In this introduction to the special issue Discourse markers and world Englishes, we briefly introduce our definition of discourse-pragmatic markers (by all means contentious items to define) and give a short overview of previous research on discourse markers in world Englishes. As the main bulk of previous research in this field has been based on material from Inner Circle Englishes, the aim of this collection of articles is twofold: (1) to provide insight into underresearched varieties of English; and (2) to investigate underresearched discourse-pragmatic items. Discourse markers are not only a powerful means to index social meaning and carry a wide range of functions, they are also indicative of 'glocalisation' . As such, discourse-pragmatic items can provide important input to the modelling of world Englishes in general and the description of individual varieties specifically.This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Topicalization refers to the sentence-initial placement of constituents other than the subject and is often listed as a non-canonical construction [cf. Ward, Gregory, Betty J. Birner and Rodney Huddleston (2002). “Information Packaging.” Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey K. Pullum, eds.
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