LINGUIST List 12.1790

Wed Jul 11 2001

Books: Pragmatics

Editor for this issue: Naomi Ogasawara <naomilinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Paul Peranteau, Pragmatics: by Marquez Reiter; by Andersen

John Benjamins Publishing announces two new works in Pragmatics:

Linguistic Politeness in Britain and Uruguay. A contrastive study of 
requests and apologies.
Rosina M�rquez Reiter (The University of Surrey)
Pragmatics & Beyond NS 83
US & Canada: 1 58811 015 X USD 95.00
Rest of world: 90 272 5102 9 NLG 209.00/
HB 2001. xviii, 225 pp.

The first well-researched contrastive pragmatic analysis of requests
and apologies in British English and Uruguayan Spanish, this work
takes the form of a cross-cultural corpus-based analysis using male
and female native speakers of each language and systematically
alternating the same social variables in both cultures.

The data are elicited from a non-prescriptive open role-play yielding
requests and apologies. The analysis of the speech acts is based on an
adaptation of the categorical scheme developed by Blum-Kulka et al. (1989).

The results show that speakers of English and Spanish differ in their
choice of (in)directness levels, head-act modifications, and the
politeness types of males and females in both cultures.

Reference to an extensive bibliography and the thorough discussion of
methodological issues concerning speech act studies deserve the
attention of students of pragmatics as well as readers interested in
cultural matters.


* * * * * * * * * * * *

Pragmatic Markers and Sociolinguistic Variation.
Gisle Andersen (University of Bergen)
A relevance-theoretic approach to the language of adolescents.
Pragmatics & Beyond NS 84
US & Canada: 1 58811 018 4 USD 95.00
Rest of world: 90 272 5103 7 NLG 209.00/
HB 2001. ix, 352 pp

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.





 John Benjamins Publishing Co.
Offices:	Philadelphia 			Amsterdam:
Websites: http://www.benjamins.com 	http://www.benjamins.nl
E-mail: servicebenjamins.com 		customer.servicesbenjamins.nl
Phone: +215 836-1200 +31 20 6304747
Fax: +215 836-1204 +31 20 6739773