“Well, I think, you know, it’s — I mean, it’s fine, actually.”
Which words would survive if this sentence only carried its message?
What is left doing the work?
What is a pragmatic marker?
Aijmer (2015) uses pragmatic marker as an umbrella term for a large, messy family of expressions: well, you know, I mean, I think, oh, actually, sort of, innit, like…
Terminology is unsettled — “discursive marker”, “discourse particle”, and “discourse marker” are used differently by different scholars.
Following Fraser (1996): a discourse marker (narrow sense) is the subtype that signals how the basic message relates to the foregoing discourse.
Discussion: is “umbrella term” honest, or a problem for a science of language?
The data first: what markers do
Two real examples from the reading (Aijmer 2015):
“He’s rich I mean, (really) rich.” — invites the hearer to infer added information.
“I think I might get us sort of a set for all of us.” — a suggestion, softened by a whole cluster of hedges.
What job are I mean / I think doing here — message content, or something else?
Defining features
Aijmer (2015, pp. 199–200) collects the standard criteria:
Bracket units of talk — sequentially dependent (Schiffrin 1987, from eleven items: oh, well, and, but, or, so, because, now, then, I mean, you know).
Weakened lexical meaning — the category is “in constant flux”, recruiting new members.
Procedural rather than conceptual — tools for guiding interpretation, not for describing the world.
Prototypicality
Not all markers are equally marker-like.
Interjections (oh, ah) are less prototypical: not fully grammaticalized, with a “dual identity” — but they can open turns, fill pauses, signal attention.
Comment clauses (I think, I don’t know) sit near the boundary — they arguably still encode conceptual content (Ifantidou 1994).
Two big functional families
Following Halliday’s distinction, pragmatic markers serve:
Function
What the marker does
Examples from the paper
Interpersonal
hedge or soften, express solidarity, signal stance
I think as a politeness hedge; well softening disagreement
Textual
attract attention, signal frames or boundaries, topic shift
now, right, OK opening or closing a move
Östman (1995) adds a three-parameter view: coherence, politeness, involvement.
Why corpus linguistics?
PMs have a “symbiotic link” with conversation — they barely appear in writing.
Spoken corpora made them visible and countable: London–Lund, COLT (London teenagers: innit, like), ICE-GB.
Findings are genre-sensitive: well in lawyers’ cross-examinations heightens the challenge rather than softening (Hale 1999); I think is more frequent in political debates than in casual conversation.
Same marker, different job — depending on where it lives.
Case study: I think
Aijmer’s own study, two genres, 100 examples each:
Frequency: 241.5 per 100k words in speech vs. 17.2 in writing; broadcast discussions highest of all text types.
Conversation: usually initial (77%); core function = subjective opinion; extended into hedging clusters (might, sort of, I don’t know) and hesitation fillers.
Broadcast discussion: initial and strategic (86%) — introduces lengthy opinions, claims authority and objectivity, often chains with and.
Core meaning + a flexible “meaning potential” extended by context.
What about learners?
Aijmer (2015, p. 204):
“Learners both over-use and under-use pragmatic markers in comparison with native speakers.”
Gilquin’s question: “pragmatic deficiency or difference?”
ELF speakers stretch markers in unusual ways that still “fulfil the speakers’ needs”.
Discussion 1: the definition problem
Take Aijmer’s criteria (bracketing talk, weakened meaning, outside proposition, procedural meaning). Test them against one marker of your choice — does it pass all four?
Where do the criteria break? Report one counterexample to the group.
Conclude: is “pragmatic marker” a natural kind, a convenient basket, or a stage in grammaticalization?
Discussion 2: form, function, and the learner
From the I think case study: why does the same marker signal modesty in conversation but authority on a political talk show? What does this say about “the meaning” of a marker?
Apply this to your own English: which markers do you (or classmates) over-use or under-use? Deficiency or difference?
Wrap-up: three things to keep
Pragmatic markers are defined by function, not by word class — a fuzzy, changing category.
One form, many functions — core meaning + meaning potential, shaped by genre and situation.
For learners, markers are a pragmatics problem, not a vocabulary problem — and corpora are how we can see it.
Questions for the essay
Which everyday conversation this week could you record (ethically) and mine for one marker? What would you count — position, co-occurring hedges, genre?
References
Aijmer, K. (2015). Pragmatic markers. In K. Aijmer & C. Rühlemann (eds.), Corpus Pragmatics: A Handbook (pp. 195–218). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Fraser, B. (1996). Pragmatic markers. Pragmatics, 6(2).
Schiffrin, D. (1987). Discourse Markers. Cambridge University Press.
Östman, J.-O. (1995). Pragmatic particles twenty years after. In B. Wårvik et al. (eds.), Organization in Discourse.