Cover not available
Article published In:
Pragmatics and Society
Vol. 6:1 (2015) ► pp.117–145

‘It is a truth universally acknowledged’…, you know?

The role of adaptive management and prosody to start a turn in conversation

This article describes the prosodic features of the most frequent pragmatic markers in English conversations that contribute to the management of context in interaction. Often, turn-taking has been analyzed either from a structural perspective, in which the participants are treated as subjects that pursue rules, accommodating to pre-established patterns, or (more recently) from a pragmatic perspective with a focus on the intentionality of the speaker in the use of pragmatic markers. It is my contention in this article that pragmatic markers are ancillary to context within the Dynamic Model of Meaning theory, and that prosody plays an essential role in adaptive management as the fourth element of context.

Keywords: adaptive context, pragmatic markers, prosody, Dynamic Model of Meaning
Published online: 10 March 2015
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ps.6.1.06rom
References (62)
Aijmer, Karin
2013 Understanding Pragmatic Markers: A Variational Pragmatic Approach. 
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Aijmer, Karin, and Anne-Marie Simon-Vandenbergen
(eds) 2006 Pragmatic Markers in Contrast. Oxford: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Balog, Heather
2012 “Early Prosodic Production: Pragmatic and Acoustic Analyses for L2 Language Learners.” In Pragmatics and Prosody in English Language Teaching, ed. by J. Romero-Trillo, 133–147. Dordrecht: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Blakemore, Diane
2002 Relevance and Linguistic Meaning: The Semantics and Pragmatics of Discourse Markers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bolinger, Dwight
1958 “A theory of pitch accent in English.” Word 141: 109–149. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brazil, David
1975 Discourse Intonation 1/2. Birmingham: Birmingham University Press.Google Scholar
Brinton, Laurel J
1996 Pragmatic Markers in English: Grammaticalization and Discourse Functions. Berlin: de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brown, Gillian, and George Yule
1983 Discourse Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Buysse, Lieven
2012 “ So as a Multifunctional Discourse Marker in Native and Learner Speech.” Journal of Pragmatics 441: 1764–1782. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cuenca, Maria J
(ed.) 2007 “Contrastive Perspectives on Discourse Markers.” Catalan Journal of Linguistics 6 (special issue): 1–172.Google Scholar
Cruttenden, Alan
1997 Intonation (2nd Edition). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dascal, Marcelo
1999 “Introduction: Some Questions about Misunderstanding.” Journal of Pragmatics 311: 753–762. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
De Klerk, Vivian
2010 Corpus Linguistics and World Englishes. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Fauconnier, Gilles
1997 Mappings in Thought and Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fischer, Kerstin
(ed.) 2006 Approaches to Discourse Particles. Oxford: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Giora, Rachel
2003 On Our Mind: Salience, Context, and Figurative Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gladkova, Anna, and Jesús Romero-Trillo
Ain’t it Beautiful? The Conceptualization of Beauty from an Ethnopragmatic Perspective.” Journal of Pragmatics.
CrossRef DOI logo with hyperlink to permanent DOI
Gussenhoven, Carlos
1984 On the Grammar and Semantics of Sentence Accents. Dordrecht: Foris Publications. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Halliday, M.A.K
1967 Intonation and Grammar in British English. The Hague: Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1970 A Course in Spoken English. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Heritage, John
2013 “Turn-initial Position and Some of its Occupants.” Journal of Pragmatics 571: 331–337. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hopper, Paul, and Elizabeth C. Traugott
1993 Grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Innes, Bronwen
2010 “ ‘Well, that’s why I asked this question sir’: Well as a discourse marker in court.” Language in Society 391: 95–117. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jenkins, Jennifer
2004 “Research in Teaching Pronunciation and Intonation.” Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 241: 109–125. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kecskes, Istvan
2003 Situation-Bound Utterances in L1 and L2. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2004 “Lexical Merging, Conceptual Blending and Cultural Crossing.” Intercultural Pragmatics 1(1): 1–26. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2006 “On my Mind: Thoughts about Salience, Context and Figurative Language from a Second Language Perspective.” Second Language Research 22 (2): 219–237. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2008 “Dueling Contexts: A Dynamic Model of Meaning.” Journal of Pragmatics 401: 385–406. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kecskes, Istvan, and Fenghui Zhang
2009 “Activating, seeking, and creating common ground: A socio‐cognitive approach.” Pragmatics and Cognition 171: 331–355. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kim, Hye Ri Stephanie, and Satomi Kuroshima
2013 “Turn Beginnings in Interaction: An Introduction.” Journal of Pragmatics 571: 267–273. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Knott, Alistair, and Robert Dale
