Reflexivity and discourse-pragmatic variation and change

Beeching, Kate

Abstract

This chapter takes a corpus linguistic approach to the investigation of reflexive, or metacommenting, expressions in French, primarily si tu veux/si vous voulez (STV/SVV). STV and SVV form part of a range of frequently occurring reflexive devices which function to flag a speaker’s hesitancy about a lexical choice, as we can see in the following example:

le cierge à trois branches consist- était + euh + un p- un chose un + un pied si vous voulez + dont + trois branches
(CRFP)
‘the candle with three branches consist- was + er + a f – a thing a + foot if you like + with + three branches’

The chapter discusses the challenges associated with applying classic variationist approaches to discourse-pragmatic items, and presents the distributional frequencies and collocates of STV/SVV across time-dated corpora of spoken French. The chapter concludes by suggesting that an onomasiological approach offers some promise in the investigation of discourse-pragmatic variation and change and that corpus approaches can go some way to meet the challenge posed by the operationalisation of the ‘envelope of variation’ when studying pragmatic markers.

• Publication Date: May 1, 2017
• Publicly Available Date: Jun 7, 2019
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Pages: 157-179
• Series Title: GRAMM-R
• Series Number: 36
• Book Title: La variation en question(s) Hommages à Françoise Gadet
• ISBN: 9782807602960
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.3726/b10950
• Keywords: discourse-pragmatic variation and change - reflexivity - si tu veux /si vous voulez
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/888237
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.3726/b10950
• Additional Information: Additional Information : This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final published version can be accessed via the following link: http://dx.doi.org/10.3726/b10950