Tentative Reference Acts? ‘Recognitional Demonstratives’ as Means of Suggesting Mutual Knowledge – or Overriding a Lack of It

In an explorative study on German oral corpus data we investigate recognitional use of proximal demonstratives as a means of explicit speaker-hearer interaction shaping the discourse structure. We show that recognitionals mark tentative reference acts in that speakers suggest - or pretend - mutual knowledge of the referent, at the same time appealing to the hearers to accept the reference. Hearers may tacitly or explicitly accept the referential act or deny it asking for clarification, in the latter case making speakers change the intended local discourse topic. On these grounds we argue against a differentiation between recognitional and indefinite demonstratives, subsuming both as kinds of recognitional use under ‘pretended’ cognitive proximity

Links und rechts vom Satz: Satzperipherien im Deutschen und ihre Rolle im Diskurs

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Tentative reference acts? 'Recognitial demonstratives’ as means of suggesting mutual knowledge - or overriding a lack of it

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"Nahe Referenten": ein integrativer Ansatz zur Funktion demonstrativer Referenz

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Referenzielle Kohärenz: Diskrepanz zwischen Theorie und Vermittlung.: Eine kritische Analyse von Deutschlehrwerken der Sekundarstufe I

Secondary school graduates are expected to write coherent texts for their respective occupations and other purposes later in life. Schooling should therefore prepare them adequately for this. It is thus paradoxical that textbooks for German provide pupils with very few explicit didactic instructions on how to write coherent texts. This applies in particular to referential coherence. Our article aims to contribute to the appropriate teaching of referential coherence in its complexity. To this end, first, the functions and the actual forms of referential means are examined in detail, from which the requirements for classroom instruction are derived. Next, textbook excerpts are examined to see whether and to what extent they meet these requirements. Our analysis shows that the way coherence is dealt with in textbooks is far from matching either linguistic or didactic demands. Very little attention is paid to form-function relationships. In some cases, tasks are even designed in such a manner that they lead pupils in the wrong direction and are thus counterproductive for the development of suitable writing or text skills