Cover not available
Part of
Positioning the Self and Others: Linguistic perspectives
Edited by Kate Beeching, Chiara Ghezzi and Piera Molinelli
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 292] 2018
► pp. 127–153

Chapter 6
Metacommenting in English and French

A variational pragmatics approach

Metacommenters allow speakers to take some distance from a particular lexical selection, or enter into a negotiation with their interlocutors. A variational pragmatics approach is taken to the investigation of metacommenting in English and French, in Europe and Canada/the US, drawing on a range of time-dated corpora.
English and French draw pragmatically on similar linguistic resources for their pool of metacommenters, subjectivity being expressed through sort of/kind of and like in English, and genre, comme and post-posed quoi in French, while intersubjectivity is inherent in the personal pronouns in if you like/if you will in English and si tu veux/si vous voulez in French.
The linguistic forms used for the purpose of metacommenting arise from items with similar core meanings in the two languages, but develop, increase and decrease in frequency at different rates across national varieties, giving rise to regional differences and indexicalities.
Keywords: pragmatic marker, metacomment, variational pragmatics
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background/literature review
    • 2.1Subjectivity and PMs
    • 2.2Identity, indexicality and PMs
    • 2.3From variationist to variational
      • 2.3.1What is a pragmatic variable?
      • 2.3.2A variational and corpus linguistic approach to pragmatic variables
    • 2.4Metacommenting in English and French
      • 2.4.1 if-ECs
      • 2.4.2PMs derived from type-noun constructions: Sort of, kind of and genre
      • 2.4.3Similatives
      • 2.4.4Post-posed quoi
      • 2.4.5Examples from the corpora (see 3.1 for details of the corpora investigated)
  • 3.Data and methods
    • 3.1The corpora investigated
    • 3.2Raw rates of occurrence per 10,000 words
    • 3.3Classifying the markers into functional sub-types
  • 4.Findings
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 17 July 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.292.06bee
References (47)
References
Aijmer, Karin. 2002. English Discourse Particles. Evidence from a Corpus. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Beeching, Kate. 2002. Gender, Politeness and Pragmatic Particles in French. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2007. “Social Identity, Salience and Language Change: the Case of Post-Rhematic quoi .” In The French Language and Questions of Identity, ed. by Wendy Ayres-Bennett, and Mari C. Jones, 140–149. Oxford: Legenda.Google Scholar
. 2016. Pragmatic Markers in British English. Meaning in Social Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2017. “Reflexivity and Discourse-pragmatic Variation and Change”. In Variation(s) en question. Hommages à Françoise Gadet, ed. by Harry Tyne, Mireille Bilger, Paul Cappeau, and Emmanuelle Guerin, 157–179. Bruxelles: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Brems, Lieselotte, and Kristin Davidse. 2010. “The Reanalysis and Grammaticalization of Nominal Type Noun Constructions with kind of/sort of: Chronology and Paths of Change.” English Studies 91: 180–202. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brinton, Laurel. 1996. Pragmatic Markers in English. Grammaticalization and Discourse Functions. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2014. “ If you choose/like/prefer/want/wish: the Origins of Metalinguistic and Politeness Functions.” In Late Modern English Syntax, ed. by Marianne Hundt, 271–290. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Buchstaller, Isabelle. 2006. “Social Stereotypes, Personality Traits and Regional Perception Displaced: Attitudes towards the ‘New’ Quotatives in the U.K.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 10 (3): 362–381. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Buchstaller, Isabelle, and Alexandra D’Arcy. 2009. “Localized Globalization: a Multi-local, Multivariate Investigation of Quotative be like .” Journal of Sociolinguistics 13 (1): 291–331. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chanet, Catherine. 2001. “1700 occurrences de la particule quoi en français parlé contemporain: approche de la « distribution » et des fonctions en discours.” Marges Linguistiques 2: 56–80.Google Scholar
Cheshire, Jenny. 2005. “Syntactic Variation and beyond: Gender and Social Class Variation in the Use of Discourse-new Markers.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 9 (4): 479–508. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Claridge, Claudia. 2013. “The Evolution of Three Pragmatic Markers: As it were, so to speak/say and if you like .” Journal of Historical Pragmatics 14 (2): 161–184. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clyne, Michael. 1992. “Introduction.” In Pluricentric Languages: Different Norms in Different Countries, ed. by Michael Clyne, 1–9. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter.Google Scholar
Coates, Jennifer. 2013. Women, Men and Everyday Language. Basingstoke: Palgrave. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
