请教：语篇标记语也属于立场标记语？

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Pennylin

In Xu Jiajin & Long Manying (2008, see UCCTS2008Proceedings in this forum), textual markers (including connectives such as first of all, however) are regarded as stance markers.

However, textual markers are usually not included as stance markers in the literature, since the former are usually regarded as logical connectors of clauses or organizers of discourse while the latter, engagement/involvement/affect markers.

Is my understanding correct?

Thanks!
 
回复: 请教：语篇标记语也属于立场标记语？

Thank you very much for the comment. I think you are right that many connectives are logical connectors.

I think the problem lies in the less well-defined notion of stance. A friend of mine who spends much of his time on stance markers told me that when he had a detailed in-depth study of his texts, he found that most linguistic devices could, more or less, express certain degree of stance. And he simply couldn't know where to stop, or where to draw the line.

I think that's the puzzle with many other discourse analysts. In our paper, we mentioned Hyland and Kopple in Section 2.4.4, they include a textual category (NB: not necessarily connectives) for stance marking. For example, 'however' is an interesting case. You can see it as a contrastive logical connector, but certainly it predicts a different view afterwards as opposed to the preceding one. That is to say, it explicitly helps mark the stance without the following part of the text. A reader and hearer can tell the attitude without difficulty what would be generally about later on upon reading/hearing the word however, can't we?

But we will reconsider the validity or justifiability of this category. Expressions like "first of all, second" are more referential in text than attitudinal. But "however, 然而，更多的是" and others are worth a re-evaluation. Functional analysis is always subject to different interpretations.

Yes, one last point to add:
We distinguished "Prototypical stance markers vs. Peripheral stance markers" in our paper which helps to pin down the stance markers on a scale of prototypicality, or force of stance marking, if you like.
 
回复: 请教：语篇标记语也属于立场标记语？

"Functional analysis is always subject to different interpretations". I agree!

Besides, functional classifications of these markers are often subjective, too. Take those "Frequent certainty stance markers" you listed in your paper on p. 30, for example. Do such items as "show/mean/prove/depends on, always, generally speaking" belong to certainty markers? The criterion of classification at work seems to be their semantic meaning. However, it seems that their meaning has little to do with degrees of certainty.
 
回复: 请教：语篇标记语也属于立场标记语？

Thank you very much for the challenge. You are a careful reader, and it is a good challenge indeed.

Yes. At page 30, we list the following as certainty markers.

really
as we all know
show/mean/prove/depends on
certainly/sure/true
no doubt/undoubtedly/unquestionably
usually/generally speaking/Generally
clearly/obvious/obviously
of course
truth/fact/in fact
always
do/indeed
inevitable/inevitably
no one can deny
admittedly

A discourse-pragmatic analysis has to be validated or justified in context, because, as it is always the case, the same linguistic form can perform different contextualized ‘acts’, and vice versa.

We actually had two to three rounds of discussion on the criteria for stance marker identification, about what to include and what to leave out.

Unlike other grammatical categories, which have less disagreement, we can’t, very often, be so sure which is a certainty marker, for example, and which is certainly not. Again a prototypicality vis-à-vis periphery distinction is made among candidate markers. Words like “true, sure, inevitable, deny” and others are less problematic; however, other words and expressions are as referred to as evidentials, disjuncts, (fact/truth-predictive) reporting verbs and intensifiers in the literature. These latter type, anticipates and reinforces the degree of certainty. You can say they are at the outer layer of the ‘certainty’ domain.

However, ‘always’ in “It is always the case” is much more certain than the sentence without ‘always’. We quite hesitated to give up such strong incremental linguistic form of making a claim, so we tallied ‘always’ as used in this example. This is also true with the emphatic use of ‘do’. ‘show/mean/prove/depends on’, (fact/truth-predictive) reporting verbs, are followed either by a factual or counter-factual proposition or statement. Actually plus or minus signs were given in annotating enhancing or mitigating force of such words or expressions, which are not clearly seen in the present paper. The earlier version of the paper was twice as long as this one, and was shortened as per the conference paper submission guidelines.
 
