part2 - 10. Discourse Markers

part2 - 10. Discourse Markers, Materiały naukowe, The Hanbook of Pragmatics

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10. Discourse Markers
DIANE
DIANE BLAKEMORE
BLAKEMORE
Subject
Theoretical Linguistics
Ç
Pragmatics
Key
-Topics
Topics
discourse
DOI:
10.1111/b.9780631225485.2005.00012.x
1 Introduction
Introduction
The term
DISCOURSE
MARKER
(DM) is generally used to refer to a syntactically heterogeneous class of
expressions which are distinguished by their function in discourse and the kind of meaning they
encode. This chapter aims to provide an overview of the issues that have arisen in the attempt to say
what the function of these expressions is and how they should be accommodated in a theory of
meaning. It does not, however, aim to provide a definitive list of DMs, for as Jucker (1993: 436) points
out, research has not yielded a definitive list of DMs in English or any other language. Indeed, as
Schourup (1999) observes, the use of this term by some writers (e.g. Blakemore 1987, 1996 and
Unger 1996) is not intended to reflect a commitment to the existence of a class of DMs at all. Given
this lack of agreement, it is not always possible to say that the range of alternative terms which have
appeared in the growing literature in this area - for example,
PRAGMATIC
MARKER
,
DISCOURSE
PARTICLE
,
DISCOURSE
CONNECTIVE
,
DISCOURSE
OPERATOR
,
CUE
MARKER
- are really labels for the same phenomenon.
1
At this stage, then, it is only possible to give examples of expressions which have been treated as
DMs in a number of different languages. Thus English examples of DMs are well, but, so, indeed, in
other words, as a result and now.
2
In spite of these difficulties, it seems that we can say that the term
DISCOURSE
is intended to underline
the fact that these expressions must be described at the level of discourse rather than the sentence,
while the term
MARKER
is intended to reflect the fact that their meanings must be analyzed in terms of
what they indicate or mark rather than what they describe. At the same time, however, it is
acknowledged that DMs are not the only expressions that operate as indicators at the level of
discourse: discourse adverbials like frankly or reportedly and expletives like damn and good grief are
also described in these terms. The property generally considered to distinguish DMs from other
discourse indicators is their function of marking relationships between units of discourse. Thus
Levinson (1983) draws attention to words and phrases which not only have a Ñcomponent of meaning
which resists truth-conditional treatmentÒ but also Ñindicate, often in very complex ways, just how the
utterance that contains them is a response to, or a continuation of, some portion of the prior
discourseÒ (1983: 197Ï8). A similar characterization is given by Fraser (1990, 1996), who sees them
as a subclass of the class of expressions which contribute to non-truth-conditional sentence meaning
distinguished from other such expressions by their role in signaling Ñthe relationship of the basic
message to the foregoing discourseÒ (1996: 186).
It is these two properties that have brought DMs into the center of pragmatics research. On the one
hand, their non-truth-conditionality has meant that they play a role in discussions of the non-unitary
nature of linguistic meaning and the relationship between semantics and pragmatics. On the other
hand, their role in signaling connectivity in discourse has meant that they play a role in the discussion
of how we should account for the textual unity of discourse. Given the theoretical divides that have
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emerged in the discussion of both these issues, it is not surprising that DM research has not yielded a
single framework for the analysis of these expressions. The aim of this chapter is to review the main
approaches that have been taken both to the question of what kind of meaning they express and the
sense in which they can be said to connect units of discourse.
2 The Meaning of DMs
2 The Meaning of DMs
2.1 DMs as conventional implicatures
2.1 DMs as conventional implicatures
In this section I shall examine the role that DMs have played in the move toward a non-unitary theory
of meaning. This move has not always been a move toward the same kind of distinction and,
consequently, my task here is to tease these different distinctions apart and to locate DMs on the
theoretical map that emerges.
For many writers, the significance of DMs lies in the role they have played in arguments for the
existence of pragmatic meaning.
3
Underlying this approach is the view that semantics is the study of
truth-conditional meaning while pragmatics is Ñmeaning minus truth conditionsÒ (cf. Gazdar 1979: 2).
Given this view, DMs lie on the pragmatics side of the semantics-pragmatics border in virtue of the
fact that they do not contribute to the truth-conditional content of the utterance that contains them.
