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Pragmemes in Discourse

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Pragmemes and Theories of Language Use

Part of the book series: Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology ((PEPRPHPS,volume 9))

Abstract

This paper argues for a pragmatic perspective on discourse, delimiting discourse from context, and from arbitrarily concatenated discourse units. It argues for a relational conception of discourse unit whose form and function depends on the frame of investigation, and proposes to adapt the concepts of pragmeme and pract. A micro pragmeme may be realized by an utterance or by the minimal form of discourse connective counting as a communicative act. A meso pragmeme spans over various micro pragmemes, which count as a sequence, and a macro pragmeme spans over some more or less delimited number of meso pragmemes counting as discourse genre or activity type. Analogously to the differentiation between type and token, a pragmeme with a contrastive function may be realized with the practs well or but, with a meso pract with a challenging function, or with the macro pragmeme of review. A continuative pragmeme may be realized by practs focussing on temporal or argumentative continuation.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Discourse connective is used as an umbrella term including discourse markers and pragmatic markers, to name but the most prominent ones (cf. Fetzer 2012).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Augsburg, Augsburg, Germany

    Anita Fetzer

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  1. Anita Fetzer
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Correspondence to Anita Fetzer .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Monash University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

    Keith Allan

  2. Department of Cognitive Science, University of Messina, Messina, Italy

    Alessandro Capone

  3. State University of New York, Albany, New York, USA

    Istvan Kecskes

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Fetzer, A. (2016). Pragmemes in Discourse. In: Allan, K., Capone, A., Kecskes, I. (eds) Pragmemes and Theories of Language Use. Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology, vol 9. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43491-9_14

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43491-9_14

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-43490-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-43491-9

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