Challenges in contrast: A function-to-form approach

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Challenges in contrast: A function-to-form approach . / Fetzer, Anita.
In: Languages in Contrast, Vol. 9, No. 1, 2009, p. 73-97.

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@article{85a8703a1743480d825a006efd0680b3,
title = "Challenges in contrast: A function-to-form approach ",
abstract = "Challenges express the speaker{\textquoteright}s intention not to comply with a proposition, force or presupposition communicated in and through a prior conversational contribution. This may be a directly adjacent contribution, some less directly adjacent contribution, or a conversational contribution uttered in some prior discourse. As for its sequential status, a challenge is a responsive contribution, and from an interpersonal perspective, it tends to carry a high degree of face-threatening potential. A felicitous analysis of a challenge thus needs to go beyond a single conversational contribution, not only accommodating context but also the nature of a challenge{\textquoteright}s embeddedness in context. The contribution is organized as follows: The first section systematizes the necessary and sufficient contextual constraints and requirements for a conversational contribution to be assigned the status of a challenge. The second part argues for a challenge to be conceptualized as a particularized contextual configuration, which may serve as a tertium comparationis in contrastive pragmatics. The third section exemplifies the frame of reference with a contrastive analysis of British and German challenges adopted from a corpus of political interviews. In both sets of data, challenges tend to be realized implicitly, and in both sets, challenging the content of a contribution is more frequent than challenging its force or presuppositions. While the British data display a wider variety of challenges, the German data prefer the content-based, implicitly realized challenge.",
keywords = "English, Context, Contrastive pragmatics, English/German, Function-to-form mapping, Rejection",
author = "Anita Fetzer",
year = "2009",
doi = "10.1075/bct.30.05fet",
language = "English",
volume = "9",
pages = "73--97",
journal = "Languages in Contrast",
issn = "1387-6759",
publisher = "John Benjamins Publishing Company",
number = "1",

}

RIS

TY - JOUR

T1 - Challenges in contrast

T2 - A function-to-form approach

AU - Fetzer, Anita

PY - 2009

Y1 - 2009

N2 - Challenges express the speaker’s intention not to comply with a proposition, force or presupposition communicated in and through a prior conversational contribution. This may be a directly adjacent contribution, some less directly adjacent contribution, or a conversational contribution uttered in some prior discourse. As for its sequential status, a challenge is a responsive contribution, and from an interpersonal perspective, it tends to carry a high degree of face-threatening potential. A felicitous analysis of a challenge thus needs to go beyond a single conversational contribution, not only accommodating context but also the nature of a challenge’s embeddedness in context. The contribution is organized as follows: The first section systematizes the necessary and sufficient contextual constraints and requirements for a conversational contribution to be assigned the status of a challenge. The second part argues for a challenge to be conceptualized as a particularized contextual configuration, which may serve as a tertium comparationis in contrastive pragmatics. The third section exemplifies the frame of reference with a contrastive analysis of British and German challenges adopted from a corpus of political interviews. In both sets of data, challenges tend to be realized implicitly, and in both sets, challenging the content of a contribution is more frequent than challenging its force or presuppositions. While the British data display a wider variety of challenges, the German data prefer the content-based, implicitly realized challenge.

AB - Challenges express the speaker’s intention not to comply with a proposition, force or presupposition communicated in and through a prior conversational contribution. This may be a directly adjacent contribution, some less directly adjacent contribution, or a conversational contribution uttered in some prior discourse. As for its sequential status, a challenge is a responsive contribution, and from an interpersonal perspective, it tends to carry a high degree of face-threatening potential. A felicitous analysis of a challenge thus needs to go beyond a single conversational contribution, not only accommodating context but also the nature of a challenge’s embeddedness in context. The contribution is organized as follows: The first section systematizes the necessary and sufficient contextual constraints and requirements for a conversational contribution to be assigned the status of a challenge. The second part argues for a challenge to be conceptualized as a particularized contextual configuration, which may serve as a tertium comparationis in contrastive pragmatics. The third section exemplifies the frame of reference with a contrastive analysis of British and German challenges adopted from a corpus of political interviews. In both sets of data, challenges tend to be realized implicitly, and in both sets, challenging the content of a contribution is more frequent than challenging its force or presuppositions. While the British data display a wider variety of challenges, the German data prefer the content-based, implicitly realized challenge.

KW - English

KW - Context

KW - Contrastive pragmatics

KW - English/German

KW - Function-to-form mapping

KW - Rejection

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=68349087079&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1075/bct.30.05fet

DO - 10.1075/bct.30.05fet

M3 - Journal articles

VL - 9

SP - 73

EP - 97

JO - Languages in Contrast

JF - Languages in Contrast

SN - 1387-6759

IS - 1

ER -

DOI