For example, it is generally agreed that although the suggestion of contrast in (1) is due to the
linguistic properties of but, its truth depends only on the truth of the propositions in (2) (cf. Grice
1961). Similarly, the truth of (3) depends only on the propositions in (4) and not on whether the
second is a consequence of the first.
(1) É Oscar is here but he has forgotten his calculator.
(2) a. Oscar is here.
É b. Oscar has forgotten his calculator.
(3) É They don't drink wine. So I have bought some beer and lemonade.
(4) a. They don't drink wine.
É b. I have bought some beer.
Even if there is no disagreement about these facts, there is disagreement about their significance.
4
While some writers (for example Fraser 1996) have adopted the classical view that truth-conditional
semantics is a theory of sentence meaning and hence that expressions like but and so do not affect
the truth conditions of sentences, others (for example, Carston 2000, Wilson and Sperber 1993, and
Blakemore 1987, 1996, 2000) see having truth conditions as a property of mental representations
rather than linguistic representations, and see the phenomena in (1) and (3) as examples of the way in
which linguistic form does not contribute to the truth-conditional content of a conceptual
representation. Either way, however, these expressions raise the same sort of question: If they don't
contribute to truth conditions, what do they contribute to?
As we have already observed, DMs are not the only examples of non-truth-conditional meaning. This
raises the question of whether the answer to this question is the same for all types of expressions
which are said to encode non-truth-conditional meaning. Fraser (1990, 1996) has proposed that
there are four different subtypes of expressions that contribute to non-truth-conditional meaning
(called
PRAGMATIC
MARKERS
):
BASIC
MARKERS
, which indicate the force of the intended message (e.g.
please and performatives like I promise);
COMMENTARY
MARKERS
, which comment on the basic message
(e.g. frankly and allegedly);
PARALLEL
MARKERS
, which Ñencode an entire message È separate and
additional to the basic and/or commentary message(s)Ò (1990: 387) (e.g. damn); and
DISCOURSE
MARKERS
(e.g. after all, but and as a result) which, in contrast to commentary markers, do not
contribute to
REPRESENTATIONAL
MEANING
, but only have what Fraser calls
PROCEDURAL
MEANING
, signaling
how the basic message relates to the prior discourse.
In adopting this terminology Fraser claims to be following Blakemore (1987). However, Fraser's
distinction between representational and procedural meaning is not equivalent to the cognitive
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distinction that has been developed in Relevance Theory (see section 2.3), since it appeals to the role
that DMs play in the coherence of discourse. Not surprisingly, expressions that Fraser classifies as
procedural (e.g., as a result) are not regarded as encoding procedural meaning in RT (Relevance
Theory).
More generally, Fraser's framework for the analysis of non-truth-conditional meaning rests on the
unexplained distinction between content or descriptive meaning and meaning which is signaled or
indicated: an expression which functions as an indicator (or marker) does so simply on the grounds
that it does not contribute to Ñcontent.Ò As Rieber (1997) observes, Fraser is not alone in using the
notion of an indicator without explaining it. It is, perhaps, odd that there is no reference in his work
to Grice's (1967, 1989) notion of conventional implicature, which represents the first attempt to say
something more about non-truth-conditional meaning other than the (obvious) fact that it is not
truth-conditional.
According to Grice (1989), while some expressions communicate information about the
CENTRAL
OR
GROUND
-
FLOOR
speech act performed by an utterance, DMs like but or so communicate information
about a
NON
-
CENTRAL
OR
HIGHER
LEVEL
speech act which comments in some way on the interpretation of
the central speech act.
5
For example, in (1) the speaker performs a ground-floor statement that Oscar
is here and that he has forgotten his calculator, and at the same time a non-central speech act by
which he indicates that he is drawing a contrast between the two conjuncts. The function of but is to
signal the performance of this act and hence it does not affect the truth value of the utterance. Those
aspects of linguistic meaning that contribute to the content of the ground-floor statement are said to
contribute to
WHAT
IS
SAID
, while those aspects of meaning which signal information about the
performance of a non-central act are said to contribute to what is
CONVENTIONALLY
IMPLICATED
.
