A corpus comparison of the use of I don’t know by British and New Zealand speakers  

Oleh:

GRANT, LYNN E.

Jenis: Article from Journal - ilmiah internasional
Dalam koleksi: Journal of Pragmatics: An Interdiciplinary Journal of Language Studies vol. 42 no. 8 (Aug. 2010), page 2282–2296.
Topik: Corpus British New Zealand Epistemic or affective device Discourse markers
Fulltext: Grant_L.E.pdf (197.09KB)

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This study outlines a corpus comparison of British and New Zealander speakers’ use of the phrases ‘I don’t know’ and ‘I dunno’, along with their use in conjunction with discourse markers. It further investigates whether the phrase appears to be used as an epistemic device or an affective device, and the variety of pragmatic or semantic functions it fulfils in the discourse. With regard to both the full and the truncated phrase, British speakers use the phrase with different frequency and for different reasons than New Zealand speakers. Both phrases are used most often as a hedge or marker of uncertainty, and used predominantly in conversations, followed by meetings and oral history interviews. In addition, the phrase often occurs alone and mostly in the initial sentence position. And while native speakers used the phrases more as politeness devices, learners used them most to express hesitation or uncertainty. Further research could add to these findings by looking at all the meanings the phrases have in conversation, their use in academic discourse, as well as use of the single variant, ‘Dunno’. Learners would benefit by having some of this included in language learning materials.

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