Article published in:
The Pragmatics of Discourse Coherence: Theories and applications
Edited by Helmut Gruber and Gisela Redeker
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 254] 2014
► pp. 87–119

The coding of discourse relations in English and German argumentative discourse

| University of Saarbrücken, Germany
| University of Augsburg, Germany
This chapter examines contrastively the overt and non-overt coding of discourse relations in British English and German editorials. Particular attention is given to the linguistic coding of discourse relations between adjacently and non-adjacently positioned discourse units, and to the question of granularity. In the data, the discourse relation of Contrast is coded overtly in adjacent and nonadjacent positioning in the two languages, while Continuation, Elaboration, Explanation and Comment are coded differently. In the British data, there is a clear preference for coding discourse relations between adjacently positioned subordinating discourse relations overtly on the level of clause, and in the German data, discourse relations holding between non-adjacently positioned sentences are preferably marked overtly.
Published online: 26 November 2014
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.254.04spe
References
Anscombe, Jean-Claude, and Oswald Ducrot
1983 L’Argumentation dans la Langue. Bruxelles: Mardaga.Google Scholar
Asher, Nicholas, and Alex Lascarides
2003 Logics of Conversation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Asher, Nicholas, and Laure Vieu
2005 “Subordinating and Coordinating Discourse Relations.” Lingua 115: 591–610. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Benz, Anton, and Peter Kühnlein
2008 “Constraints in Discourse. An Introduction.” In Constraints in Discourse, ed. by Anton Benz, and Peter Kühnlein, 1–26. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Biber, Douglas
1988 Variation across Speech and Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bloor, Thomas, and Meriel Bloor
1995 The Functional Analysis of English: A Hallidayan Approach. London: Arnold.Google Scholar
Brinton, Laurel
1996 Pragmatic Markers in English: Grammaticalization and Discourse Functions. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bublitz, Wolfram, Uta Lenk, and Eija Ventola
(eds) 1999 Coherence in Spoken and Written Discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Chesterman, Andrew
1998 Contrastive Functional Analysis. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Clyne, Michael
1987 “Cultural Differences in the Organization of Academic Texts.” Journal of Pragmatics 11: 211–247. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Degand, Liesbeth, Nathalie Lefèvre, and Yves Bestgen
1999 “The Impact of Connectives and Anaphoric Expression on Expository Discourse Comprehension.” Document Design 1: 39–51. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Doherty, Monika
2003 “Discourse Relators and the Beginnings of Sentences in English and German.” Languages in Contrast 3: 223–251. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Esser, Jürgen
2006 Presentation in Language. Rethinking Speech and Writing. Tübingen: Gunter Narr.Google Scholar
Fetzer, Anita
2005 “Negative Theme Zones in Political Interviews: A Contrastive Analysis of German and English Turn-initial Positions.” In Pressetextsorten im Vergleich. Contrasting Text Types in the Press, ed. by Andrew Chesterman, and Hartmut Lenk, 283–301. Hildesheim: Olms.Google Scholar
2008 “Theme Zones in English Media Discourse. Forms and Functions.” Journal of Pragmatics 40 (9): 1543–1568. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Gernsbacher, Morton-Ann, and Talmy Givón
(eds) 1995 Coherence in Spontaneous Text. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Givón, Talmy
1993 English Grammar: A Function-based Introduction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2005 Context as Other Minds. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Gómez-González, Maria
2001 The Theme–Topic Interface. Evidence from English. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Grosz, Barbara, Ararvind Joshi, and Scott Weinstein
1995 “Centering: A Framework for Modelling the Local Coherence of Discourse.” Computational Linguistics 21: 203–225.Google Scholar
Grosz, Barbara, and Candace Sidner
1986 “Attention, Intentions and the Structure of Discourse.” Computational Linguistics 12: 175–204.Google Scholar
Gumperz, John
1992 “Contextualization and Understanding.” In Rethinking Context: Language as an Interactive Phenomenon, ed. by Alessandro Duranti, and Charles Goodwin, 229–252. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Halliday, Michael, and Ruqaiya Hasan
1976 Cohesion in English. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Halliday, Michael A. K
1994 Introduction to English Functional Grammar. London: Arnold.Google Scholar
Hannay, Mike
1994 “The Theme Zone.” In Nauwe Betrekkingen, ed. by Ronney Boogart, and Jan Noordegraaf, 107–117. Amsterdam: Neerlandistiek and Münster: Nodus Publikationen.Google Scholar
House, Juliane