1994 “Using Linguistic Phenomena to Motivate a set of Coherence Relations.” Discourse Processes 181: 35–62. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ladd, D. Robert
1996 Intonational Phonology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Levinson, Stephen C
1983 Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Maguire, Laura, and Jesús Romero-Trillo
2013 “Context Dynamism in Classroom Discourse.” In Research Trends in Intercultural Pragmatics, ed. by I. Kecskes & J. Romero-Trillo, 145–160. Berlin: de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mascaro, Olivier, and Dan Sperber
2009 “The Moral, Epistemic, and Mindreading Components of Children’s Vigilance Towards Deception.” Cognition 1121: 367–380. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mey, Jacob L
2001 Pragmatics: An Introduction (2nd edn.). Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Müller, Simone
2005 Discourse Markers in Native and Non-native English Discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Norrick, Neal R
(ed.) 2009 “Pragmatic Markers.” Journal of Pragmatics 41 (special issue).Google Scholar
Ochs, Elinor
1996 “Linguistic Resources for Socializing Humanity.” In Rethinking Linguistic Relativity, ed. by J.J. Gumperz and S.C. Levinson, 407–437. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Östman, Jan-Ola
1995 “Pragmatic Particles 20 years after.” In Organization in Discourse, ed. by B. Wårvik, S.K. Tanskanen, and R. Hiltunen, 95–108. Turku: University of Turku.Google Scholar
Padilla Cruz, Manuel
2013 “Metapsychological Awareness of Comprehension and Epistemic Vigilance of L2 Communication in Interlanguage Pragmatic Development.” Journal of Pragmatics 591: 117–135. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pickering, Lucy, Guiling Hu, and Amanda Baker
2012 “The Pragmatic Function of Intonation: Cueing Agreement and Disagreement in Spoken English Discourse and Implications for ELT.” In Pragmatics and Prosody in English Language Teaching, ed. by J. Romero-Trillo, 199–218. Dordrecht: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Romero-Trillo, Jesús
1994 “Ahm, ehm...You call it Theme? A Thematic Approach to Spoken English.” Journal of Pragmatics 221: 495–509. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1997 “Your Attention Please. Pragmatic Mechanisms to Obtain the Addressee’s Attention in English and Spanish Conversations.” Journal of Pragmatics 281: 205–221. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2001 “A Mathematical Model for the Analysis of Variation in Discourse.” Journal of Linguistics 371: 527–550. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2002a “The Pragmatic Fossilization of Discourse Markers in Non-native Speakers of English.” Journal of Pragmatics 341: 769–784. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2002b “The Sympathetic Circularity Function in English: An Intonation Corpus-driven Analysis.” Revista Complutense de Estudios Ingleses 101: 87–112Google Scholar
2006 “Discourse Markers.” In Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, ed. by K. Brown, 639–641. Oxford: Elsevier. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2007 “Adaptive Management in Discourse: The Case of Involvement Discourse Markers in English and Spanish.” Catalan Journal of Linguistics 61: 81–94. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(ed.) 2008 Pragmatics and Corpus Linguistics, a Mutualistic Entente. 
Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2012 “Pragmatic Markers.” In Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics, ed. by C. Chapelle, 4522–4528. Oxford: Blackwell-Wiley. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(ed.) 2013 The Yearbook of Corpus Linguistics and Pragmatics, vol. 1: New Domains and Methodologies. Dordrecht: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Romero Trillo, Jesús
‘Pragmatic Punting’ and Prosody: Evidence from Corpora.” In The Functional Perspective on Language and Discourse: Applications and Implications ed. by M.A. Gómez González, et al. 293 309 Amsterdam John Benjamins DOI logo
Romero-Trillo, Jesús, and Elizabeth Lenn
2011 “Do you (mis)understand What I Mean?” Journal of English Studies 91: 209–221.. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Romero-Trillo, Jesús, and Laura Maguire
2011 “Adaptive Context: The Fourth Element of Meaning.” International Review of Pragmatics 31: 228–241. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Romero-Trillo, Jesús, and Jessica Newell
2012 “Prosody and Feedback in Native and Non-native Speakers of English.” In Pragmatics and Prosody in English Language Teaching, ed. by J. Romero-Trillo, 117–131. Dordrecht: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sacks, Harvey, Emanuel A. Schegloff, and Gail Jefferson
1974 “A Simplest Systematics for the Organization of Turn-taking for Conversation.” Language 501: 696–735. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schiffrin, Deborah
1987 Discourse Markers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Searle, John R
1983 Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sperber, Dan, Fabrice Clément, Christophe Heintz, Olivier Mascaro, Hugo Mercier, Gloria Origgi, and Deirdre Wilson
2010 “Epistemic Vigilance.” Mind and Language 251: 359–393. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Svartvik, Jan, and Randolph Quirk
1980 A Corpus of English Conversation. Lund: Lund University Press.Google Scholar
Szczepek-Reed, Beatrice
2012 “Prosody in Conversation: Implications for Teaching English Pronunciation.” In Pragmatics and Prosody in English Language Teaching, ed. by J. Romero-Trillo, 147–168. Dordrecht: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (8)

