The speech of men and women in contemporary French: The function of parenthetical remarks and the pragmatic particles c'est-a-dire, enfin, hein and quoi.

This thesis sets out to test Lakoff's (1975) hypothesis that women's speech is more polite or tentative than men's through a detailed analysis of the usage, in a sample of contemporary spoken French, of parenthetical remarks (PRs) and the pragmatic particles (PPs) c'est-a-dire, enfin, hein and quoi. PRs and PPs serve both the repair requirements and the social interactional 'face-work' which are characteristic of spontaneous speech. Qualitative and quantitative investigations were conducted on the seventeen-hour corpus of orthographically-transcribed spontaneous speech. The aim of the qualitative analysis was to evaluate the contextual factors which may motivate the use of PRs and PPs. The quantitative analysis, by contrast, set out to measure the distributional frequencies of their usage according to the sex, age and educational background of the speakers. Whilst the detailed exploration of contingent factors such as the social roles adopted by the speakers demonstrates the value of a qualitative account, the fact that it is possible to make generalisable or falsifiable pronouncements on the basis of results found to be statistically significant in the data legitimises the adoption of a quantitative account. Both qualitative and quantitative analyses presume a prior sub-categorisation of the pragmatic usages of the linguistic item under investigation. The thesis arrives at the conclusion that, if men's and women's usage of PRs and PPs differs in the corpus, the asymmetry lies not in the degree of tentativeness displayed but rather in the use made of such expressions to introduce explanatory ramification and to mediate repair, both of which are favoured to a greater extent by the male speakers in our corpus. If the female speakers display greater politeness, it lies in their more adroit usage of the PPs to structure discourse and to maintain contact with their interlocutor

Introduction: Strategic uses of politeness formulae. Analytical approaches and theoretical accounts

This essay introduces the special issue of the Journal of Pragmatics, co-edited by Beeching and Murphy, entitled Doing (mock) im/politeness

Corpora in language teaching and learning

Répondant à la question "Qu’est-ce qu’un corpus en didactique des langues ?", cet article se propose de mettre en questions la prééminence accordée au corpus lui-même pour privilégier le point de vue de l’apprenant. La relation entre didactique et corpus est en effet prioritairement de l’ordre d’une relation. Cette relation s’établit normalement par la médiation de l’enseignant, aidé souvent en cela par les concepteurs de programmes et de ressources pédagogiques. L’article commence par une définition des termes "corpus", "didactique" et de celui, plus épineux, d’"authenticité". Pour suivre, trois aspects du lien entre didactique et corpus sont alors illustrés, articulés avec mon expérience propre. La première partie, "Du syllabus au corpus", présente un petit corpus de français parlé créé à partir d’enregistrements authentiques réunis et transcrits durant plus de 10 ans entre 1980 et 1993. Des manuels de français langue étrangère inspirés de ces enregistrements authentiques visaient la préparation d’apprenants britanniques aux examens de niveau GCSE et A-Level. La deuxième partie, "Du corpus au syllabus", montre comment le recueil, la transcription et l’analyse des corpus constitués dans un contexte spécialisé, celui de stations expérimentales d’horticulture, illustrent la constitution d’un syllabus langagier. La troisième partie, "Un corpus de jeux de rôle", étudie le rôle des corpus d’apprenants et leur contribution pour l’enseignement-apprentissage, tout particulièrement pour l’acquisition des marqueurs discursifs. Au regard du lien entre didactique et corpus, la conclusion souligne le rôle de la motivation et l’importance de l’engagement de l’intérêt de l’apprenant qui, seul, garantirait l’"authenticité" des activités proposées.This article argues the case for regarding the relationship between corpora and the French term "didactique des langues" (i.e. theory and practice of language teaching and learning) as precisely that: a relationship. Relationships are negotiated and it is this negotiation which is managed by teachers with support from curriculum and materials developers. The article begins by attempting to define what is meant by the terms "corpus" and "teaching" and addressing the thorny question of "authenticity". It proceeds to give illustrations, drawn from my own experience, of three ways in which corpora and language teaching/learning are connected. The first, "From syllabus to corpus", describes how a small corpus of spoken French was created incrementally over more than 10 years of collecting authentic spoken recordings for exploitation in textbooks for the teaching of French to GCSE and A-level students in the UK from 1980 to 1993. The second, "From corpus to syllabus", describes how a specialist spoken corpus with a focus on amenity horticulture was collected, transcribed and analysed to inform a language learning syllabus. The third section, "A corpus of role-plays", investigates the role of learner corpora and how they can inform language teaching, with specific reference to the acquisition of discourse markers. In its consideration of the links between corpora and language teaching, the conclusion highlights the role of motivation, the importance of engaging students » interest and thus rendering activities « authentic »

Politeness-induced semantic change: The case of quand même

This article contributes to a growing body of theory that posits language-external, social factors as a primary motor in diachronic change. Politeness theory and the use of variationist approaches enable us to posit, and test, the hypothesis of a type of pragmaticalization, which I call Politeness-Induced Semantic Change (PISC). Historical data on quand même are presented that give tentative credence to such a model. Moeschler and de Spengler's (1981) and Waltereit's (2001) speech-act theoretic analyses of quand même are reinterpreted within the framework of politeness theory and sociopragmatics. The ensuing corpus investigation of the grammaticalization and pragmatico-semantic evolution of quand même from 1500-2000 highlights the fact that not only the innovation but also the propagation of a new form-function configuration depend on social factors; politeness theory may have explanatory power in capturing the ever-changing social patterning of linguistic features and the conditions that favor the spread of innovation. © 2005 Cambridge University Press

