaker’s potential communicative intentions (Fraser, 1996, p. 94). 

3. Feng’s (2008) Model of Pragmatic Markers

Feng follows Fraser’s model of PMs. Yet, he argues that his model has a narrower scope than Fraser’s (1996; 1999; 2006). Feng assigns several characteristics for pragmatic markers: (i) Non-truth-conditionality, (ii) Propositional Scope, (iii) Syntactic Dispensability, and (iv) semantic dependency.

4. Pragmatic Markers and Sociolinguistic Variation

Similar to the previous cited works, Archer et.al. (2012) agree that pragmatic markers have little propositional meaning, rather they belong to pragmatics. They are pragmatic in the sense that they facilitate for the hearer to interpret the utterance by signaling how the utterance fits into the context.Archer et al. shed light on the importance of social variation in the study of pragmatic markers. Studies have shown that there are differences in frequencies between pragmatic markers in British and American English. They further argue that PMs only get their full meaning in a social and cultural context. Hence, certain social variation must be taken into consideration when studying PMs such as social situation, speaker identity, and power relation. What is interesting about them is that they are language specific (Archer, Aijmer, & Wichmann, 2012). 

Based on this, pragmatic markers may vary in function depending on the social context, i.e. the speaker’s social role, identity or power. For instance, ‘well’ is associated with authority and power if used inside the courtroom by the cross-examiner, while it expresses a defensive attitude if used by the person cross-examined (Ibid). Holms (1986) argue that gender differences also contribute to the variation of function. He (Ibid.) states that women in New Zealand use ‘you know’ more than men. Age differences also affect the function of pragmatic markers, i.e. young people use different markers from older people.