Pragmatic markers in World Englishes

This book contributes to the field of pragmatic variation in World Englishes by analysing the pragmatic markers ‘kind of’ and ‘sort of’. After a general review of their history and current use, the book offers a contrastive study of their frequency, semantics and pragmatic values in four varieties of English, as represented in the GloWbE corpus. These are, on the one hand, the two most influential inner circle varieties of English, those spoken in the United States and Great Britain, and, on the other, two outer circle varieties spoken in former colonies of these two countries, namely the Philippines and Singapore respectively. The results strengthen the understanding of the effects of global processes such as Americanization and glocalization on pragmatic variation and illustrate phenomena of linguistic convergence and divergence across space.

Este libro contribuye al campo de la variación pragmática en las lenguas inglesas del mundo analizando los marcadores pragmáticos “kind of” y “sort of”. Tras una revisión general de su historia y su uso actual, se ofrece un estudio contrastivo de su frecuencia, semántica y valores pragmáticos en cuatro variedades de inglés, representadas en el corpus GloWbE. Se trata, por un lado, de las dos variedades más influyentes del inglés del círculo interno, las habladas en Estados Unidos y Gran Bretaña, y, por otro, de dos variedades del círculo externo habladas en antiguas colonias de estos dos países, Filipinas y Singapur, respectivamente. Los resultados refuerzan la comprensión de los efectos de procesos globales como la americanización y la glocalización en la variación pragmática e ilustran fenómenos de convergencia y divergencia lingüística a través del espacio.

Lucía Loureiro-Porto  es profesora asociada en la Universitat de les Illes Balears (España). Ha impartido diversas asignaturas de licenciatura y posgrado sobre lingüística inglesa, centradas especialmente en gramática inglesa, la variación y el cambio lingüísticos, sociolingüística y metodología de la enseñanza del inglés como lengua extranjera. Sus principales intereses de investigación incluyen la variación morfosintáctica y pragmática en la historia del inglés y en las lenguas inglesas del mundo, con especial referencia a la coloquialización y la democratización como factores determinantes del cambio y a la americanización de las lenguas inglesas del mundo, incluidas las variedades L1 y L2.

Lucía Loureiro-Porto is Associate Professor at the Universitat de les Illes Balears (Spain). She has taught various undergraduate and postgraduate courses on English Linguistics, with special reference to English Grammar, Language Variation and Change, Sociolinguistics, and Methodology of the Teaching of English as a Foreign Language. Her main research interests involve morphosyntactic and pragmatic variation in the history of English and in World Englishes, with special reference to colloquialization and democratization as determinants of change and to the Americanization of World Englishes, including L1 and L2 varieties.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION

1. World Englishes: Divergence in convergence

2. Pragmatic markers: From linguistic Cinderellas to blossoming field of research

3. Aims and structure

CHAPTER 2. ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENT OF KIND OF AND SORT OF: PRAGMATICALIZATION VS GRAMMATICALIZATION

1. Origins

2. Reanalysis, metaphor, grammaticalization and pragmaticalization of kind of and sort of

CHAPTER 3. KIND OF AND SORT OF IN INNER CIRCLE VARIETIES OF ENGLISH

1. Semantics: Diminishers, approximators, boosters

1.1. Kind of and sort of as diminishers

1.2. Kind of and sort of as approximators

1.3. Kind of and sort of as boosters

2. Pragmatics: Stance markers and hedging devices

2.1. Kind of and sort of as stance markers

2.2. Kind of and sort of as hedges

CHAPTER 4. WORLD ENGLISHES AND THE STUDY OF PRAGMATIC MARKERS

1. Models of analysis of World Englishes

2. The varieties studied in this volume

3. Pragmatic markers in World Englishes: Theoretical approaches

4. Pragmatic markers in Singapore and Philippine English

CHAPTER 5. KIND OF AND SORT OF IN WORLD ENGLISHES

1. Methodology

1.1. The corpus

1.2. Methodological decisions

2. Global results: Overview of the data

3. Syntactic position of kind of and sort of in the corpus

3.1. Kind of and sort of + verb

3.2. Kind of and sort of + adjective

4. Semantic and pragmatic analysis of kind of and sort of in the corpus

4.1. The semantic values of kind of and sort of

4.2. The pragmatic values of kind of and sort of

CHAPTER 6. DIALECT CONVERGENCE, SORT OF. THE POTENTIAL ROLE OF GLOBAL PHENOMENA

1. Americanization

2. Colloquialization

3. Some critical considerations

CHAPTER 7. CONCLUSION AND OUTLOOK

REFERENCES