Cited by 8 other publications

Shan, Yi
2021. Investigating the Interaction Between Prosody and Pragmatics Quantitatively: A Case Study of the Chinese Discourse Marker ni zhidao (“You Know”). Frontiers in Psychology 12 DOI logo
Shan, Yi
2023. Form (Prosody)-Meaning (Pragmatics) pairings of discourse markers: A case study of Nǐ zhīdào (‘You Know’) as a construction in Chinese media interviews. Language & Communication 93 ► pp. 136 ff. DOI logo
De Marco, Anna
2016. The use of discourse markers in L2 Italian. Language, Interaction and Acquisition 7:1 ► pp. 67 ff. DOI logo
MacArthur, Fiona
2016. Beyond Engaged Listenership: Assessing Spanish Undergraduates’ Active Participation in Academic Mentoring Sessions in English as Academic Lingua Franca. In Yearbook of Corpus Linguistics and Pragmatics 2016 [Yearbook of Corpus Linguistics and Pragmatics, ], ► pp. 153 ff. DOI logo
Gonen, Einat, Zohar Livnat & Noam Amir
2015. The discourse marker axshav (‘now’) in spontaneous spoken Hebrew: Discursive and prosodic features. Journal of Pragmatics 89 ► pp. 69 ff. DOI logo
Romero-Trillo, Jesús
2015. Understanding vagueness: A prosodic analysis of endocentric and exocentric general extenders in English conversation. Journal of Pragmatics 86 ► pp. 54 ff. DOI logo
Romero-Trillo, Jesús
2018. Prosodic modeling and position analysis of pragmatic markers in English conversation. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory 14:1 ► pp. 169 ff. DOI logo
Romero-Trillo, Jesús
2018. Corpus Pragmatics and Second Language Pragmatics: A Mutualistic Entente in Theory and Practice. Corpus Pragmatics 2:2 ► pp. 113 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.