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Positioning the Self and Others: Linguistic perspectives
Edited by Kate Beeching, Chiara Ghezzi and Piera Molinelli
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 292] 2018
► pp. 177–195

Chapter 8
Positioning of self in interaction

Adolescents’ use of attention-getters

Look, listen, come on, excuse me are examples of imperatives of verbs which have developed into discourse markers with an attention-getting function. It is shown that the functional markers are used by adolescents to position themselves in relation to what is said and other participants in the conversation in order to mark their disalignment with the norms of adult society. In the adolescents’ world impoliteness is the norm associated with creating a positive self-image of the speakers. Attention-getters are also an important part of how adolescents perform as tellers of narratives or anecdotes. Adolescents use attention-getters for irony and ‘mock politeness’ and in joking competitive exchanges.

Keywords: attention getters, adolescent speech, look , listen , come on , excuse me
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background review: Attention-getters in previous work
  • 3.Data and methods: Corpus analysis of the attention getters
  • 4.Findings
    • 4.1 Look
      • 4.1.1 Look as a marker of relevance
      • 4.1.2 Look and turn-taking
      • 4.1.3 Look as argumentation marker
      • 4.1.4Patterns with look marking escalation
      • 4.1.5Patterns with look as a part of reported speech
    • 4.2 Listen
    • 4.3 Come on
    • 4.4 Excuse me
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 17 July 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.292.08aij
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Van Olmen, Daniël & Vittorio Tantucci
2022. Getting attention in different languages: A usage-based approach to parenthetical look in Chinese, Dutch, English, and Italian. Intercultural Pragmatics 19:2 ► pp. 141 ff. DOI logo

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