Pragmaversals

The idea behind the Project

Prof. Claudia Lange and Dr John Kirk have both placed their research focus on spoken language in direct communicative interaction. Prof. Lange has published on discourse markers in varieties of English; Dr Kirk is among the first participants of the symposia on Discourse-Pragmatic Variation & Change (Salford 2012, Newcastle-upon-Tyne 2014; Ottawa 2016) and has conducted research into the English discourse markers just kind of/sort of, well, I don’t know and please.

Against this background, the question arises whether “Vernacular Universals” or even “Angloversals”, as they are referred to in current literature, may also be seen as pragmatic universals or “Pragmaversals”, that is, to which extent the means to mark intertextual and interpersonal relations in communicative interaction in varieties of English converge all over the world: Have discourse markers such as you know and well in Englishes worldwide got the same discourse-pragmatic fuctions as in Indian or Irish English, or would a detailed contextual analysis reveal systematic differences?

Apart from that, it is envisaged to include German in future works on discourse-pragmatic phenomena in spoken language for contrastive purposes. Surprisingly, no research into the forms and the functions of German discourse markers and modal particles has been initiated as yet to contrast them to their English equivalents (e. g. well and naja, kind of and irgendwie). It would be interesting to know to which extent the influence of English on German is reflected once more in discoursepragmatics.