Discourse Markers in Sicily

A Synchronic, Diachronic, and Sociolinguistic Analysis
Erscheinungsjahr 2022
ISBN: 978-90-04-52105-6
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 21, 218 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 511 g

Reihe: Studies in Pragmatics

When I entered her shop, my friend turned to me and said: 'Arà, che si dice?' (‘Hey there, how you doing?’). This was not a full-fledged sentence in Italian, as she had thrown a little Sicilian word in – arà. It was a greeting, of course, but also a way of expressing her surprise at seeing me there, and a way of prompting me to start our conversation. The fact she used Sicilian had a clear meaning too: the vernacular indicates a shared social identity.

In a nutshell, this book analyses the cases of Sicilian arà and mentri to understand the complexity of discourse markers: what functions they perform, how they evolve historically, and what their social meaning is in a bilingual speech community.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Scivoletto, Giulio

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Semantik & Pragmatik
• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Soziolinguistik
• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Dialektologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgements

List of Figures

Introduction

1 The Theoretical and Methodological Framework

1.1 Discourse Markers (DM?s) as a Research Object

1.2 Methodology: Approach, Area, and Data of the Research

2 Synchronic Analysis

2.1 The Case of arà

2.2 The Case of mentri

3 Diachronic Analysis

3.1 The Evolution of DM?s: General Issues

3.2 Reconstructing the Evolution of arà

3.3 Reconstructing the Evolution of mentri

4 Sociolinguistic Analysis

4.1 DM?s and Language Contact in the Repertoire

4.2 DM?s and Social Meaning in the Community

Conclusion

Appendix 1: List of Diachronic Sources

Appendix 2: List of Transcription Symbols

Appendix 3: Socio-demographic Information About the Speakers (cf. §?4.2.1)

Bibliography

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Giulio Scivoletto, Ph.D. (2019), University of Bergamo & University of Pavia, is a research fellow at the University of Catania, where he teaches Italian Sociolinguistics. His main research interests include semantic-pragmatic change, language contact, sociolinguistic variation, and educational linguistics.