Pragmatic markers in English and Italian film dialogue: Distribution and translation
LivianaGaliano
University of Pavia
Abstract
Pragmatic markers are recognised to be a fundamental aspect of spoken language, in particular conversation, as
they allow the processing of information within a specific context by providing the addressee with cues on how to interpret
utterances. As far as audiovisual dialogue is concerned, pragmatic markers are considered as a hallmark of naturalness and orality
which is fundamental to ensure the audience’s immersion in the world represented on screen. Thanks to both distributional and
translation-oriented analysis of corpus data, the paper aims to compare the use of pragmatic markers in anglophone, dubbed Italian
and original Italian film dialogues as well as highlight the strategies employed in translating English pragmatic markers into
dubbed Italian.
The presence of elements typical of spoken language is essential to evoke the idea of orality in the mind of the audience of
a film. Among features such as vocatives, expletives, interjections, conversational formulas, and so on, pragmatic markers are
fundamental in dialogue not only because they recreate orality on screen (cf. Pavesi 2009;
Guillot 2016; Fowler 2020), but also for
their procedural and intersubjective functions (cf. Aijmer 2002; Waltereit and Detges 2007; Beeching 2016) which facilitate the
alternation of conversational turns, the interpretation of the speaker’s attitude and intentions, and the management of the
speaker-hearer relationship.
References
Aijmer, Karin
1996Conversational
Routines in English: Convention and
Creativity. London: Longman.
Aijmer, Karin
2002 “Interjections
in a Contrastive Perspective.” In Emotion in Dialogic
Interaction, ed. by Edda Weigand, 103–124. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins Publishing Company.
Aijmer, Karin
2013Understanding
Pragmatic Markers: A Variational Pragmatic
Approach. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University
Press.
Aijmer, Karin, Ad Foolen, and Anne-Marie Simon-Vandenbergen
2006 “Pragmatic
Markers in Translation: A Methodological Proposal.” In Approaches to
Discourse Particles, ed. by Kerstin Fischer, 101–114. Oxford/Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Aijmer, Karin, and Anne-Marie Simon-Vandenbergen
2011 “Pragmatic
Markers.” In Discoursive Pragmatics, ed.
by Jan Zienkowski, Jan-Ola Östman, and Jef Verschueren, 223–247. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins.
Andersen, Gisle
1998 “The Pragmatic Marker Like From a Relevance-Theoretic Perspective.” In Discourse Markers, ed. by Andreas H. Jucker, and Yael Ziv, 147–170. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Andersen, Gisle
2011Pragmatic
Markers and Sociolinguistic Variation: A Relevance-Theoretic Approach to the Language of
Adolescents. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins.
Badan, Linda
2021 “Verb-based
Discourse Markers in Italian: Guarda, Vedi, Guarda Te, Vedi Te.” In Pragmatic Markers and
Peripheries, ed. by Daniel
Van Olmen, and Jolanta Šinkuniene, 144–170. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins.
Baker, Mona
1992In
Other Words: A Coursebook on
Translation. London: Routledge.
Baker, Mona
1996 “Corpus-based
Translation Studies: The Challenges that Lie Ahead.” In Terminology,
LSP and Translation: Studies in Language Engineering, in Honour of Juan C. Sager, ed.
by Harold Somers, 175–186. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins.
Barnes, Betsy
1995 “Discourse Particles in French Conversation: (Eh) Ben, Bon, and Enfin.” The French Review 68 (5): 813–821.
Bazzanella, Carla
1986 “I connettivi di correzione nel parlato: usi metatestuali e fatici.” In Parallela 2. Aspetti della sintassi dell’italiano
contemporaneo, ed. by Lichem Klaus, Mara Edith, and Susanne Knaller, 35–45. Tübingen: Gunter
Narr.
Bazzanella, Carla
1990 “Phatic Connectives as Interactional Cues in Contemporary Spoken Italian.” Journal of Pragmatics 14: 629–647.
Bazzanella, Carla
1995 “I
segnali discorsivi.” In Grande grammatica italiana di
consultazione – vol. 3, ed.
by Lorenzo Renzi, Giampaolo Salvi, and Anna Cardinaletti, 225–260. Bologna: Il
Mulino.
Bazzanella, Carla, Cristina Bosco, Alessandro Garcea, Barbara Gili Fivela, Johanna Miecznikowski, and Francesca Tini Brunozzi
2007 “Italian Allora, French Alors: Functions, Convergences and Divergences.” Catalan Journal of
Linguistics 6: 9–30.