This speech act theoretic account of conventional implicature seems to assume that each DM
corresponds to a speech act individuated by its content. Thus while but signals the performance of an
act with the content presented schematically in (5), so signals the performance of an act with a
content of the form in (6), and moreover signals the performance of an act whose content has the
form in (7):
(5) There is a contrast between the statement that P and the statement that Q
(6) The statement that P is an explanation for the statement that Q
(7) The statement that Q is additional to the statement that P
As Wilson and Sperber (1993) have observed, Grice's characterization of the meanings of these
expressions fails to account for all of their uses. Consider, for example, the discourse initial use of so
in (8) produced by a speaker who sees someone arrive home laden with parcels.
(8) [the hearer has arrived home laden with parcels] So you've spent all your money.
Since there is no utterance which could be understood as an explanation for the ground-floor
statement made by (8), one cannot characterize the meaning of so in terms of its role in signaling the
performance of an act whose content has the form in (6). As Blakemore (1997) observes, it is even
more difficult to see how a Gricean analysis could be applied in cases where DMs are used as
fragmentary utterances, for example (9) and (10) (see also Stainton, this volume).
(9) [speaker listens patiently to an account of why the carpenters have taken a whole day to put
up three shelves] Still.
(10) [speaker and hearer are witnesses to a passionate speech followed by dramatic exit] Well.
It seems that underlying Grice's account is the assumption that corresponding to each DM there is a
conceptual representation of a relation that holds between two statements. Thus but encodes a
conceptual representation of a relation of contrasting, while moreover is linked to a conceptual
representation of the relation of adding. It has yet to be shown in detail how the meanings of
notoriously elusive DMs (well, for example) are analyzed along the lines given in (5Ï7). Moreover, it is
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not clear how this sort of approach would distinguish between DMs whose meanings, although closely
related, are not identical - but, nevertheless and yet, for example.
6
These are questions about the content of the higher-order speech acts performed by speakers who
use expressions like but. However, if a speaker who uses but is performing a speech act, then it must
also have an illocutionary force, and it is not clear what this would be. It cannot be contrasting itself,
since this is not a speech act, at least not in the sense made familiar by classical speech act theory
(Austin 1962, Searle 1969). In any case, it seems that Grice was looking for an analysis in which the
information that the speaker is drawing a contrast between emerges as a distinct proposition (a
conventional implicature). His idea seems to be that this proposition is a comment on the central
(ground-floor) act, and thus that the higher-order act is an act of
COMMENTING
. The question, then, is
how do we analyze commenting?
Rieber's (1997) modification of Grice's conventional implicature analysis might seem to answer these
questions. He argues that but is a parenthetical
TACIT
PERFORMATIVE
and that (11) should be analyzed
as (12).
(11) Sheila is rich but she is unhappy.
(12) Sheila is rich and (I suggest that this contrasts) she is unhappy.
While this analysis does, as Rieber says, Ñget the truth conditions rightÒ (1997: 54), it seems to raise
the same sort of questions. His analysis is illuminating only to the extent that we understand what it
means to perform the speech act of suggesting. Rieber himself is doubtful whether suggest is the
most appropriate verb. However, this is not really the point, because it is clear that what he has in
mind is something like showing or indicating - which brings us back to our original problem.
According to Rieber, the role of words like but is explained once it is recognized that not all
communication consists in modifying the beliefs of the hearer. eIn contrast with Ñordinary
communication,Ò a speaker who is indicating or showing that something is the case is not standing
behind her words, but simply inducing the hearer to notice something that he might have seen for
himself (Rieber 1997: 61). In this way, using but is rather like pointing at an oncoming bus or opening
the door of the fridge to show someone that there is no food. Pointing is, of course, a natural device
rather than a linguistic one. The question is whether a linguistic expression points in this sense.
According to Rieber, by using but in (11) the speaker is inducing the hearer to ÑseeÒ that the second
segment contrasts with the first - in other words, a hearer who understands an utterance containing
but recovers the proposition in (13):
(13) The state of affairs represented by the second segment contrasts with the state of affairs
represented by the first segment.
Rieber gives no evidence that this is indeed the case. However, as we shall see in section 2.3, it is not
clear that the recovery of this proposition is involved in the interpretation process for an utterance
like (11). Thus according to Sperber and Wilson's (1986a) Relevance Theory a hearer will have
understood (11) provided that he has recovered its intended explicit content and its intended implicit
content (its implicatures). An assumption such as the one in (13) that identifies a relation between the
two segments does not play a role in the interpretation process at all.