回复: 请教：语篇标记语也属于立场标记语？

The framework used in the present study was created based on Biber's three major semantic distinction (Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English, 1999: 972) by adding two new categories (pp. 6-7). As for the linguistically explicit ways of expressing stance in writings, writers may use either grammatical or lexical means. This study chose the latter one that makes the stance markers value-laden. To study how much value a marker is laden and which category it belongs to, that is, to what extent the writer is making the writer/reader visibility explicit and then contributing to the argumentation, one has to refer to its semantic meaning.

The markers listed at page 30 are a subcategory of epistemic stance markers which mark to what extent one can rely on the information conveyed by the proposition, differing in the degree of certainty, precision, and limitation. As to the verbs show/mean/prove/depends on,they indicate a strong sense of probability and strongly imply that the writer has good reason for the argumentation. Biber in his Stance in spoken and written university register (Journal of English for Academic Purposes, (2006): 97-116) categorized the verbs such as conclude, determine, know, etc. into certainty stance markers. As to generally speaking and alike, they mark involvement with the topic and solidarity with the readers. They function to engage readers into the argumentation so as to make the essay much convincing. In the present study, those markers that contribute to the argumentation either directly or indirectly will be identified as stance markers. Therefore, it is not so much their meaning has little to do with degrees of certainty that they have either explicit or implicit attribution to the writer.
 
回复: 请教：语篇标记语也属于立场标记语？

Thank you both for your answers.

I'd like to discuss further with you the typology of stance, or, the differences between textual and stance markers.

According to Vande Kopple (1985), text connectives, code glosses, illocution markers, etc. belong to metadiscourse, not stance.

According to Hyland (1998), metadiscourse refers to “those aspects of the text which explicitly refer to the organisation of the discourse or the writer's stance towards either its content or the reader”. It is accepted by many that metadiscourse comprises textual and interpersonal metadiscourse (e.g. Mao, 1993; Dafouz-Milne[FONT=宋体], 2008[FONT=宋体]). [/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=宋体] [/FONT]
[FONT=宋体]Therefore, stance markers are one category of metadiscourse, paralleling textual markers.[/FONT]

Is my understanding correct? Thanks again.
 
回复: 请教：语篇标记语也属于立场标记语？

早上在刚买的Spoken Corpora in Applied Linguistics一书上看到作者分析中的stance marker的分类包含modals，hedges，amplifiers（p.115）。
这个是在作者的personal expressives这个speech act下的，原文如下：

Personal expressives are used to express feelings, opinions, and apologies. As such, they would be expected to be realised with a high frequency of stance markers and first person agency...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Linguistics...=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1227206504&sr=8-1
 
回复: 请教：语篇标记语也属于立场标记语？

这个问题很难有完满的答案。很高兴和你讨论。诚如你所说，我们的分类还值得斟酌。我平时一直在关注相关的文献。
 
回复: 请教：语篇标记语也属于立场标记语？

许教授：您好 ！我在“中国学习者英语书面语和口语中话语标记的使用情况”中看到了您对话语标记的功能的描述，请问您是根据什么对话语标记的功能进行如下划分的？期待您的回复！
示意话轮的开始、延续、转换、结束；
表达和 暗示说话人的态度；
帮助促成会话双方的互动；
提示话题和信息焦点
 
回复: 请教：语篇标记语也属于立场标记语？

我没写过这篇文章：“中国学习者英语书面语和口语中话语标记的使用情况”。想是张冠李戴了。

1. 示意话轮的开始、延续、转换、结束；
2. 表达和 暗示说话人的态度；帮助促成会话双方的互动；
3. 提示话题和信息焦点

上述划分，是在综合其他人研究基础上，我自己的划分，

第一条是从话语结构的连贯上来看的；
第二条是从会话双方的互动交流来看的；
第三条是是从话题、信息结构上来看的
 
回复: 请教：语篇标记语也属于立场标记语？

usually/generally speaking/Generally

It appears to me that the above expressions are more like uncertainty markers than certainty markers.

Compared with expressions like "always" , the speaker/writer tend to use "usually/generally speaking/Generally" to hedge his/her commitment to the proposition in some way.
 
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