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Metalanguaging and discourse markers in bilingual conversation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2009

Yael Maschler
Yael Maschler
Affiliation:
Department of Communication, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem 91905, Israel
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Abstract

This study examines the functions of the bilingual discourse strategy of language alternation in the process of marking boundaries of continuous discourse. The focus is on switched discourse markers – employed, it is argued, to metalanguage the frame of the discourse. The corpus is comprised of audio recordings of over 20 hours of Hebrew-English bilingual conversation. The strategy of language alternation at discourse markers is illustrated, and the switched discourse markers are classified according to Becker's approach to context (1988b) as a source of constraints on text. This classification is then related to the phenomenon of clustering of discourse markers at discourse unit boundaries in both bilingual and monolingual discourse. Finally, cross-linguistic differences in discourse markers are related to a theory of metalanguage. (Discourse analysis, bilingual discourse, discourse markers, languaging, metalanguage, Hebrew/English comparative discourse)

Type
Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 23 , Issue 3 , June 1994 , pp. 325 - 366
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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