Discourse Markers and Stuff like that (S Lange WiSe 2023/24)

Discourse markers are typical of spoken language; and while some people find expressions such as well, you know, so, like, I mean, … at best superfluous and at worst annoying, linguists’ interest in their functions has grown exponentially over the last years. This course will first disentangle the different theoretical perspectives on discourse markers and clarify the associated terminology: discourse marker, pragmatic marker, or discourse particle? We will then consider the forms and functions of a wide range of expressions, and proceed to do our own corpus-based research on discourse markers in varieties of English. Bring your laptop along!

When: THU 2.DS

Where: ABS/2-07/U