Markers
and cohesion
Halliday and Hasan’s (1976) seminal work on cohesion in English provided an
important
framework for analyzing text by addressing a basic question stemming from
the very inception of discourse analysis: what makes a text different from a
random
collection of unrelated sentences? Although Halliday and Hasan did not speak
directly
of discourse markers, their analysis of cohesion (based primarily on written
texts)
included words (e.g. and, but, because, I mean, by the way, to sum up) that
have since
been called markers and suggested functions for those words partially
paralleling
those of markers.
Halliday and Hasan propose that a set of cohesive devices (reference,
repetition,
substitution, ellipsis, and conjunction) help create a text by indicating
semantic relations
in an underlying structure of ideas (see Martin, this volume). A range of
expressions
(including, but not limited to, conjunctions) conveys conjunctive relations.
Whereas
most cohesive features establish cohesion through anaphoric or cataphoric ties
to the
text, conjunctive items “express certain meanings which presuppose the presence
of
other components in the discourse” (Halliday and Hasan 1976: 236).
The meanings conveyed by conjunctive items are relatively straightforward:
additive, adversative, causal, and temporal. Within these general meanings,
however,
are specific subtypes: a causal relation, for example, includes general causal
(with
simple
and emphatic subtypes), and specific causal (with reason, result, and purpose
subtypes). Each (sub)type of cohesive meaning can be conveyed through a variety
of
words: a general causal simple conjunctive relation, for example, can be
conveyed
through so, then, hence, and therefore. Multiplicity is found not just in a
function (e.g.
causal relation) →
form (e.g. so, hence) direction, but also in a form → function
direction. Thus a single word [form] can convey more than one
conjunctive relation
[function]: then, for example, can convey temporal, causal, and conditional
relations,
between clauses (cf. Biq 1990; Hansen 1997; Schiffrin 1992).
Whereas many analyses of conjunctions argue for either a simple semantic
interpretation
or a set of polysemous meanings (e.g. Posner 1980), Halliday and Hasan
allow variation in the degree to which meaning results from the semantics of a
word itself or from the propositions in a text. For example, although and is a
texturecreating
device that can contribute an additive meaning, its meaning can also reflect
the semantic content of a text: thus, if and prefaces an upcoming proposition
whose
meaning contrasts with that of a prior proposition, and would then convey an
adversative relation (comparable to but and on the other hand).
Just as contributions to meaning can vary in source – word meaning and/or
propositions
– so too, meanings can fluctuate between “external” and “internal” sources.
External meaning is “inherent in the phenomena that language is used to talk
about” (Halliday and Hasan 1976: 241); it is roughly analogous to referential
meaning
and the domain of semantics. Internal meaning is nonreferential pragmatic
meaning:
it is “inherent in the communicative process” (1976: 241), e.g. the speaker’s
choice
of speech role, rhetorical channel, attitude (1976: 240). Rather than separate
external
and internal meanings, however, Halliday and Hasan posit a continuity. The
additive
meaning of and, for example, may be viewed “as an extension of the underlying
patterns of conjunction into the communication situation itself, treating it,
and thereby
also the text . . . as having by analogy the same structure as ‘reality’”
(1976: 267).
Although meaning can be reshuffled – between word and propositions, between
internal and external sources – the boundary between sentence and text is less
permeable.
The systemic-functional grammar in which Halliday and Hasan’s analysis is
located draws a sharp distinction between sentence and text: thus, the
structural role
of words like and (to coordinate clauses at a sentential level) is
qualitatively different
from its cohesive role (to mark interpretive dependencies between propositions,
and
thus create texture).
Markers and pragmatics
Like the work reviewed thus far, Fraser’s (1990, 1998) perspective on discourse
markers
is embedded within a larger framework that impacts upon the analysis of
markers.
