Discourse Markers in Interaction - (Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs [Tilsm]) by Maria-Josep Cuenca & Liesbeth Degand (Paperback)

About the Book

In any kind of human communication, Discourse Markers are part of the game. Yet, as a linguistic class, they remain underdetermined. To gain deeper insight into this complex category, more systematic work is needed on how Discourse Markers are used

Book Synopsis

The aim of this volume is to bring together researchers interested in investigating the role that Discourse Markers play in language production and comprehension from an experimental or corpus-based perspective.

In any kind of human communication, Discourse Markers are part of the game. This omnipresence informs us of a crucial inherent aspect of human language. Yet, as a linguistic category, Discourse Markers remain underdetermined. To gain deeper insight into this complex linguistic category, more systematic work is needed on the production and on the interpretation of Discourse Markers in a variety of situational settings, resorting to different methodological approaches. The contributions in this volume aim at drawing more attention to the double face of Discourse Markers, namely as signals intentionally used by the speaker to facilitate the addressee's interpretation of the discourse, but also as potential traces of the speaker's production difficulties.

The combination of experimental and corpus-based approaches and the focus on processing of Discourse Markers in both production and comprehension makes this volume a unique contribution in answering the question why we use Discourse Markers in certain situations, but also when we do not.

Review Quotes

"To sum up, this enlightening and informative book, which makes methodological contributions and involves interdisciplinary studies, will promote more breakthroughs for future DM [Discourse Markers] researches." Yanhong Guo, Dandi Li in: Journal of Pragmatics 2023

About the Author

Maria-Josep Cuenca, Universitat de València, Spain; Liesbeth Degand, University of Louvain, Belgium.