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Discourse marker ‘oh’ as a means for realizing the identity potential of constructed dialogue in interaction 1
Author(s) -
Trester Anna Marie
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
journal of sociolinguistics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1
H-Index - 51
eISSN - 1467-9841
pISSN - 1360-6441
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9841.2009.00402.x
Subject(s) - voice , identity (music) , linguistics , sociology , style (visual arts) , discourse marker , ethnography , discourse analysis , epistemology , aesthetics , philosophy , literature , anthropology , art
This research explores how discourse marker oh works with constructed dialogue (quoted speech), identifying a use of oh not discussed in previous research in which it can serve to signal speaker stance towards quoted material. While both discourse markers and constructed dialogue have been widely discussed as identity resources in the discourse analytic and interactional‐sociolinguistic tradition, there has been little work considering how these linguistic features may work together. In this paper, I address this gap by illustrating how Bakhtin's (1984) notions of uni‐directional and vari‐directional double voicing articulate with information display and evaluation functions of oh identified by Schiffrin (1987), suggesting that oh (when occurring as a preface to constructed dialogue), works both to display and evaluate quoted material for the purposes of identity construction in interaction. Such uses of this discourse marker provide illustration of how footing works together with related concepts of evaluation , positioning , and alignment as part of a process of stancetaking in interaction (Du Bois 2007). Examples are taken from ethnographic interviews collected as part of a larger study of the linguistic style of a community of improv performers in Washington, D.C. focusing primarily on examples contributed by one speaker, Josh.