Pichler Heike. The Structure of Discourse-Pragmatic Variation

John Benjamins, 2013. —xxi, 276 pages. — (Studies in Language Variation 13). — ISBN: 978-90-272-7218-8.Everyday language use overflows with discourse-pragmatic features. Their frequency, form and function can vary greatly across social groups and change dramatically over time. And yet these features have not figured prominently in studies of language variation and change. The Structure of Discourse-Pragmatic Variation demonstrates the theoretical insights that can be gained into both the structure of synchronic language variation and the interactional mechanisms creating it by subjecting discourse-pragmatic features to systematic variationist analysis. Introducing an innovative methodology that combines principles of variationist linguistics, grammaticalisation studies and conversation analysis, it explores patterns of variation in the formal encoding of I don’t know, I don’t think and negative polarity tags in a north-east England interview corpus. Speakers strategically exploit the formal variability of these constructions to signal subtle meaning differences and to index social identities closely linked to the variables’ and their variants’ functional compartmentalisation in the variety. The methodology, results and implications of this study will be of great interest to scholars working throughout variationist sociolinguistics, grammaticalisation and discourse analysis.Variationist sociolinguistics and discourse-pragmatic features
Discourse-pragmatic features: Defiition of scope and terminology
Reasons for the neglect of discourse-pragmatic features in variationist research
Arguments in favour of the quantitative analysis of discourse-pragmatic features
Aims and focus of the book
Organisation of the book
Data, methodology and theoretical frameworkData
Variationist sociolinguistics
Grammaticalisation
Conversation analysis (CA)The BwE verb negation systemThe evolution of verb negation and negative particles
Negative auxiliaries in BwE
Previous research on negator and negative auxiliary variation
Quantitative analysis of negative particle and negative auxiliary variationThe construction i don’t knowPrevious research on i don’t know
The variable context and data coding
Qualitative analysis of i don’t know
Quantitative analysis of i don’t know
DiscussionThe construction i don’t thinkPrevious research on i don’t think
The variable context and data coding
Qualitative analysis of i don’t think
Quantitative analysis of i don’t think
DiscussionNegative polarity question tags (neg-tags)Previous research on question tags
The variable context and data coding
Qualitative analysis of neg-tags
Quantitative analysis of neg-tags
DiscussionDiscussion & conclusionSynthesis of the results
Implications of the resultsChallenges for the future
Th state of the art and beyond
Dealing with low token frequency
Developing reliable analytical methods
Exploring intra-linguistic constraints on discourse-pragmatic variation
Exploring patterns of discourse-pragmatic change
Investigating the range of discourse-pragmatic variables