Programm 75. StuTS

Dutch deverbal interpersonal pragmatic markers across registers

This research examines the role of Dutch deverbal interpersonal pragmatic markers (PMs) across various oral communication registers. The study focuses on five selected PMs: hoor, kijk, luister, weet je, and zeg, within three distinct registers: spontaneous conversations, classroom conversations, and broadcast interviews.
Hoor, meaning 'to hear', serves as a PM to urge, correct, reassure, or warn the hearer, or to emphasize the utterance. Kijk and luister, translating to 'to look' and 'to listen' respectively, function as attention-getting devices and argumentation markers. Weet je, literally translating to 'you know', is utilized to maintain the attention of the hearer. Lastly, zeg, meaning 'to say', is employed as an attention-getting device or to express surprise.
The findings reveal that contextual factors significantly influence the distribution and frequency of PMs. For instance, hoor is most prevalent in classroom and spontaneous conversations due to its emphasizing and warning functions, whereas kijk predominates in broadcast interviews owing to its argumentative role. Weet je stands out in spontaneous conversations, indicating its dual function of capturing attention and fostering an intimate conversational tone. Conversely, zeg is least common in classroom discussions due to the absence of surprising elements in that context. Luister emerges as the least common PM across both spontaneous conversations and broadcast interviews, suggesting that its low frequency is more attributable to language-specific factors than to the register.
This quantitative study, spanning diverse communication registers, aids in unfolding as many functions of Dutch deverbal interpersonal PMs as possible.

Language of presentation: English
The linguistic subfield: Corpus Linguistics