Bazzanella, Carla, and Margarita
Borreguero Zuloaga
2011 “Allora
e entonces: problemi teorici e dati empirici.” Discourse Markers in Romance
Languages, Oslo Studies in
Language 3 (1): 7–45.
Beeching, Kate
2002Gender, Politeness and Pragmatic Particles in French. Pragmatics and Beyond: New Series 64. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Beeching, Kate
2009 “Procatalepsis and the Etymology of Hedging/Boosting Particles.” In Current Trends in Diachronic Semantics and Pragmatics. Studies in Pragmatics 7, ed. by Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen, and Jacqueline Visconti, 81–106. Bingley: Emerald.
Beeching, Kate
2016Pragmatic
Markers in British English: Meaning in Social
Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Biber, Douglas, Stig Johansson, Geoffrey Leech, Susan Conrad, and Edward Finegan
1999Longman
Grammar of Spoken and Written
English. London: Longman.
Biber, Douglas, Stig Johansson, Geoffrey Leech, Susan Conrad, and Edward Finegan
2021Grammar
of Spoken and Written English. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins.
Bonola, Anna, and Nataliya Stoyanova
2020 “Discourse
and Pragmatic Markers in Italian Linguistics: Trends and Methods.” Voprosy
Jazykoznanija (1): 124–147.
Bonsignori, Veronica, Silvia Bruti, and Silvia Masi
2011 “Formulae
across Languages: English Greetings, Leave-Takings and Good Wishes in Dubbed
Italian.” In Audiovisual Translation in Close-up: Practical and
Theoretical Approaches, ed. by Adriana Şerban, Anna Matamala, and Jean-Marc Lavaur, 23–44. Bern: Peter
Lang.
Braun, Friederike
1988Terms
of Address: Problems of Patterns and Usage in Various Languages and
Cultures. Berlin: Mouton de
Gruyter.
Brinton, Laurel
J.
1996Pragmatic Markers in English.
Grammaticalization and Discourse
Functions. Berlin: Mouton de
Gruyter.
Brinton, Laurel J.
1998 “ ‘The Flowers Are Lovely; Only They Have No Scent’. The Evolution of a Pragmatic Marker in English.” In Anglistentag, Giessen, Proceedings, ed. by Raimund Borgmeister, Herbert Grabes, and Andreas H. Jucker, 9–33. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag.
Brinton, Laurel
J.
2001 “From Matrix Clause to Pragmatic
Marker: The History of Look-Forms.” Journal of Historical
Pragmatics 2 (2): 177–199.
Brinton, Laurel
J.
2003 “Historical Discourse
Analysis.” In The Handbook of Discourse
Analysis, ed. by Deborah Schiffrin, Deborah Tannen, and Heidi
E. Hamilton, 138–160. Malden: Blackwell
Publishing.
Brinton, Laurel
J.
2008The Comment Clause in English:
Syntactic Origins and Pragmatic
Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Brown, Gillian
1977Listening
to Spoken
English. London: Longman.
Brown, Penelope, and Stephen
C. Levinson
1987Politeness:
Some Universals in Language Use. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Brown, Richard, and Marguerite Ford
1961 “Address
in American English.” Journal of Abnormal and Social
Psychology 62: 375–385.
Brown, Roger, and Albert Gilman
1960 “The
Pronouns of Power and Solidarity.” In Style In
Language, ed. by Thomas Sebeok, 253–276. New
Jersey: Wiley&Sons.
Bucaria, Chiara
2008 “Acceptance of the Norm or Suspension of Disbelief? The Case of Formulaic Language in Dubbese.” In Between Text and Image. Updating Research in Screen Translation, ed. by Delia Chiaro, Christine Heiss, and Chiara Bucaria, 149–163. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Caron-Prague, Josiane, and Jean Caron
1991 “Psychopragmatics vs. Sociopragmatics. The Function of Pragmatic Markers in Thinking-Aloud Protocols.” In Pragmatics at Issue: Selected Papers of the International Pragmatics Conference, Antwerp, August 17–22, 1987, ed. by Jef Verschueren, 29–36. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Carter, Ronald, and Michael McCarthy
2006Cambridge
Grammar of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Chaume, Frederic
2004 “Discourse
Markers in Audiovisual
Translating.” Meta 49 (4): 843–855.