D’Arcy, Alexandra. 2007. “‘Like’ and Language Ideology: Disentangling Fact from Fiction.” American Speech 82 (4): 386–419. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Detges, Ulrich, and Richard Waltereit. 2009. “Diachronic Pathways and Pragmatic Strategies: Different Types of Pragmatic Particles from a Diachronic Point of View.” In Current Trends in Diachronic Semantics and Pragmatics, ed. by Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen, and Jacqueline Visconti, 43–61. Bingley: Emerald. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dostie, Gaétane. 2009. “Discourse Markers and Regional Variation in French. A Lexico-semantic Approach.” In Sociolinguistic Variation in Contemporary French, ed. by Kate Beeching, Nigel Armstrong, and Françoise Gadet, 201–214. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fedriani, Chiara, and Piera Molinelli. 2013. “Ut ita dicam and Cognates: a Pragmatic Account”. Journal of Latin Linguistics 12 (1): 71–99. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fleischman, Suzanne, and Marina Yaguello. 2004. “Discourse Markers across Languages? Evidence from English and French”. In Discourse Across Languages and Cultures, ed. by Carol Lynn Moder, and Aida Martinovic-Zik, 129–147. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fleury, Serge, Florence Lefeuvre, and Mat Pirès. 2012. ”Etude syntaxique, discursive, lexicométrique et sociolinguistique du mot quoi dans le Corpus du français parlé parisien des années 2000.” In Regards croisés sur la langue française: usages, pratiques, histoire. Mélanges en l’honneur de Sonia Branca-Rosoff, ed. by Yana Grinschpun, and Judith Nyee-Doggen, 97–112. Paris: PUF. submitted 21 April 2015 to [URL].Google Scholar
Ghezzi, Chiara. 2013. Vagueness Markers in Contemporary Italian: Intergenerational Variation and Pragmatic Change. Ph.D. dissertation. Pavia: University of Pavia.Google Scholar
Holmes, Janet. 1986. “Functions of you know in Women’s and Men’s Speech.” Language in Society 15 (1): 1–22. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1989. “ Sort of in New Zealand Women’s and Men’s Speech.” Studia Linguistica 42 (2): 85–121. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1995. Women, Men and Politeness. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Isambert, Paul. 2016.”Genre: une mode récente mais qui vient de loin.” Journal of French Language Studies 26 (1): 85–96.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Johnstone, Barbara, Jennifer Andrus, and Andrew E. Danielson. 2006. “Mobility, Indexicality and the Enregisterment of “Pittsburghese”.” Journal of English Linguistics 34 (2): 77–104. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lucy, John ed. 1993. Reflexive Language. Reported Speech and Metapragmatics . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Labov, William. 1994. Principles of Linguistic Change. Vol.1: Internal Factors.Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
. 2001. Principles of Linguistic Change. Vol. 2: Social Factors. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Margerie, Hélène. 2010. “On the Rise of (Inter)subjective Meaning in the Grammaticalization of kind of/kinda .” In Subjectification, Intersubjectification and Grammaticalization, ed. by Kristin Davidse, Lieven Vandelanotte, and Hubert Cuyckens, 315–348. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Miriam Meyerhoff, Erik Schleef, and Laurel MacKenzie. 2015. Doing Sociolinguistics. A Practical Guide to Data Collection and Analysis. London/New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Mihatsch, Wiltrud. 2009. “The Approximators French comme, Italian come, Portuguese como and Spanish como from a Grammaticalization Perspective.” In Grammaticalization and Pragmatics: Facts, Approaches, Theoretical Issues, ed. by Corinne Rossari, Claudia Ricci, and Adriana Spiridon, 65–91. Oxford: Emerald. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2016. “Type-noun Binominals in Four Romance Languages”. Language Sciences 53. Special issue Binominal Syntagms as a Neglected Locus of Synchronic Variation and Diachronic Change: towards a Unified Approach, ed. by Lieselotte Brems, Bernard De Clerck, und Katrien Verveckken, 136–159.Google Scholar
Ochs, Eleanor. 1992. “Indexing Gender”. In Rethinking Context: Language as an Interactive Phenomenon, ed. by Alessandro Duranti, and Charles Goodwin, 335–358. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Pichler, Heike. 2010. “Methods in Discourse Variation Analysis: Reflections on the Way forward.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 14 (5): 581–608. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2013. The Structure of Discourse-Pragmatic Variation. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schiffrin, Deborah. 1987. Discourse Markers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schnedecker, Catherine. 2016. “Si tu veux/si vous voulez : caractéristiques syntaxiques et fonctions sémantico-pragmatiques des hypothétiques en si portant sur le dire.” Journal of French Language Studies 26 (1): 45–66.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schneider, Klaus P. 2008. “Small Talk in England, Ireland, and the U.S.A”. In Variational Pragmatics. A Focus on Regional Varieties in Pluricentric Languages, ed. by Klaus P. Schneider, and Anne Barron, 99–139. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2010. “Variational Pragmatics”. In Variation and Change. Pragmatic Perspectives, ed. by Mirjam Fried, Jan-Ola Östmann, and Jef Verschueren, 239–267. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Silverstein, Michael. 2003. “Indexical Order and the Dialectics of Sociolinguistic Life.” Language and Communication 23: 193–229. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tagliamonte, Sali. 2006. Analysing Sociolinguistic Variation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tagliamonte, Sali, and Alex D’Arcy, 2004. “He’s like, she’s like. The Quotative System in Canadian Youth.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 8: 493–514.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2009. “Peaks beyond Phonology: Adolescence, Incrementation and Language Change.” Language 85 (1): 58–108. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Terkourafi, Marina. 2011. “The Pragmatic Variable: toward a Procedural Interpretation .” Language in Society 40: 343–372. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Traugott, Elizabeth Closs. 2016. “On the Rise of Types of Clause-final Pragmatic Markers in English.” Journal of Historical Pragmatics 7 (1): 26–54.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Aijmer, Karin
2024. A contrastive analysis of (-)ish in English and Swedish blogs. Languages in Contrast DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 27 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.