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Part of
Pragmatic Markers and Peripheries
Edited by Daniël Van Olmen and Jolanta Šinkūnienė
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 325] 2021
► pp. 111–140

Chapter 4
Another ‘look!’

The Latvian particle lūk in parliamentary discourse

ORCID logo | Adam Mickiewicz University

The Latvian pragmatic marker lūk is derived from the imperative ‘look!’ but is used mainly in the textual domain in speech and writing. This study investigates its use in parliamentary discourse, based on a corpus of shorthand transcripts, as well as audio and video recordings. The main functions of lūk are pointing to parts of a speaker’s text (textual deixis), introducing and concluding a topic (discourse organization) and marking the voice of an opponent (represented speech and viewpoint). Similar functions have been described for imperatives of ‘look’ verbs in various European languages. An important difference is that lūk occurs only turn-medially and lacks dialogic functions.

Keywords: pragmatic marker, perception verbs, interjection, Latvian, parliamentary discourse, discourse organization, represented speech, viewpoint, deixis
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Data and methods of investigation
  • 3.Results: Functions of lūk
    • 3.1Situational deixis
    • 3.2Text deictic uses
    • 3.3Discourse organizing
    • 3.4Representing speech and viewpoint
    • 3.5Summary
  • 4.Discussion
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Transcription symbols
  • Abbreviations
  • Sources
  • References
Published online: 13 October 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.325.04nau
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