Coates, Jennifer
2013Women, Men and Everyday Talk. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Cognola, Federica, and Silvio Cruschina
2021 “Between
Time and Discourse: A Syntactic Analysis of Italian Poi.” Annali di Ca’
Foscari. Serie
Occidentale 55: 87–116.
Crible, Ludivine
2017 “Towards
an Operational Category of Discourse Markers. A Definition and its
Model.” In Discourse Markers, Pragmatic Markers and Modal Particles:
New Perspectives, ed. by Chiara Fedriani, and Andrea Sansò, 101–126. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins.
Cuenca, Maria-Josep
2008 “Pragmatic
Markers in Contrast: The Case of Well.” Journal of
Pragmatics 40 (8): 1373–1391.
Dardano, Maurizio
2012 “Vabbè,
embè e compagnia bella.” In Noio volevàn savuàr. Studi in onore di
Edgar Radtke del sessantesimo compleanno, ed. by Silvia Natale, Daniela Pietrini, Nelson Puccio, and Till Stellino, 27–40. Frankfurt
am Main / Berlin / Bern / Bruxelles / New York / Oxford / Wien: Peter
Lang.
De
Cesare, Annamaria
2010 “Gli
impieghi di ecco nel parlato conversazionale e nello scritto
giornalistico.” In Il parlato nella scrittura italiana odierna:
riflessioni in prospettiva testuale, ed. by Angela Ferrari, and Annamaria De Cesare, 105–148. Bern: Peter
Lang.
Defour, Tine
2008 “The
Speaker’s Voice. A Diachronic Study on the Use of “Well” and “Now” as Pragmatic
Markers.” English Text
Construction 1 (1): 62–82.
Degand, Liesbeth
2000 “Causal Connectives or Causal Prepositions? Discursive Constraints.” Journal of Pragmatics 32: 687–707.
Denke, Annika
2009Native-like Performance. Pragmatic Markers, Repair and Repetition in Native and Non-native English Speech. Saarbrücken: VDM Verlag Dr. Müller.
Diewald, Gabriele
2006 “Discourse
Particles and Modal Particles as Grammatical Elements.” In Approaches
to Discourse Particles, ed. by Kerstin Fischer, 403–425. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Edmondson, Willis
1981Spoken Discourse: A Model for Analysis. London: Longman.
Erman, Britt
1987Pragmatic
Expressions in English: A Study of You Know, You See and I Mean in Face-to-Face
Communication. Stockholm: Almqvist and
Wiksell.
Erman, Britt
2001 “Pragmatic Markers Revisited with a Focus on You Know in Adult and Adolescent Talk.” Journal of Pragmatics 33: 1337–1359.
Espunya, Anna
2012 “Sentence
Connection in Fictive Dialogue.” In The Translation of Fictive
Dialogue, ed. by Jenny Brumme, and Anna Espunya, 199–215. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Fedriani, Chiara, and Andrea Sansò
eds.2017Pragmatic
Markers, Discourse Markers and Modal
Particles. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins.
Fiorentini, Ilaria
2016 “Segnali
discorsivi italiani in situazione di contatto linguistico. Il caso degli indicatori di
riformulazione.” Quaderns
d’Italià 21: 11–26.
Fiorentini, Ilaria
2017 “Italian
Discourse Markers and Modal Particles in Contact.” In Pragmatic
Markers, Discourse Markers and Modal Particles, ed. by Chiara Fedriani, and Andrea Sansò, 417–437. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins.
Firth, Raymond
1972 “Verbal
and Bodily Rituals of Greeting and Parting.” In Interpretation of
Ritual, ed. by Jean S.
La Fontaine, 1–38. London: Tavistock.
Fischer, Kerstin
ed.2006Approaches
to Discourse Particles. Studies in Pragmatics
1. Oxford: Elsevier.
Forchini, Pierfranca
2010 ““Well, Uh No. I Mean, You Know. Discourse Markers in Movie
Conversation.” In Perspectives on Audiovisual
Translation, ed. by Łukasz Bogucki, and Krzysztof Kredens, 45–59. Bern: Peter
Lang.
Formentelli, Maicol
2014 “Exploring
Lexical Variety and Simplification in Original and Dubbed Film
Dialogue.” In The Languages of Dubbing: Mainstream Audiovisual
Translation in Italy, ed. by Maria Pavesi, Maicol Formentelli, and Elisa Ghia, 141–166. Bern: Peter
Lang.
