Discourse markers are the word insertions that people engage to provide continuity in conversations.
Examples of discourse markers in English would include "like", "you know", "and" and "uh".
This study examines the use of the discourse marker "alors" in the French language widening community of scholars, both American and international, including Brown and Yule, van Dijk, Tannen, and - most relevant here - Deborah Schiffrin, whose notion of discourse markers forms an important basis for Professor Moine's study.
This study is useful in the first place because it introduces and skillfully integrates a wide variety of sources.
But the work does not simply apply other linguists' concepts to the uses of French alors in a mechanical fashion.
Indeed, the book is not most importantly about alors at all; its primary significance lies in the discourse model that evolves from Professor Moine's investigation of the various meanings that attach to alors in the corpus of examples that he examines here.Professor Moinze identifies sixteen meanings for alors in the present study and argues that this multiplicity of meanings derives from different areas of meaning, not only from the inherent semantic traits of the word itself, but also from various combinations of characteristics derived from other levels of context, pragmatic and discursive, in which the sample uses occur. He goes on to describe three nested or hierarchical levels of analysis - micro-unit, mid-unit, and macro-unit - to facilitate our understanding of how meanings emerge.
A micr-unit includes a discourse marker (which may take the form of a lexical unit such as alors or non-lexical items such as laughter, filled pauses, and changes of speaker); when the micro-unit changes the focus of the discourse (through a change in verb tense of change of speaker), the newly established focus initiates a new mid-unit.
A combination of mid-units constitutes a macro-unit, which Moine identifies with the underlying mental processes he labels as "self-appropriation" (itself a subset of "tuning"), "contrasting," and "disinvestment."He argues that this notion of the macro-unit helps to identify more functionally what we mean when we talk about macro-unit helps to identify more functionally what we mean when we talk about "topic" - a notoriously difficult problem in linguistic analysis.
Beginning at least as far back as DeTocqueville, the French have always been better observers of America than we have been observers of France - or even of ourselves.Poe went critically unrecognized in his homeland until Baudelaire discovered him. This study continues that tradition: here a carefully French scholar of an originally American innovation in language studies rigorously applies and extends the field.
This work also demands that American scholars return the favor, however, by focusing their attention on examples drawn from the French language - specifically on examples of the uses of alors 'then' in a variety of oral and literary settings, including interviews, radio transcripts, and works such as Camus's "L'etranger" and Beckett's "En attendant Godot", but that effort of scholarly attention will be more than amply rewarded.
In "The Meanings of Fr.Alors: Elaborating a discourse model", Andre Moine, a native of France, currently teaching at Millersville University of Pennsylvania, has insightfully tapped into a strain of pragmatic language analysis largely pioneered by American such as sociologists Erving Goffman, John Gumperz, Del Hymes, Emanuel Schegloff, and Harvey Sacks and sociolinguists like William Labov and Gail Jefferson.Under the sobriquet of discourse analysis, this scholarly trend set itself apart from the linguistic tradition represented by figures like Saussure, Bloomfield, and Chomsky, for whom actual instances of conversation played little or no role in the description of language. For the discourse-analytical tradition, in contrast, empirical data - instances of real people using real language in real contexts - have formed the fundamental basis for research and theory-building.
Discourse analysis has been elaborated by an ever-Schiffrin's analyses of discourse markers clearly linked them with discourse structure and cohesion.
What emerges from Dr.Moine's technical analysis of his corpus is an argument for an even more fundamental role of discourse markers in structuring discourse - by introducing and marking transitions within and between micro-, mid-, and macro-units. "The micro-unit [is] definitely distinct from any syntactic unit and...is the smallest unit to structure the discourse at the same level of focus...The mid-unit plays a central role in making it possible for the speaker to vary the focus...The macro-unit - i.e., the unit that contains and expresses the sub-topic - is the basic information unit in discourse" (p.133-4).
Dr. Moine's rigorous parsing of his evidence and his in-depth and specific description of micro-, mid-, and macro-units create a persuasive case in favor of his discourse model's correspondence to actual linguistic behavior. His arguments that the various internal parts of a macro-unit - the "transitional mid-unit," the "initial micro-unit," the "initial mid-unit," and "tailing - correspond to specific mental processes is perhaps more speculative, but in these instances, again, he presents a strongly reasoned and empirically supported case.As the author admits, the range of evidence on which his discourse model is based is limited and in some ways idiosyncratic.
But, as he puts it, "any model is just that: a model.
A tool to work with towards the next step; a tool to be modified" (p. 136). "The Meanings of French Alors: Elaborating a discourse model", in other words, does not purport to be the final word on its subject.
It is a starting point, an invitation to other scholars - indeed, to Dr. Moine himself - to pursue research that will extend, refine, and enrich the discourse model presented here.I personally am particularly eager to see it tried on a corpus of American samples.
In this sense, the text represents the most useful kind of linguistic scholarship, presenting a strong empirical basis for a creative and compelling theoretical construct. It lays the basis for considerable research to come and for a continued deepening in our understanding about how, in J.L.
Austin's phrase, we all "do things with words" - and, as it turns out, with laughter, filled silences, and turn-taking as well.
