Discourse-pragmatic markers, fillers and filled pauses: Pragmatic, cognitive, multimodal and sociolinguistic perspectives

Abstract

Despite being the object of considerable research effort over several decades, the status and function of discourse-pragmatic markers (DPMs), fillers and filled pause (FPs) continue to be at the forefront of an expanding field of scholarly debate.The current Special Issue brings together researchers on DPMs and FPs working across different research traditions with a common interest in pragmatics. These include sociolinguists and psycholinguists, those interested in multimodal approaches and more applied aspects such as first and second language acquisition and language contact, alongside those of a more theoretical bent, investigating cognitive aspects of the items recruited as filler words, their socio-interactional functions, and how form-function mappings come about