Abstract
The past 30 years have seen increasingly rapid advances in the area of discourse markers (DMs), and different researchers have pursued a range of approaches. One of these, the ‘enunciative approach’ is deeply rooted in theories of ‘énonciation’ (Culioli, 1999; Ducrot, 1985), and is quite unknown outside the French community. Fortunately, longitudinal studies have been presented recently by French researchers (Paillard, 2009; Ranger, 2018) to introduce the enunciative approach to audiences outside the French-speaking academic world.
The book under review is the latest work on this approach, and Lansari conforms to this trend by rendering a moderate English–French contrastive view. This volume is divided into six chapters. The opening chapter outlines the general background, particularly comparing the approaches of the literature of pragmatics (as a functional theory) and the literature of enunciation (as a speaker-centered theory). The chapter focuses on these two approaches and their roles in DMs definition, but there are also some references to other theories within pragmatic studies (semantic-pragmatic and cognitive-pragmatic) or outside pragmatic studies (syntactic) in its discussion of critical points. Furthermore, the chapter goes beyond synchronic analysis and alludes to basic diachronic notions such as grammaticalization and pragmaticalization.
Chapter 2 is mainly about the theoretical and methodological framework applied to investigate four DMs of saying, two French: on va dire and j’allais dire, and two English: shall we say and I was going to say. Lansari is completely aware of the main criticism of the enunciative approach, namely that it is abstract, so she tries to show a distinction between her non-compositional approach and the enunciative approach. In addition, she makes a great effort to reconcile enunciation with pragmatics. Here, she proposes a ‘discursive profile’ that features abstract enunciative operations and pragmatic, syntactic and collocational factors. Methodologically speaking, the data are collected from the Ten Ten corpus family (corpora of web texts) that provides the comparable data needed for contrastive analysis.
Chapter 3 provides the main corpus findings with a detailed annotation grid corresponding to each level of discursive profile (semantic-pragmatic, syntactic and collocational levels). It also signals how the four DMs are similar and different through the lens of discursive profile levels. At the semantic–pragmatic level, the four DMs are classified under three pragmatic functions (metalinguistic comment, affiliation and topic shifting). The syntactic level adopts five syntactic parameters (DMs scope, position with respect to the host, position in the sentence, position in turn-taking and DMs autonomy). The collocational level deals with annotation of the DMs co-occurrences with epistemic and degree markers, opposition markers, computer-mediated community (CMC) signs and with other DMs.
Chapters 4 and 5 deal with the corpus data of the four DMs, starting with diachronic and etymological overviews of the DMs as the bedrock to present the analysis and discussion, which is almost overlooked in other similar studies concerning DMs.
Chapter 4 expounds on comparative analysis of on va dire and shall we say regarding each DM discursive profile. Although they both rely on the same semantic representation associated with a pragmatic function (metalinguistic comment), and share the same functions syntactically, on va dire reveals greater stabilization than shall we say.
Chapter 5 sets out the comparative analysis of j’allais dire and I was going to say. As they both rely on a subjective commitment, they are similar semantically, but they are divergent pragmatically, syntactically and collocationally. It is worth noting that these DMs are different from the other two in that they signal no degrees of stabilization.
Chapter 6 sets forth a summary of the book, reiterating the main results and highlighting the nature and degree of pragmaticalization for each DM. The chapter enlightens readers about possible next steps that can be taken by future studies.
Taken as a whole, this book yields a worthwhile read for several reasons. First, it is written in a lucid and reader-friendly manner with well-structured chapters, a selective and highly relevant review of the literature, particularly in providing diachronic information, and corpus-based examples that follow and prove the theoretical discussions. One of the values of this book lies in providing a corpus-based study with authentic examples to support the theoretical frameworks. Correspondingly, it is worthwhile corpus-linguistically that it does not merely tackle issues theoretically, but practically as well. Second, the organization of the book helps readers to keep track of overall discussion in all chapters by furnishing them with interim introductions and summaries. Third, this book is one of the few that draws on French ‘énonciation’ theories in English to have a larger audience, and unlike other enunciative studies, unveils a quite distinguished and moderate approach to taking account of enunciation. That is to say, this book diverges from others, which adopt enunciation theory as a skeleton (Paillard, 2009; Ranger, 2018), in that Lansari does not get embroiled in complicated abstract notions. Lansari is aware of the enunciative approach’s failure against better-known approaches (e.g. pragmatic, semantic-pragmatic, cognitive pragmatic, functional pragmatic, sociolinguistic), and she reaches her goals empirically, theoretically and methodologically. Finally, the book can lead to more studies with a similar approach but focusing on other DMs, and conceivably this trend may be welcomed in an excellent manner outside the French academic community. However, while everything seems quite pleasant, particularly reconciling enunciation with pragmatics, the negative effect of the absence of spoken corpus data is troublesome, since it leaves us in ignorance of a great deal of DM occurrences. Lansari is aware of the significance of spoken corpora, but she leaves it to future research.