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Metapragmatic Pragmemes

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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 chapter examines metapragmatic disclaimers (e.g., ‘I know you might probably think that I’m rude, but’) from the perspective of socio-cultural pragmatics. Drawing on insight from Mey’s (Pragmatics. Blackwell, Oxford, 2001; Pragmatic acts. In: K Brown (ed) Encyclopedia of language and linguistics. Elsevier, Oxford, 2006) pragmatic act theory, an approach that has its roots in the socio-cultural view of pragmatics, I argue that the notion of pragmeme can fruitfully be used by researchers when describing those utterances that address metapragmatic awareness on the part of the speaker. The examples used in this chapter are taken from a corpus of naturally-occurring Persian conversations, which further reveal how the notion of pragmeme can account for the creativeness one observes in the use of language in general and in the use of metapragmatic disclaimers in particular.

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Acknowledgement

I am immensely grateful to Tahmineh Tayebi for all her support and encouragement. The corpus I have used in this paper has been collected and transcribed with her help.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of English and Media, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, UK

    Vahid Parvaresh

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  1. Vahid Parvaresh
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Correspondence to Vahid Parvaresh .

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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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Parvaresh, V. (2016). Metapragmatic Pragmemes. 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_27

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43491-9_27

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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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