Claiming common ground with utterance-final particle hoor in Dutch

Abstract

In this article we conduct a pragmatic analysis of the Dutch utterance-final particle hoor (lit. ‘hear’). Apparently, hoor has contradictory uses. It expresses politeness (involvement, togetherness), but it can also contribute to the face-threatening force of an utterance. We argue that there is a core meaning that all uses share, which is that by adding hoor, speakers claim a proposition at issue to be part of the common ground. This core meaning will be shown to account for hoor’s key characteristics. Hoor expresses involvement and is often attached to speech acts that are intrinsically polite, such as apologizing and giving compliments. Also, while hoor never occurs in interrogative sentences, it can be used with a certain type of directive speech acts, namely those that are in the interest of the hearer or are presented as having shared interests.