Inter alii.
Below is the review of Anderson's new book with the 'Pragmatics & Beyond'
series, featuring the phrase "relevance-theoretic" in the subtitle (Yus, is
it in your biblio already? :)).
I was interested. I first came to hear "ennit" when reading the script of
the BBC serial by the late playwright Dennis Potter, _Pennies from Heaven_,
televised with Bob Hoskins (and published posthumously by Faber as edited
by K. Trodd). He (Bob Hoskins) says "ennit" every other word, and I thought
it was Cockney and dated (the play takes place in 1937 London). Later, I
met an American from New Haven who told me that the USA equivalent of
"ennit" is "eDnit". Anderson transcribes the thing as "_I_nnit". So there.
As for "like", it's an interesting particle, too. I especially like the
reference to truth-conditionality issues. I am reminded of a study by S.
Mura, "Licensing violations: legitimate violations to Grice's
conversational principle" in R Craig & al, _Conversational Coherence_. Sage
Series in Interpersonal Communication.
====
G. Anderson, _Pragmatic Markers & Sociolinguistic Variation: A
Relevance-Theoretic Approach to the Language of Adolescents_. Benjamins
Pragmatics & Beyond NS 84. Reviewed by J M Fuller (Linguist List 12 2724).
"This book is aimed at an audience of researchers on topics in pragmatics &
sociolinguistics, & seeks to fill a gap between research on pragmatic
markers and work on sociolinguistic variation. Andersen explicitly frames
her analysis in RELEVANCE THEORY and theories of grammaticalisation;
implicit in her work is the general variationist framework of correlating
linguistic features with social variables. Using a corpus of London
adolescent speech, & another of adult speech for comparison, she examines
two sets of features:
1. "innit"/"is it" as invariant
tags and follow-ups.
2. the particle "like" as a pragmatic
marker with a variety of functions.
Anderson presents evidence that both of these are found _primarily_ in
adolescent speech, with some variation
according to gender, ethnicity, social class and location of residence, and
suggests that they are both undergoing grammaticalisation. The format of
the book is as follows. Chapter 1 is a general introduction; chapter 2 is
the theoretical background applied in the analysis. Chapter 3 presents the
data and methods, and chapters 4 and 5 contain the analyses. Chapter 6 is a
brief summary. The theoretical background chapter covers three topics:
RELEVANCE THEORY, grammaticalization theory, and a discussion of what
pragmatic markers are and how they fit into these frameworks.
THE DISCUSSION OF RELEVANCE THEORY IS AN EXCELLENT
RESOURCE IN AND OF ITSELF
for those interested in this theory, as Andersen presents the essential
points of relevance theory in a clear and concise manner. The principle of
relevance, which states that speakers are assumed to produce just enough
contextual effects to be worth processing, is the backbone of this theory;
it is fleshed out with reliance on the "cognitive environment", which
allows speakers to underspecify their utterances with regard to
propositional meaning, and hearers to interpret utterances according to a
presumption of optimal relevance. The discussion of grammaticalization
focuses on a uni-directional cline from referential (propositional) to
non-referential meanings, meaning that lexical items come to operate on
textual and interpersonal levels. In
particular, pragmatic markers (also called "pragmatic particles",
"discourse markers" or "connectives") are
lexical items which have undergone, or are undergoing, such a process. In
general, pragmatic markers have a low degree of lexical specificity & a
high degree of context sensitivity. As such, they are often claimed not to
contribute to propositional meaning. Andersen's discussion of this feature
of pragmatic markers is very valuable, as she illustrates that not all
pragmatic markers are outside of propositional meaning of the utterances
they modify. As this is an often-claimed trait of pragmatic markers, this
discussion -- which shows that non-propositionality is a frequent attribute
of pragmatic markers, but NOT A DETERMINING FEATURE -- is an important
contribution to the study of pragmatic markers in general. Andersen ties in
this argument to her discussion of grammaticalisation by suggesting that
pragmatic markers with a lexical history which have not been fully
grammaticalised (e.g.,
"like", "sort of", you know"
) may be problematic for the propositional/non-propositional dichotomy,
while others which are fully grammaticalized fulfill this criterion. As a
final component of this chapter, Andersen ties in RELEVANCE THEORY to the
study of pragmatic markers. Essentially, pragmatic markers function to
indicate speaker
attitude and expectations of mutual manifestness of propositions (also
called "common ground" within other
approaches
[Now, this seems to be the term favoured by H. P. Grice. See e.g. _Studies
in the Way of Words_, p.274. Tho' he is even careful about that when he
refers to "some subjunconjunction of A and B and C has WHAT I MIGHT CALL
COMMON-GROUND STATUS, and, therefore, is not something that is likely to be
challenged [...] The supposition must be _not_ that it is _common
KNOWLEDGE_ but rather that it is
_noncontroversial_,
in the sense that it is something we would expect the hearer to take from
us (if he does not already know)". Grice goes on to formalise this in terms
of square-brackets. See e.g. D Wilson, _Presupposition_, and Grice, op.