Fowler, Roger
2000 “Orality
and the Theory of Mode in Advertisements.” In Changing Landscapes in
Language and Language Pedagogy, ed. by Marie
N. Guillot, and Marie
Madeleine Kenning, 26–39. London: AFLS/Cilt.
Fraser, Bruce
1988 “Types of English Discourse Markers.” Acta Linguistica Hungarica 38: 19–33.
1999 “What
Are Discourse Markers?” Journal of
Pragmatics 14: 219–236.
Freddi, Maria, and Chiara Malagori
2014 “Discourse
Markers in Audiovisual Translation.” In Multimodal Epistemologies:
Towards and Integrated Framework, ed. by Arianna Maiorani, and Christine Christie, 191–209. London/New
York: Routledge.
Furiassi, Cristiano
2021 “Translating
the Discourse Marker Combination Okay Then from English into Italian: Evidence from the American TV Series
Fargo.” Textus 1: 101–130.
Galiano, Liviana, and Alfonso Semeraro
2023 “POS
and Pragmatic Tagging of Film Dialogue.” Corpus
Pragmatics 7: 17–39.
Ghezzi, Chiara, and Piera Molinelli
eds.2014Discourse
and Pragmatic Markers from Latin to the Romance
Languages. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Goss, Emily
L., and Joseph
C. Salmons
2000 “The
Evolution of Bilingual Discourse Marking System: Modal Particles and English Markers in German-American
Dialects.” International Journal of
Bilingualism 4: 469–484.
Guillot, Marie
N.
2016 “Cross-cultural Pragmatics and
Audiovisual Translation.” In Audiovisual Translation: Theoretical and
Methodological Challenges, ed. by Yves Gambier, and Sara
Ramos Pinto, 288–301. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins.
Guillot, Marie
N.
2020 “The Pragmatics of Audiovisual
Translation: Voices from within in Film Subtitling.” Journal of
Pragmatics 170: 317–330.
Hervey, Sandor, and Ian Higgins
1992Thinking
Translation. A Course in Translation Method: French to
English. London: Routledge.
Holmes, Janet
1995Women, Men and Politeness. London: Longman.
Holmes, Janet
1997 “Story-Telling
in New Zealand.” In Gender and Discourse, ed.
by Ruth Wodak, 263–293. London: Sage.
Hyland, Ken
1998aHedging in Scientific Research Articles. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Hyland, Ken
1998b “Boosting, Hedging and the Negotiation of Academic Knowledge.” Text 18 (3): 349–382.
Hyland, Ken
2000 “Hedges, Boosters and Lexical Invisibility.” Language Awareness 9: 179–197.
Jefferson, Gail
1973 “A
Case of Precision Timing in Ordinary
Conversation.” Semiotica 9: 47–96.
2004Translating
Cultures: An Introduction for Translators, Interpreters and Mediators. London/New
York: Routledge.
Kerbrat-Orecchioni, Catherine
1992Les Interactions Verbales Tome II. Paris: Armand Colin.
Khachaturyan, Elizaveta
2011 “Una
classificazione dei segnali discorsivi in italiano.” Discourse Markers in Romance
Languages 3 (1): 95–116.
Lamiroy, Beatrice
1994 “Pragmatic Connectives and L2 Acquisition: The Case of French and Dutch.” Pragmatics 4: 183–201.
Lenk, Uta
1998Marking Discourse Coherence: Functions of Discourse Markers in Spoken English. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag.
Lenker, Ursula
2010Argument
and Rhetoric. Adverbial Connectors in the History of
English. Berlin: De Gruyter
Mouton.
Lin, Chia-Yen
2010 “ ‘… That’s Actually Sort of You Know Trying to Get Consultants in …’: Functions and Multifunctionality of Modifiers in Academic Lectures.” Journal of Pragmatics 42: 1173–1183.
2018 “Direct
Anglicisms in Dubbed Italian. A Preliminary Study on Animated Films.” Lingue e
Linguaggi 28: 193–209.
Müller, Simone
2005Discourse Markers in Native and Non-native English Discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Nikula, Tarja
1996Pragmatic Force Modifiers: A Study in Interlanguage Pragmatics. Jyväskylä: University of Jyväskylä.
Pavesi, Maria
2003 “A
Look ‘into’ Simplification and the Translation of Motion Events in
Science.” In Complexity in Language and
Text, ed. by Lavinia
Merlini Barbaresi, 147–168. Pisa: Plus.