In contrast to Halliday and Hasan – whose main interest was the cohesion of
text
– Fraser’s theoretical framework concerns the meaning of sentences,
specifically how
one type of pragmatic marker in a sentence may relate the message conveyed by
that
sentence to the message of a prior sentence. And in contrast to my approach in
Schiffrin
(1987a) – whose starting point was to account for the use and distribution of
markers
in everyday discourse – Fraser’s starting point is the classification of types
of pragmatic
meaning, and within that classification, the description of how some pragmatic
commentary markers (discourse markers) dictate an interpretation of “the
message
conveyed by S2 [S = segment] vis-a-vis the interpretation of S1” (Fraser 1998:
302).
Fraser’s framework depends upon a differentiation between content and pragmatic
meaning. Content meaning is referential meaning: “a more or less explicit
representation
of some state of the world that the speaker intends to bring to the hearer’s
attention by means of the literal
interpretation of the sentence” (1990: 385). Pragmatic
meaning concerns the speaker’s communicative intention, the direct (not
implied)
“message the speaker intends to convey in uttering the sentence” (1990: 386).
It is conveyed
by three different sets of pragmatic markers: basic pragmatic markers (signals
of illocutionary force, e.g. please), commentary pragmatic markers (encoding of
another
message that comments on the basic message, e.g. frankly), and parallel
pragmatic
markers (encoding of another message separate from the basic and/or commentary
message, e.g. damn, vocatives). Discourse markers are one type of commentary
pragmatic
marker: they are “a class of expressions, each of which signals how the speaker
intends the basic message that follows to relate to the prior discourse” (1990:
387).
Fraser’s more recent work (1998) builds upon the sequential function of
discourse
markers, such that discourse markers necessarily specify (i.e. provide
commentary on)
a relationship between two segments of discourse: this specification is not
conceptual,
but procedural (it provides information on the interpretation of messages; see
also
Ariel 1998).
As suggested earlier, Fraser’s framework presumes a strict separation between
semantics (his content meaning) and pragmatics (his pragmatic meaning):
speakers’
use of commentary pragmatic markers – including, critically, discourse markers
– has
nothing to do with the content meaning of the words (cf. Halliday and Hasan
1976;
Schiffrin 1987a; see also Norrick, this volume). Similarly, although discourse
markers
may be homophonous with, as well as historically related to, other forms, they
do not
function in sentential and textual roles simultaneously: “when an expression
functions
as a discourse marker, that is its exclusive function in the sentence” (1990:
189).
One consequence of these disjunctive relationships is that multiple functions
of
markers – including, critically, social interactional functions – are
downplayed (if noted
at all) and not open to linguistic explanation. What some scholars (e.g. Ariel
1998;
Halliday and Hasan 1976; Schiffrin 1987a, 1992; Maschler 1998; Schwenter 1996)
suggest
is an interdependence (sometimes clear, sometimes subtle) between content and
pragmatic meaning – explained by well-known processes such as semantic
bleaching
(Bolinger 1977) or metaphorical extensions from a “source domain” (Sweetser
1990)
– becomes, instead, a matter of chance (e.g. homophony). Likewise, what
scholars
working on grammaticalization (Brinton, this volume; Traugott 1995) and
particularly
pragmaticization (e.g. Fleischman 1999; Onodera 1992, 1995) have found to be
gradual changes in form/function relationships would have to be viewed,
instead, as
a series of categorical and functional leaps across mutually exclusive classes
of form
and meaning.
Fraser’s classification of types of pragmatic meaning also has the important
effect
of redefining the set of expressions often considered as markers. Different
markers are
excluded for different reasons: whereas oh, for example, is considered akin to
a separate
sentence, because is viewed as a content formative or an interjection, and
y’know is
identified as a parallel pragmatic marker. These classifications create sets
that end up
containing tremendous internal variation. The large and varied group of
interjections
(Fraser 1990: 391), for example, includes not only oh, but also ah, aha, ouch,
yuk (what
Goffman 1978 has called response cries), uh-huh, yeah (what Yngve 1970 calls
back
channels and Schegloff 1981 calls turn-continuers), hey (a summons, see DuBois
1989),
and because (which is an interjection when it stands alone as an answer (Fraser
1990:
392), and elsewhere a content formative (but see Schlepegrell 1991; Stenstrom
1998)).
