Discourse topic organisation: signalling macro-topic boundaries

In discourse analysis, the notion of topic has proved to be an extremely useful tool as a central organising principle for discourse. The aim of this paper is to investigate structural markers used by English speakers in effecting a change of topic, and more specifically, an opening or closing of a...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: Martínez Caro, Elena, Downing Rothwell, Angela
Format: book part
Publication Date:1999
Country:España
Institution:Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM)
Repository:Docta Complutense
Language:Spanish
OAI Identifier:oai:docta.ucm.es:20.500.14352/61044
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/61044
Access Level:Open access
Keyword:81
811.111
Lingüística
Filología inglesa
57 Lingüística
5505.10 Filología
Description
Summary:In discourse analysis, the notion of topic has proved to be an extremely useful tool as a central organising principle for discourse. The aim of this paper is to investigate structural markers used by English speakers in effecting a change of topic, and more specifically, an opening or closing of a macro topic. In our taxonomy of discourse topic organisation applying to English conversation, Markers are signals used to mark a boundary in the discourse topic, without an explicit reference to or inclusion of the topic. They include words and phrases largely devoid of referential content like well, now, I see, yes, etc. which may occur in differente combinations or clusterings or with other segmentation devices such as pauses, endorsements and repetitions.