The multifaceted and whimsical nature of discourse

Abstract

My contribution, rooted in functional and systemic grammar, is based on the assumption that though discourse as a social behaviour and verbal interaction has been studied by great minds for decades, the dynamism of human evolution and the consequent changes in communicative strategies can hardly leave discourse analysts immune to a whole spectrum of new challenges. These are evoked by changes in the scope of items considered to be relevant for present-day research, by blurring the traditional borderlines between categories (written manifestation of spoken discourse in chatting), but before all by the existence of language corpora offering the immensity of data across genres, language varieties and language interfaces. A brief introduction (Part 1) will be followed by three main parts, focusing on reasons for multifacetedness in discourse (Part 2), whimsical nature of discourse (Part 3), and hands-on experience with overt language manifestations of vagueness, as exemplified by English placeholders (Mrs Thingy, John Whatsisname, whatchamacallit, so-and-so) emergent from the BNC and COCA corpora (Part 4). The aim is twofold: to map the facets which contribute to patterning and variation in discourse shaping, and by using authentic language data amplify the role of peripheral language devices in interaction.