Starting from notions of conversational dominance as a locus for face-work, and of the crucial role of specific language items in managing conflict and (dis)agreement in dialogue, the paper will look at some case studies in the development and pragmaticalization stages of various English Discourse Markers (such as now, pray, please, I’m afraid, and well). Beginning with the source forms, the paper will discuss the gradual emergence of subjective and intersubjective meanings, as well as the phenomenon of layering and the tendency toward the development of deontic meanings that some English discourse markers show, possibly indicating a form of cyclical development of functions. The specific case studies presented include both a synchronic and a diachronic perspective.
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2004Subjectivity, intersubjectivity and the historical construction of interlocutor stance: From stance markers to discourse markers. Discourse Studies 6(4): 427–448.
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Ghezzi, Chiara & Molinelli, Piera
2014aDeverbal pragmatic markers from Latin to Italian (Lat. QUAESO and It. prego): The cyclic nature of functional developments. In Discourse and Pragmatic Markers from Latin to the Romance Languages [Oxford Studies in Diachronic & Historical Linguistics 9], Chiara Ghezzi & Piera Molinelli (eds), 61–85. Oxford: OUP.
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2010Subjectification and intersubjectification. In Handbook of Pragmatics: Historical Pragmatics [HoPS8], Andreas H. Jucker & Irma Taavitsainen (eds), 127–163. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
2012aI’m afraid I’ll have to stop now… Your time is up, I’m afraid. Corpus studies and the development of attitudinal markers. In Developing Corpus Methodology for Historical Pragmatics [Studies in Variation, Contacts and Change in English Volume 11], Carla Suhr & Irma Taavitsainen (eds). Available (20 Feb 2015) at: [URL]
Mazzon, Gabriella
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Murphy, James
2014Apologies in the Discourse of Politicians: A Pragmatic Approach. PhD Thesis, University of Manchester.
Murphy, James
2015How politicians use ‘I’m sorry’ to position themselves as not being sorry. Paper given at the 14th IPrA Conference, Antwerp, 26–31 July 2015.
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2023. “So What Are You, a Telephone?”: Emotion Management in Complaint Responses in BELF Phone Interactions. In Advancing (Im)politeness Studies [Advances in (Im)politeness Studies, ], ► pp. 133 ff.
Mazzon, Gabriella
2019. Variation in the expression of stance across varieties of English. World Englishes 38:4 ► pp. 593 ff.
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