cit, pp.66 ('Indicative Conditionals'), 280 ('Presupposition &
Conversational Implicature'). JLS]
) and provide hearers with cues to correctly interpret utterances. Andersen
breaks down pragmatic
meaning into three basic aspects:
1. subjective,
which describes the relation
between the speaker and the communicated
proposition or assumption
2. interactional,
which can be either speaker or hearer oriented
3. textual,
which contributes to and express coherence relations.
The next chapter describes the data used for the analysis. She analyzes
adolescent speech from the Bergen
Corpus of London Teenage Language (COLT), which contains roughly 100 hours
of conversation of teens, recorded by 30 teenage "recruits" in natural
settings. The recruits responsible for recording the data provided
information which allowed categorisations of age, gender, social class, &
location of residence. Unfortunately, only the data from the recruits
themselves can be categorised according to social class, and ethnic group
membership was not elicited from even the recruits. Because many of the
London boroughs in which the data were collected are areas with great
ethnic diversity, it is assumed that this diversity is reflected in the
conversations. Post hoc information from the fieldworker and from the
content of the corpus reveal the ethnicity of some of the speakers, and
these speakers could be grouped into the general categories of
1. "white"
2. "ethnicity minority".
This less than detailed demographic information about the speakers in this
corpus is the one drawback of this study. The lack of a consistent
classification criteria for the social variable examined limits the
findings on sociolinguistic variation to a more speculative level than is
desirable in a study with this focus. In addition to the COLT data, a
subset of the British National Corpus (BNC) containing adult speech is used
for
comparison. Although there are problems with this comparison -- the adult
data are not given by location of
residence, and contain little ethnic variation -- it provides some
comparative basis from which to view the
findings on the COLT data. Chapter 4 presents an analysis of "innit" and
"is it" as
invariant tag questions
invariant follow-ups.
Because only PARADIGMATIC use of these phrases are found in the adult
corpus, they appear to be undergoing grammaticalisation in adolescent
speech. In the COLT corpus, all of these forms CO-OCCUR with the use of
canonical tags and follow-ups, overall and in the speech of individuals.
"Innit" as a tag shows great flexibility in both form and function -- much
greater than in canonical tags -- and comprises 26.8% of all tags used.
There is little evidence for invariable "is it" as a tag. The linguistic
contexts that favour the use of "innit" as a tag appear to be contexts in
which the canonical equivalent would be a
negative polarity tag
in the third person
especially with the present tense of "be"; use of this invariable tag is
also favoured when the canonical tag realisation would involve a
trisyllabic or syntactically awkward tag (e.g., "weren't they", "mightn't
I"). As a follow-up, "innit" functions as a marker of contextual alignment
(what Andersen calls an
"A-signal"
) and appears in 100% of the contexts where this is expressed; no canonical
follow-ups are used in this context. "Is it" as a follow-up functions to
register
surprise and disbelief
(i.e. divergence) following from the previous speaker's utterance (a
so-called
"D-signal"
), and appears in 32.5% of the contexts, in variation with canonical
follow-ups. Socially, the tag "innit" is an adolescent feature which is
found more among FEMALE speakers, low-social class members, and ethnic
minorities, but the strongest correlation is with the residential location,
indicating that it is as central phenomenon rather than a peripheral one.
