Pragmatic Markers and Sociolinguistic Variation: A relevance-theoretic approach to the language of adolescents (Pragmatics & Beyond New Series)

This book combines theoretical work in linguistic pragmatics and sociolinguistics with empirical work based on a corpus of London adolescent conversation. It makes a general contribution to the study of pragmatic markers, as it proposes an analytical model that involves notions such as subjectivity, interactional and textual capacity, and the distinction between contextual alignment/divergence. These notions are defined according to how information contained in an utterance interacts with the cognitive environment of the hearer. Moreover, the model captures the diachronic development of markers from lexical items via processes of grammaticalisation, arguing that markerhood may be viewed as a gradient phenomenon. The empirical work concerns the use of like as a marker, as well as a characteristic use of two originally interrogative forms, innit and is it, which are used as attitudinal markers throughout the inflectional paradigm, despite the fact that they contain a third person singular neuter pronoun. The author provides an in-depth analysis of these features in terms of pragmatic functions, diachronic development and sociolinguistic variation, thus adding support to the hypothesis that adolescents play an important role in language variation and change. This title combines theoretical work in linguistic pragmatics and sociolinguistics with empirical work based on a corpus of London adolescent conversation. It makes a general contribution to the study of pragmatic markers as it proposes an analytical model that involves notions such as subjectivity, interactional and textual capacity, and the distinction between contextual alignment and divergence. These notions are defined according to how information contained in an utterance interacts with the cognitive environment of the hearer. Moreover, the model captures the diachronic development of markers from lexical items via processes of grammaticalization, arguing that markerhood may be viewed as a gradient phenomenon. PRAGMATIC MARKERS AND SOCIOLINGUISTIC VARIATION......Page 2 Editorial page......Page 3 Title page......Page 4 LCC data......Page 5 Table of contents......Page 8 Acknowledgements......Page 10 General introduction......Page 12 Theoretical background......Page 40 COLT and the BNC: Data and methods......Page 94 Invariant tags and follow-ups: innit/is it......Page 108 The pragmatic marker like......Page 220 Pragmatic aspects of teenage and adult conversation......Page 312 Notes......Page 322 References......Page 332 Appendix......Page 352 Index......Page 356 PRAGMATICS AND BEYOND NEW SERIES......Page 364