Publications
Publication details [#58257]
Barnes, Lawrie and Werner Botha. 2013. Variation in the use of sentence final particles in Macau Cantonese. Chinese Language and Discourse 4 (2) : 277–296.
Publication type
Article in journal
Publication language
English
Keywords
Language as a subject
Place, Publisher
John Benjamins
Journal DOI
10.1075/cld
Annotation
This paper considers how meaningful social information is conveyed with the use of sentence final particles in Macau Cantonese. The purpose in this research is to provide a general sociolinguistic account of sentence final particles in Macau Cantonese, and specifically to illustrate that social meanings of SFPs are variable, and do not constitute rigid or fixed meanings and interpretations. These social meanings, this paper argues, are a potential for indicating speaker identity at the individual level, and constitute a rich resource for communicating speaker identity in Macau Cantonese. This study uses an eclectic sociolinguistic approach, and combines elements of distributionist analyses, social network theory and constructionist approaches with a view to accounting for the dynamics underlying sentence final particle variation. Finally, this research considers constraints such as conversation topic, the affective relations between interlocutors, and gender as impinging on the distribution and use of SFPs in Macau Cantonese.