POINT OF VIEW AND GRAMMAR: STRUCTURAL PATTERNS OF SUBJECTIVITY IN AMERICAN ENGLISH CONVERSATION

This volume in the Studies in Discourse and Grammar series applies a usage-based approach to language in an investigation of the evaluative nature of relational clauses & the most frequent property relations between subjects & predicates in naturally occurring American English conversations...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inxiv+187pp, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2002
Main Author Scheibman, Joanne
Format Book Chapter
LanguageEnglish
Published 01.01.2002
Subjects
American English
Collocations
Conversation
Judgment
Language Standardization
Language Usage
Semantics Discourse Relationship
Subjectivity
Word Frequency
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Summary:This volume in the Studies in Discourse and Grammar series applies a usage-based approach to language in an investigation of the evaluative nature of relational clauses & the most frequent property relations between subjects & predicates in naturally occurring American English conversations (21 females & 12 males). Contrary to widely held views that privilege referentiality, propositionality, & information exchange in linguistic analysis, it is argued that what is most commonly expressed in everyday conversation is the speaker's point of view & that the frequent repetition of structural patterns expressing subjective stance results in their conventionalization as grammar. Analyses of the discourse data are held to confirm a hypothesis that the relative frequency of linguistic elements in natural conversation is dependent on their combinability to express a speaker's point of view; eg, verbs of cognition most frequently construe with a first-person subject. Evidence for the conventionalization of subjective linguistic forms is provided through a data coding system based on a typology of discursive, semantic, & syntactic properties. 50 Tables, Bibliog, 2 Appendixes. J. Hitchcock
Bibliography:SourceType-Books-1
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ObjectType-Book-1
ISBN:1588112322
9781588112323
ISSN:0928-8929