Can filled pauses be represented as linguistic items? Investigating the effect of exposure on the perception and production of um

The current paper presents three studies that investigated the effect of exposure on the mental representations of filled pauses (um/uh). In Study 1, a corpus analysis identified the frequency of co-occurrence of filled pauses with words located immediately before or after them in naturalistic spoken adult British English (BNC2014). Based on the collocations identified in Study 1, in Study 2, 22 native British English-speaking adults heard sentences in which the location of filled pauses and the co-occurring words were manipulated and the participants were asked to judge the acceptability of the sentences heard. Study 3 was a sentence recall experiment in which we asked 29 native British English adults to repeat a similar set of sentences as used in Study 2. We found that frequency-based distributional patterns of filled pauses (Study 1) affected the sentence judgments (Study 2) and repetition accuracy (Study 3), in particular when the filled pause followed its collocate. Thus, the current study provides converging evidence for the account maintaining that filled pauses are linguistic items. In addition, we suggest filled pauses in certain locations could be considered as grammatical items, such as suffixes

Adjunctive rifampicin for Staphylococcus aureus bacteraemia (ARREST): a multicentre, randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial.

BACKGROUND: Staphylococcus aureus bacteraemia is a common cause of severe community-acquired and hospital-acquired infection worldwide. We tested the hypothesis that adjunctive rifampicin would reduce bacteriologically confirmed treatment failure or disease recurrence, or death, by enhancing early S aureus killing, sterilising infected foci and blood faster, and reducing risks of dissemination and metastatic infection. METHODS: In this multicentre, randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, adults (≥18 years) with S aureus bacteraemia who had received ≤96 h of active antibiotic therapy were recruited from 29 UK hospitals. Patients were randomly assigned (1:1) via a computer-generated sequential randomisation list to receive 2 weeks of adjunctive rifampicin (600 mg or 900 mg per day according to weight, oral or intravenous) versus identical placebo, together with standard antibiotic therapy. Randomisation was stratified by centre. Patients, investigators, and those caring for the patients were masked to group allocation. The primary outcome was time to bacteriologically confirmed treatment failure or disease recurrence, or death (all-cause), from randomisation to 12 weeks, adjudicated by an independent review committee masked to the treatment. Analysis was intention to treat. This trial was registered, number ISRCTN37666216, and is closed to new participants. FINDINGS: Between Dec 10, 2012, and Oct 25, 2016, 758 eligible participants were randomly assigned: 370 to rifampicin and 388 to placebo. 485 (64%) participants had community-acquired S aureus infections, and 132 (17%) had nosocomial S aureus infections. 47 (6%) had meticillin-resistant infections. 301 (40%) participants had an initial deep infection focus. Standard antibiotics were given for 29 (IQR 18-45) days; 619 (82%) participants received flucloxacillin. By week 12, 62 (17%) of participants who received rifampicin versus 71 (18%) who received placebo experienced treatment failure or disease recurrence, or died (absolute risk difference -1·4%, 95% CI -7·0 to 4·3; hazard ratio 0·96, 0·68-1·35, p=0·81). From randomisation to 12 weeks, no evidence of differences in serious (p=0·17) or grade 3-4 (p=0·36) adverse events were observed; however, 63 (17%) participants in the rifampicin group versus 39 (10%) in the placebo group had antibiotic or trial drug-modifying adverse events (p=0·004), and 24 (6%) versus six (2%) had drug interactions (p=0·0005). INTERPRETATION: Adjunctive rifampicin provided no overall benefit over standard antibiotic therapy in adults with S aureus bacteraemia. FUNDING: UK National Institute for Health Research Health Technology Assessment

Pragmatic Markers in British English: Meaning in Social Interaction

Fundamental to oral fluency, pragmatic markers facilitate the flow of spontaneous, interactional and social conversation. Variously termed ‘hedges’, ‘fumbles’ and ‘conversational greasers’ in earlier academic studies, this book explores the meaning, function and role of well, I mean, just, sort of, like and you know in British English. Adopting a sociolinguistic and historical perspective, Beeching investigates how these six commonly occurring pragmatic markers are used and the ways in which their current meanings and functions have evolved. Informed by empirical data from a wide range of contemporary and historical sources, including a small corpus of spoken English collected in 2011–14, the British National Corpus and the Old Bailey Corpus, Pragmatic Markers in British English contributes to debates about language variation and change, incrementation in adolescence and grammaticalisation and pragmaticalisation

Semantic change: Evidence from false friends

Functional linguists are in general agreement that semantic change may be triggered as part of the negotiation of meaning in interactional contexts: a 'one-off' contextual implicature generalises to become a new core meaning of a lexical item (Traugott and Dasher, 2002). In what ways, however, does the 'one-off' contextual implicature arise? Why would one language develop one aspect of meaning and another a different one? And how or why does it generalise and become a coded part of the structure of that particular language? Hansen (2008: 228) notes that "close crosslinguistic comparisons of the polysemies of semantically related items [...] should turn out to be highly relevant" in this respect. 'False friends, forms deriving from a common etymon which have developed different meanings in different languages, offer useful insights. This paper presents lexicographic and spoken synchronic data on two false friends in French and English, effectivement/'effectively and finalement/'fmally, and explores the cognitive processes involved in their recruitment for interactional functions. The factors which are influential in the development of hedging usages of the terms are overviewed and the contribution that a detailed synchronic study of the semantics of false friends can make to the study of semantic change is evaluated. © John Benjamins Publishing Company