Cover not available
Part of
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
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.254.04spe
References (51)
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. DOI logoGoogle 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. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Biber, Douglas. 1988. Variation across Speech and Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle 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. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bublitz, Wolfram, Uta Lenk, and Eija Ventola (eds). 1999. Coherence in Spoken and Written Discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chesterman, Andrew. 1998. Contrastive Functional Analysis. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clyne, Michael. 1987. “Cultural Differences in the Organization of Academic Texts.” Journal of Pragmatics 11: 211–247. DOI logoGoogle 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. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Doherty, Monika. 2003. “Discourse Relators and the Beginnings of Sentences in English and German.” Languages in Contrast 3: 223–251. DOI logoGoogle 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. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gernsbacher, Morton-Ann, and Talmy Givón (eds). 1995. Coherence in Spontaneous Text. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Givón, Talmy. 1993. English Grammar: A Function-based Introduction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2005. Context as Other Minds. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gómez-González, Maria. 2001. The Theme–Topic Interface. Evidence from English. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle 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. DOI logoGoogle 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. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Krzeszowski, Tomas. 1989. “Towards a Typology of Contrastive Studies.” In Contrastive Pragmatics, ed. by Wieslaw Oleksy, 55–72. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lenker, Ursual. 2010. Argument and Rhetoric – Adverbial Connectors in the History of English. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Levinson, Stephen. 1979. “Activity Types and Language.” Linguistics 17: 365–399. DOI logoGoogle 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. DOI logoGoogle 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. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel. 1995. “Discourse as an Interactional Achievement III: The Omnirelevance of Action.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 28 (3): 185–211. DOI logoGoogle 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. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
van Dijk, Teun A. 1980. Textwissenschaft. München: dtv. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Widdowson, Henry. 2004. Text, Context, and Pretext. Critical Issues in Discourse Analysis. Oxford: Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wöllstein, Angelika. 2010. Topologisches Satzmodell. Heidelberg: Winter.Google Scholar
Cited by (3)

Cited by three other publications

Speyer, Augustin
2022. Discourse relations and the German prefield. In Language Change at the Interfaces [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 275], ► pp. 215 ff. DOI logo
Zaliznjak, Anna A. & Irina Mikaelian
2018. Русское а: опыт интегрального описания. Russian Linguistics 42:3 ► pp. 321 ff. DOI logo
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. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 15 july 2024. 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.