Even if understanding (11) did involve the recovery of a distinct proposition whose truth is suggested
by but, it is difficult to see how it could be the one in (13). Like Grice, Rieber does not explain what he
means by Ñcontrast.Ò It would have to be extremely general to account for the full range of use of but
(cf. Blakemore 2000, Iten 2000b), and as Iten (2000b) points out, no matter how generally it is
defined, it is difficult to see how it could accommodate the use of but in (14):
(14) That' s not my sister but my mother.
At the same time, however, it would have to account for the differences in meaning between but and
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other so-called contrastive DMs such as on the other hand, nevertheless, and although.
Bach (1999b) also analyzes but in terms of contrast. However, he proposes that the contrast it
encodes must be pragmatically enriched on particular occasions of use. More importantly, in contrast
with both Rieber and Grice, he rejects the idea that the analysis of non-truth-conditional DMs
requires the postulation of a distinct proposition whose truth is suggested rather than asserted.
Expressions which have been analyzed as carrying conventional implicatures, he argues, are either
part of what is said or means for performing higher-order speech acts. But falls into the first
category. His argument is as follows: since Ñthe that-clause in an indirect quotation specifies what is
said in the utterance being reportedÒ (1999b: 339), the fact that but can occur in an indirect quotation
like (15) and, moreover, be understood as part of what is being reported, means that it contributes
straightforwardly to what is said.
(15) Anne said that Sheila is rich but she is unhappy.
The fact that but appears not to contribute to the truth conditions of the utterances that contain it is,
says Bach, the result of forced choice. Contrary to popular opinion, Bach argues, an utterance may
express more than one proposition. The fact that but does not seem to contribute to truth conditions
is due to the fact that it contributes to a proposition, which, while truth-conditional, is Ñsecondary to
the main point of the utteranceÒ (1999b: 328). This proposition is not a conventional implicature
whose truth is indicated by but. It is a proposition yielded when but combines with the rest of the
sentence. In other words, according to Bach, but is an operator which preserves the propositions
expressed while yielding a new one.
As Blakemore (2000) points out, there is a range of constructions and devices which can be indirectly
quoted in an embedded construction. These include focal stress and expressions associated with
vague stylistic effects (e.g. the bastard). It is not easy to see how these could be analyzed as
contributing to something (propositional) with truth conditions. Moreover, as Iten (2000b) observes,
Bach's technical notion of saying is quite different from the natural language ÑsayingÒ that introduces
indirect quotations, and consequently it is not clear that his ÑIQÒ (= indirect quotation) test is indeed
the right diagnostic for identifying Ñwhat is saidÒ in the technical sense.
2.2 Argumentation
2.2 Argumentation Theory
Theory
Anscombre and Ducrot's (1977, 1989) Argumentation Theory (AT) begins, as the speech act theoretic
accounts of Grice and Rieber do, as an attempt to accommodate non-truth-conditional meaning
within a framework which assumes that utterances have truth-conditional content. However, as Iten
(2000a) says, it ends up as a theory in which truth conditions play no role at all. This means that the
issues that the theory raises go beyond the concerns of this chapter. On the other hand, since AT
claims to provide an alternative answer to the question of how we analyze the (non-truth-conditional)
contribution of DMs, and since their analysis of the French equivalent of but (that is, mais) has been
influential,
7
it cannot be ignored here.
8
I shall, however, restrict the discussion to those features of
their analyses that distinguish the AT approach from the conventional implicature approach to DMs
(above) and the relevance-theoretic approach (cf. section 2.3).
According to the original (1976) version of AT, utterances have not only informational content, but
also argumentative orientation. The role of argumentative potential in Anscombre and Ducrot's theory
derives from their observation that two utterances with the same truth-conditional content cannot
always be used to support the same sort of conclusions (see Anscombre and Ducrot 1976: 10). This
led them to develop a theory of pragmatique integre, or in other words a theory of linguistically
encoded non-truth-conditional meaning. For example, within this framework, but is an argumentative
operator which constrains the argumentative orientation of the utterances that contain it. Thus
according to Anscombre and Ducrot (1977), the speaker of (11) must be understood to be presenting
the second segment as an argument that (a) is for a conclusion which contradicts the conclusion of an
argument from the first segment, and (b) is a stronger argument than the argument from the first
segment. The use of but in (14) imposes a different constraint: the second segment must be
understood as a reason for rejecting the first segment, and the two segments have to represent the
same kind of fact in ways that are incompatible with each other.
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