1996 “Contrastive Discourse Analysis and Misunderstanding: The Case of German and English.” In Contrastive Sociolinguistics, ed. by Marlies Hellinger, and Ulrich Ammon, 345–361. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Kamp, Hans, and Uwe Reyle
1993 From Discourse to Logic. Introduction to Modeltheoretic Semantics of Natural Language, Formal Logic and Discourse Representation Theory. Dordrecht: Kluwer.Google Scholar
Karagjosova, Elena
2003 “Modal Particles and the Common Ground.” In Perspectives on Dialogue in the New Millennium, ed. by Peter Kühnlein, Hannes Rieser, and Henk Zeevat, 335–349. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
König, Ekkehard
1997 “Zur Bedeutung von Modalpartikeln im Deutschen: Ein Neuansatz im Rahmen der Relevanztheorie.” Germanistische Linguistik 136: 57–75.Google Scholar
Krifka, Manfred, and Caroline Féry
2008 “Information Structure. Notional Distinctions, Ways of Expression.” In Unity and Diversity of Languages, ed. by Piet van Sterkenburg, 123–136. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Krzeszowski, Tomas
1989 “Towards a Typology of Contrastive Studies.” In Contrastive Pragmatics, ed. by Wieslaw Oleksy, 55–72. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Lenker, Ursual
2010 Argument and Rhetoric – Adverbial Connectors in the History of English. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Levinson, Stephen
1979 “Activity Types and Language.” Linguistics 17: 365–399. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
1983 Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Liedtke, Frank
1997 “Gesagt? getan: Über illokutionäre Indikatoren.” Linguistische Berichte 8: 189–213.Google Scholar
Mann, William C., and Sandra A. Thompson
1987 “Rhetorical Structure Theory: Description and Construction of Text Structures.” In Natural Language Generation, ed. by Gerard Kempen, 85–95. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
1988 “Rhetorical Structure Theory: Toward a Functional Theory of Text Organization.” Text 8: 243–281.Google Scholar
Martin, Jim R., and David Rose
2008 Genre Relations. Mapping Culture. London: Equinox.Google Scholar
Pomerantz, Anita
1984 “Agreeing and Disagreeing with Assessments: Some Features of Preferred/Dispreferred Turn Shapes.” In Structures of Social Action, ed. by John Atkinson, and John M. Heritage, 57–101. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Quirk, Randolph, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech, and Jan Svartvik
1985 A Grammar of Contemporary English. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Reinhart, Tanya
1982 “Pragmatics and Linguistics: An Analysis of Sentence Topics.” Philosophica 27: 53–94.Google Scholar
Reis, Marga
1997 “Zum syntaktischen Status unselbständiger Verbzweit-Sätze.” In Sprache im Fokus. Festschrift für Heinz Vater zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. by Christa Dürscheid, Karl-Heinz Ramers, and Monika Schwarz, 121–144. Tübingen: Niemeyer.Google Scholar
Sacks, Harvey
1995 Lectures on Conversation, ed. by Gail Jefferson. Oxford: Blackwell. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel
1995 “Discourse as an Interactional Achievement III: The Omnirelevance of Action.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 28 (3): 185–211. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Soria, Claudia, and Giacomo Ferrari
1998 “Lexical Marking of Discourse Relations – Some Experimental Findings.” Proceedings of COLING-ACL Workshop on Discourse Relations and Discourse Markers , 36–42. Montréal.
Sperber, Dan, and Deirdre Wilson
1986 Relevance: Communication and Cognition. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Speyer, Augustin
2010 “Die Markierung von Diskursrelationen im Frühneuhochdeutschen.” Sprachwissenschaft 35: 409–442.Google Scholar
Thibault, Paul
2003 “Contextualization and Social Meaning-making Practices.” In Language and Interaction. Discussions with John J. Gumperz, ed. by Susan Eerdmans, et al., 41–62. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
van Dijk, Teun A
1980 Textwissenschaft. München: dtv. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Widdowson, Henry
2004 Text, Context, and Pretext. Critical Issues in Discourse Analysis. Oxford: Blackwell. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Wöllstein, Angelika
2010 Topologisches Satzmodell. Heidelberg: Winter.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 3 other publications

Hofmockel, Carolin, Anita Fetzer, Robert M. Maier, Patrick Saint-Dizier & Manfred Stede
2017. Discourse relations: Genre-specific degrees of overtness in argumentative and narrative discourse. Argument & Computation 8:2 ► pp. 131 ff. Crossref logo
Speyer, Augustin
2022.  In Language Change at the Interfaces [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 275], ► pp. 215 ff. Crossref logo
Zaliznjak, Anna A. & Irina Mikaelian
2018. Русское а: опыт интегрального описания. Russian Linguistics 42:3 ► pp. 321 ff. Crossref logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 12 july 2022. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.