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Introduction: Seven types of continuity in discourse

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Gunnel Tottie
Affiliation:
University of Zürich

Extract

This issue of Language Variation and Change brings together seven articles from four continents, North and South America, Europe, and Australia, dealing with Québec French, Brazilian Portuguese, British and Australian English, respectively. Although the geographical spread is great, the articles have in common a focus on how various discourse strategies and devices (punctors, pragmatic expressions, extension particles) maintain coherence or continuity in spoken discourse, and all subscribe to the importance of a rigorous quantitative methodology. They thus bear testimony to the important development in linguistics in recent years that regards discourse processes found mainly in unedited oral speech as crucial data offering a key to the functioning of human language (Ducrot, 1980; Roulet et al., 1985; Schegloff et al., 1977; Schiffrin, 1987; Stenström, 1990).

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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