Finally, Andersen proposes the following diachronic development for
"innit": its use begins in third person singular neuter contexts, it later
becomes a tag throughout the inflectional paradigm, and then comes to be
used as a follow-up. Chapter 5 presents an analysis of the pragmatic
functions and sociolinguistic variation pragmatic marker "like". Andersen
claims that "like" marks
non-literal resemblance
between an utterance and its underlying thought, and she links the
development of these functions of "like" to non-pragmatic marker uses,
which have similar semantic properties, through the process of reanalysis.
The marking of non-literal resemblance of the pragmatic marker "like"
includes such commonly reported functions as
- marking approximation,
- introducing examples,
- indicating vague expressions
- introducing quotations.
While "like" as a pragmatic marker is often outside of THE
TRUTH-CONDITIONAL MEANING
of an utterance, it is not always non-truth conditional, as phrases such as
1a. You wrote like 4 sides.
clearly differ truth conditionality from the proposition
1b. You wrote 4 sides.
Yet even when it contributes to the truth-conditionality of an utterance,
"like" also has a PROCEDURAL function, i.e., it indicates to the hearer the
speaker's alignment with the element it frames. An analysis of the
placement of "like" indicates that it can modify anything from whole
propositions to single terms, and be syntactically bound (i.e.,
clause-internal) or unbound. In these data, it is bound about two-thirds of
the time. It is less likely to occur within phrases with high syntactic
fixedness, & more likely to occur
immediately before the lexical material of a phrase, as opposed to the
grammatical words. Socially, "like" is favoured by adolescents, although it
is found in the speech of those in their 30s and 40s. It has been primarily
adopted by adolescent GIRLS in their late teens in the COLT data, and
although it is used by
speakers of all social classes, is used at a significantly higher rate in
the HIGH-CLASS group than the middle and low groups. It is also primarily a
feature of white adolescent speech, with no clear pattern in terms of
location of residence, although it is less favoured in areas where there
are many ethnic minorities. The final chapter of this book is quite brief,
and is divided between the subject of age-grading and suggestions
for further research. Although Andersen has, throughout the book, argued
for a language change analysis for the linguistic features she analyzes,
she concedes in this chapter that age-grading must not be ruled out. This
leads smoothly into the section on suggestions for further research, a
major aspect of which is a plea for more research on adolescent-specific
language use. Despite its one drawback -- the limitations for
conclusions about sociolinguistic variation due to the inadequate
demographic information about speakers in the main corpus -- this book is a
worthwhile read. I applaud her use of theoretical frameworks for her
analysis, and the two features she has examined are well-deserving of
attention. Her contributions on the feature of invariable "innit" are
largely unique, as this feature has not been previously studied in great
detail. The discussion of "like" -- a more traveled topic in pragmatics --
contributes to the study of this pragmatic marker by analyzing its function
within a pragmatic theory and linking linguistic and social development of
this particle. This chapter on "like" is, in my opinion, the highlight of
the book, as it
most successfully links the theoretical background and empirical findings
in a clear and straightforward analysis."
==
J L Speranza, Esq
Country Town
St Michael's Hall Suite 5/8
Calle 58, No 611 Calle Arenales 2021
La Plata CP 1900 Recoleta CP 1124
Tel 541148241050 Tel 542214257817
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina
http://www.netverk.com.ar/~jls/
jls@netverk.com.ar
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Nov 02 2001 - 04:29:13 GMT