Full Description
This study aims to investigate politeness in women's and men's speech, with a particular focus on the use of c'est-à-dire, enfin, hein and quoi in contemporary spoken French. Politeness is defined as going beyond the notion of the face-threatening act, englobing both everyday ideas of politeness and the creation of sociability in face-to-face interaction.
The pragmatic particles studied are demonstrated to serve both psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic purposes: they lubricate reformulation and contribute to both sociability and social indexation.
The study, which combines qualitative and quantitative analysis, is based on a corpus of spontaneous spoken French, comprising 155,000 words, 95 interviews and subjects ranging in age from 7 to 88 years. The sample contains speakers from a broader range of educational backgrounds than is often the case: a butcher, a video-salesman and a toiletteur canin rub shoulders with counter assistants, teachers and doctors.
Contents
1. Preface and Acknowledgements; 2. List of abbreviations; 3. 1. Introduction; 4. 2. Discourse markers and pragmatic particles; 5. 3. Establishing and investigating a corpus of spoken French; 6. 4. The qualitative analysis; 7. 5. C'est-a-dire (que); 8. 6. Enfin; 9. 7. Hein; 10. 8. Quoi; 11. 9. Conclusion; 12. Appendix; 13. References; 14. Index