Pavesi, Maria
2008 “Spoken
Language in Film Dubbing: Target Language Norms, Interference and Translational
Routines”. In Between Text and Image. Updating Research in Screen
Translation, ed. by Delia Chiaro, Christine Heiss, and Chiara Bucaria, 79–99. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins.
Pavesi, Maria
2009 “Dubbing
English into Italian: A Closer Look at the Translation of Spoken
Language”. In New Trends in Audiovisual
Translation, ed. by Jorge
Díaz Cintas, 197–209. Bristol,
Blue Ridge Summit: Multilingual Matters.
Pérez-González, Luis
2007 “Appraising Dubbed Conversation. Systemic Functional Insights into the Construal of Naturalness in Translated Film Dialogue.” Translator 13 (1): 1–38.
Pulcini, Virginia, and Adriana
T. Damascelli
2005 “A
Corpus-Based Study of the Discourse Marker ‘Okay’.” In Historical
Linguistic Studies of Spoken English, ed. by Antonio Bertacca, 231–243. Pisa: Edizioni
Plus.
Quaglio, Paulo
2009Television
Dialogue: The Sitcom Friends vs. Natural
Conversation. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John
Benjamins.
Ranger, Graham
2018Discourse
Markers: An Enunciative Approach. Cham,
Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan.
Redeker, Gisela
1990 “Ideational and Pragmatic Markers of Discourse Structure.” Journal of Pragmatics 14: 367–381.
Romero
Fresco, Pablo
2009 “Naturalness
in the Spanish Dubbing Language: A Case of Not-So-Close
Friends.” Meta 54 (1): 49–72.
Schiffrin, Deborah
1987Discourse
Markers. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Schourup, Lawrence
1985Common Discourse Particles in English Conversation. New York: Garland.
Schourup, Lawrence
1999 “Discourse Markers. Tutorial Overview.” Lingua 107: 227–265.
Schourup, Lawrence
2001 “Rethinking
Well.” Journal of
Pragmatics 33: 1025–1060.
Taylor, Christopher
J.
2004 “The Language of Film: Corpora
and Statistics in the Search for Authenticity. Notting
Hill (1998) – A Case
Study.” Miscelánea 30: 71–85.
Unger, Christopher
1996 “The Scope of Discourse Connectives: Implications for Discourse Organization.” Journal of Linguistics 32: 402–438.
Valdeón, Roberto
2008 “Inserts
in Modern Script-Writing and Their Translation into
Spanish.” In Between Text and Image: Updating Research in Screen
Translation, ed. by Delia Chiaro, Christine Heiss, and Chiara Bucaria, 117–132. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John
Benjamins.
Verschueren, Jef, Jan-Ola Östman, and Jan Blommaert
1995The Handbook of Pragmatics. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Vincent, Diane, and David Sankoff
1992 “Punctors: A Pragmatic Variable.” Language Variation and Change 4: 205–216.
Voguera, Miriam, and Carla Borges
2017 “Vagueness
Expressions in Italian, Spanish and English Task-Oriented
Dialogues.” Normas 7 (1): 57–74.
Waltereit, Richard, and Ulrich Detges
2007 “Different
Functions, Different Histories: Modal Particles and Discourse Markers from a Diachronic Point of
View.” Catalan Journal of
Linguistics 6 (6): 61–80.
Watts, Richard J.
1988 “A Relevance-Theoretic Approach to Commentary Pragmatic Markers: The Case of Actually, Really and Basically.” Acta Linguistica Hungarica 38: 235–260.
Weydt, Harald
1969Abtönungspartikel: Die deutschen Modalwörter und ihre französischen Entsprechungen. Bad Homburg: Gehlen.
Weydt, Harald
ed.1979Die Partikeln der deutschen Sprache. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Weydt, Harald
2001 “Partikelforschung.” In Lexicon der Romanistischen Linguistik, ed. by Günter Holtus, Michael Metseltin, and Christian Schmitt, Vol I/1, 782–801. Tübingen: Niemeyer.
Weydt, Harald
2006 “What Are Particles Good For?” In Approaches to Discourse Particles, ed. by Kerstin Fischer, 205–218. The Netherlands: Brill.
Wissmath, Bartholomäus, David Weibel, and Rudolf Groner
2009 “Dubbing or Subtitling? Effects on Spatial Presence, Transportation, Flow, and Enjoyment.” Journal of Media Psychology 21: 114–125.