The Functional Perspective on Language and Discourse: Applications and Implications

✍ Scribed by María de los Ángeles Gómez González (ed.), Francisco José Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez (ed.), Francisco Gonzálvez García (ed.), Angela Downing (ed.)

• Publisher: John Benjamins
• Year: 2014
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 302
• Series: Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 247
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Over the last forty years, the functionalist approach to linguistic description and explanation has given rise to several major schools of thought that share two crucial assumptions: (i) form is not independent of meaning/function or language use; and (ii) linguistic description and explanation need to take into account the communicative function of language. This volume offers readers interested in functional linguistics a selected sample of studies that jointly prove the efficacy of the analytical tools and procedures broadly accepted within the functionalist tradition in order to investigate language and discourse, with special focus on key pragmatic/discourse notions such as contextualization, grammaticalisation, reference, politeness, (in-)directness, discourse markers, speech acts, subjective evaluation and sentiment analysis in texts, among others. In addition, this volume offers specific corpus-based techniques for the objective contextualisation of linguistic data, which is crucial given the central role allotted to context in both functional linguistics and pragmatics/discourse analysis.

✦ Table of Contents

María de los Ángeles Gómez González & al.: Introduction: On the relatedness of functionalism and pragmatics

Part I. Methods in the analysis of language and discourse
Alison Wray: Developing comprehensive criteria of adequacy: The challenge of hybridity
John H. Connolly: A method of analysing recontextualisation in the communication of science
Julia Lavid & al.: Contrastive corpus annotation in the CONTRANOT project: Issues and problems
Antonio Moreno Ortiz and Chantal Pérez Hernández: Form and function in evaluative language: The use of corpora to identify contextual valence shifters in a linguistically-motivated
sentiment analysis system
Paul Meara: Life before Nation: Bibliometrics and L2 vocabulary studies in 1982

Part II. Pragmatics and grammar
Pilar Guerrero Medina: A lexico-paradigmatic approach to English setting-constructions
Karolien Janssens and Jan Nuyts: How did we think?
Anne-Marie Simon-Vandenbergen and Miriam Taverniers: The adverb truly in Present-Day English

Part III. Current trends in pragmatics and discourse analysis
Kristin Davidse: Nominal reference and the dynamics of discourse: A cognitive-functional approach
Jesús Romero-Trillo: “Pragmatic punting” and prosody: Evidence from corpora
Mike Hannay, Elena Martínez Caro and J. Lachlan Mackenzie: Besides as a connective
Michael Stubbs: Searle and Sinclair on communicative acts: A sketch of a research problem
Laura Hidalgo, Raquel Hidalgo and Angela Downing: Strategies of (in)directness in Spanish speakers’ production of complaints and disagreements in English and Spanish

✦ Subjects

Языки и языкознание;Лингвистика;Прагмалингвистика;