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Chapter 4. On the rise of a marker of disaffiliation from Others’ discourse

Abstract

The discourse marker combination Oh, by the way is typically used to signal “digressive” discourse management and topic-shift from discourse 1 to content in discourse 2. I discuss how the combination came to be conventionalized as a hedge on a potentially face-threatening utterance (OBTW1), as attested in COHA from the 1840s. From the 1920s it could be used as a marker that signals the speaker’s strong disalignment with and mockery of something said by a third person “Other” (OBTW2). This study contributes to work on reported speech enactment. Links to pejorative expressives and echoic mockery are suggested. It is proposed that OBTW1 and OBTW2 are coming to be constructionalized as a new construction with variants. This construction is independent of its source in a discourse marker combination.

Abstract

The discourse marker combination Oh, by the way is typically used to signal “digressive” discourse management and topic-shift from discourse 1 to content in discourse 2. I discuss how the combination came to be conventionalized as a hedge on a potentially face-threatening utterance (OBTW1), as attested in COHA from the 1840s. From the 1920s it could be used as a marker that signals the speaker’s strong disalignment with and mockery of something said by a third person “Other” (OBTW2). This study contributes to work on reported speech enactment. Links to pejorative expressives and echoic mockery are suggested. It is proposed that OBTW1 and OBTW2 are coming to be constructionalized as a new construction with variants. This construction is independent of its source in a discourse marker combination.

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. General acknowledgments vii
  4. Introduction. Reconnecting form and meaning 1
  5. Section 1. Information structure
  6. Chapter 1. On the use of there -clefts with zero subject relativizer 17
  7. Chapter 2. Impersonal passives in English and Norwegian 45
  8. Chapter 3. Atopicality as the unmarked logical structure in Scottish Gaelic 71
  9. Section 2. Usage-based approaches to grammar and the lexicon
  10. Chapter 4. On the rise of a marker of disaffiliation from Others’ discourse 99
  11. Chapter 5. Towards a radically usage-based account of constructional attrition 123
  12. Chapter 6. The compound pronouns someone / somebody and everyone / everybody in present-day spoken English 145
  13. Section 3. Theoretical issues in functional linguistics
  14. Chapter 7. Iconicity in spatial deixis 185
  15. Chapter 8. A cognitive-functional approach to watch as a verb of perception 209
  16. Chapter 9. Zero-marking or nothing to mark? 237
  17. Chapter 10. Enation and agnation in multi-level models 267
  18. Author index 299
  19. Language index 301
  20. Subject index 303
Reconnecting Form and Meaning
This chapter is in the book Reconnecting Form and Meaning
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.230.04tra

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. General acknowledgments vii
  4. Introduction. Reconnecting form and meaning 1
  5. Section 1. Information structure
  6. Chapter 1. On the use of there -clefts with zero subject relativizer 17
  7. Chapter 2. Impersonal passives in English and Norwegian 45
  8. Chapter 3. Atopicality as the unmarked logical structure in Scottish Gaelic 71
  9. Section 2. Usage-based approaches to grammar and the lexicon
  10. Chapter 4. On the rise of a marker of disaffiliation from Others’ discourse 99
  11. Chapter 5. Towards a radically usage-based account of constructional attrition 123
  12. Chapter 6. The compound pronouns someone / somebody and everyone / everybody in present-day spoken English 145
  13. Section 3. Theoretical issues in functional linguistics
  14. Chapter 7. Iconicity in spatial deixis 185
  15. Chapter 8. A cognitive-functional approach to watch as a verb of perception 209
  16. Chapter 9. Zero-marking or nothing to mark? 237
  17. Chapter 10. Enation and agnation in multi-level models 267
  18. Author index 299
  19. Language index 301
  20. Subject index 303
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