‘Und Tralala’: Vagueness and General Extenders in German and New Zealand English

Terraschke, Agnes; Holmes, Janet

doi:10.1057/9780230627420_11

Cited by 21 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…Interestingly, 40% of the respondents explained oder so as an equivalent of 'or so'. This resonates with Terraschke and Holmes' (2007) observation that German speakers used 'or so' as general extender (''the cheapest or so''). They did not translate 'and all those kind of things' word for word, und so and und so weiter being preferred.…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 72%

“…She discovered that in both databases, disjunctive forms outnumbered adjunctive ones, and that all general extenders marked assumptions of similarity and solidarity, and could be used as intensifiers to emphasise and encourage an answer to a question. Terraschke and Holmes (2007) found that the most frequent functions of German general extenders were to show uncertainty as in ja, ich hab neulich gesehen ich glaub Stickmen oder so ähnlich ('the other day I watched I think Stickmen or something like that'), create affective rapport as in ja, ich find das irgendwie das System find ich doch schon sehr verschult mit Hausaufgaben teilweise und so'n Mist ('I think the system is very much like school with homework and shit like that') and attenuate negative discursive moves as in es ist immer nett mit (einen) ihnen und so, aber so richtig, also ich hab schon gemerkt, dass sie teilweise sehr veraltet waren in ihren Einstellungen und so ('it's always nice with them and stuff but I noticed that they are very conservative in their attitudes and beliefs and stuff'). Studies of German general extender usage suggest that they are similar to VL in English and other languages: they have an epistemic function of hedging and a sociopragmatic function of marking politeness.…”

Section: Vague Language In Other Languagesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Dingsbums und so: Beliefs about German vague language

Cutting

2015

Journal of Pragmatics

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Research has shown that vague language, which includes vague items (general nouns, general verbs, general extenders, vague clauses, clause final ellipsis and conversational implicature) and vague modifiers (vague quantifiers and other epistemic stance markers), is a feature of many languages, signalling a friendly attitude and modifying face threats. In order for language teachers to teach about vague language, they need to understand the preconceptions of their learners. This paper describes the beliefs of 178 German English language teachers and students. This study has shown that all the participants were aware of German equivalents to the English general nouns, verbs and extenders. Describing German vague language, they mentioned vague non-verbal indicators, vague responses to health enquiries, and vague epistemic stance indicators that indexed explicitly a lack of knowledge. They emphasised that these forms are reserved for family and close friends, and expressing closeness. They believed that they were not appropriate in formal settings, being associated them with a low level of education and youth talk. They also pointed to negative connotations of indifference, and impressions of laziness and incompetence that vague language can create. The paper suggests applications of findings for language educators.

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 72%

Section: Vague Language In Other Languagesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dingsbums und so: Beliefs about German vague language

Cutting

2015

Journal of Pragmatics

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“…Other researchers have called these expressions "vague category markers" (Evison et al 2007;Walsh et al 2008), "extension particles" (Dubois 1992), "discourse extenders" ( Norrby and Winter 2001), "set markers" (Stenström et al 2002), "set-marking tags" (Dines 1980;Stubbe and Holmes 1995;Winter and Norrby 2000), "vagueness tags" (Altenberg 1998;De Cock et al 1998), "generalized list completers" (Jefferson 1990), and "pragmatic markers" (Aijmer 2004). It a ppears that the term "general extender" (Cheshire 2007;Terraschke and Holmes 2007;Tagliamonte and Denis 2010;Martínez 2011;Levey 2012) has lately become dominant and thus it is also chosen for this study. The term was Brought to you by | Nanyang Technological University Authenticated Download Date | 6/11/15 1:01 AM first introduced by Overstreet (1999: 3) to represent these expressions that are "general" in the sense that they are non-specific and "extenders" because they are added to otherwise grammatically complete utterances.…”

Section: General Extendersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Frequencies of vague expressions in English as an academic lingua franca

Metsä-Ketelä¹

2012

Journal of English as a Lingua Franca

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This article explores the use of vague expressions in English spoken as a lingua franca in academic settings. The main focus is on the frequencies of general extenders (e.g. and so on), vague classifiers (e.g. some sort of), metadiscourse particles (e.g. so to say), and indefinite prepositional phrases (e.g. in a way). The aim of the study is to investigate how non-native speakers using English as a lingua franca employ and modify their repertoire of lexical vagueness in a ccordance with the speech event type and academic domain. Furthermore, the study also presents comparisons between the frequencies of vague expressions in lingua franca and native speaker data. The main sample is drawn from the English as a Lingua Franca in Academic Settings (ELFA) corpus and the findings are contrasted with a comparable data from the Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English (MICASE). The findings show that, on the whole, lingua franca speakers employ vague expressions almost twice as frequently as native speakers, although the range of different expressions was found to be narrower in the lingua franca data. Vague expressions were most commonly found in dialogic speech events such as doctoral defense and seminar discussions. As regards academic domains, vague expressions were most often used in technology, while in humanities and social sciences their frequencies were lower. Keywords: vague language; general extenders; hedging; English as a lingua franca; academic discourse Epämääräisten ilmausten esiintyminen akateemisessa lingua franca -englannissa Brought to you by |

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“…Cultural protocols emerge in the way the speaker uses vague language in interaction and can reveal particular ways in which speakers vary their use of vague language (Terraschke & Holmes 2007). One such manifestation of cultural protocols can be identified in the pattern I think that with that functioning as a complementizer, a phrase more widely used by the Persian speakers than the Chinese or L1s.…”

Section: Infl Uence Of Cultural Protocolsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Communicating through Vague Language

Sabet

Zhang

2015

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‘Und Tralala’: Vagueness and General Extenders in German and New Zealand English

Cited by 21 publications

References 9 publications

Dingsbums und so: Beliefs about German vague language

Dingsbums und so: Beliefs about German vague language

Frequencies of vague expressions in English as an academic lingua franca

Communicating through Vague Language

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