1. The pragmatic roles of as in in Nigerian English usage
- Author
-
Felix Nwabeze Ogoanah
- Subjects
Linguistics and Language ,Sociology and Political Science ,Relevance theory ,Process (engineering) ,Anthropology ,Interpretation (philosophy) ,Relevance (information retrieval) ,Psychology ,Language and Linguistics ,Linguistics ,Utterance ,Nigerian English ,Meaning (linguistics) - Abstract
No previous accounts of discourse or pragmatic markers have considered the contributions of as in as a marker in utterance interpretation. Yet, this particle, although essentially a Nigerian English usage, shares the same features with some of the most commonly discussed markers such as, that is, in short, in other words, so, you know, I mean and so on. Drawing examples from spoken data, which are analysed within the framework of relevance theory, this paper describes the contributions of as in as a pragmatic marker in the interpretation of utterances in Nigerian English usage. As a pragmatic marker, as in encodes procedural meaning by constraining the inferential process in a way that maximizes relevance. Specifically, this paper argues that as in in various ways and in diverse contexts signals the speaker's desire to get the hearer to recognize that a crucial aspect of his meaning is being communicated in the host utterance, and in the process encourages the hearer to arrive at that meaning with minimal processing effort.
- Published
- 2011
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