While discourse markers have been examined in some detail, little is known about their usage by non-native speakers. This book provides valuable insights into the functions of four discourse markers (so, well, you know and like) in native and non-native English discourse, adding to both discourse marker literature and to studies in the pragmatics of learner language. It presents a thorough analysis on the basis of a substantial parallel corpus of spoken language. In this corpus, American students who are native speakers of English and German non-native speakers of English retell and discuss a silent movie. Each of the main chapters of the book is dedicated to one discourse marker, giving a detailed analysis of the functions this discourse marker fulfills in the corpus and a quantitative comparison between the two speaker groups. The book also develops a two-level model of discourse marker functions comprising a textual and an interactional level.

No abstract

This article examines time recording and time practices in Kenmu nitchū gyōji, a medieval document describing daily and monthly routine at the court of Emperor Go-Daigo in the beginning of the fourteenth century. By probing into the text’s chronographic and chronopolitical features, it is shown that Kenmu nitchū gyōji is strongly concerned with temporality, providing an ideal in which court regularities are meant to repeat identically according to a minutely regulated sequential progression. These peculiar temporal characteristics exhibit the text’s political function: by way of a chronological and at the same time cyclical structure, the image of a divine order is provided, thus legitimizing imperial rule.

This forum unites the articles of six scholars whose different, but complementary, approaches shed light on some key themes of the environmental history of toxicity. One recurrent line of questioning asks who is to blame for the steady increase in poisons in the global environment over the past century. While Marco Armiero identifies capitalism as the main driving force, Michelle Mart and Iris Borowy see more deep-seated social and psychological dynamics at work. Simone Müller and Justine Philip take a middle position, while Janelle Lamoreaux does not regard the economic context as particularly relevant at all, pointing instead to the gendered way in which toxicants have been perceived and experienced. In a second, related thread running through the articles, the authors debate how to balance notions of victimization and agency. One approach focuses on the exposure to toxicants suffered by marginalized social groups and nonhuman actors, who are forced to shoulder a disproportionate toxic burden. Another approach highlights the degree to which the release of poisons has not only been an unintended by-product of various activities but also a tool, deliberately used to achieve multiple purposes. Several authors present specific concepts that they have developed as a way to frame various aspects of these discussions, including “wasteocene” (Armiero), the “toxic commons” (Müller), and the “fateful triangle of health” (Borowy). All contributors address the environmental history of toxicants not only as academics but also as participants of a toxin-filled world, both subjects and objects of the developments they analyze.

No abstract