Pseudoquotation in current English communication: “Hey, she didn't really say it”

Abstract

To investigate discourse and interactive functions ofquote formula+hey+pseudoquotation, that is, invented quotation, in current English communication, tokens were collected from public and commercial broadcasts and miscellaneous readings during a four-month period. In addition, all instances ofheywith context were extracted from the Brown Corpus of American English. Only 26 possible tokens, the majority from radio and television, were located; one instance inBrownindicates existence as early as 1961. A speaker uses quote formula +hey+ pseudoquotation to dramatize and thereby give emphasis to an important point (in these examples, generally in an expository discourse), a practice reported for both sophisticated and folk discourse. Instead of a rhetorical question, the device makes arhetorical answerto an unasked question. Although pseudoquotation can be found either without discourse marker or with other discourse marker,heyis an appropriate marker for pseudoquotation, simultaneously to mark an important point in a discourse and to bind listeners to the ongoing interaction by (re)capturing their attention. (Discourse markers, conversational interaction, pragmatics, dramatization,hey, quotation)

Speech representation and institutional discourse

“…3 While using the traditional linguistic method of argumentation based on sentence examples, they explore interesting and relevant properties of speech representation, for example the limitations of the Original utterance' hypothesis and the importance of hypothetical utterances and invented quotes (cf. also Dubois [1989] on 'pseudo-quotation'; this perspective is developed further in this special issue by Myers). Coulmas (1986) introduces a pragmatics perspective.…”

Le discours direct avec guillemets sans verbe introducteur dans les textes traduits du japonais

“…Bref, le texte japonais se présente comme une masse peu structurée. De plus, en japonais, il n'existe pas de phrases correspondantes à [5], [6] Dubois (1989), l'anglais Hey marque une pseudo-citation. Il est possible que son équivalent français Tiens, employé en (6a), ait une fonction similaire.…”

Youth speech, youth identities, and music worlds in Sweden: Four high-school girls describe music

“…However, ba is very rare in these data, and occurs only in the descriptions of the old song (two instances). One ofthose instances marks a pseudoquotation (Dubois 1989), i.e., an approximate rendering of somebody's thoughts or spoken words, see example (20). The other instance of ba is more interesting äs it appears to function primarily äs a signal of youthful language, see example (21) (21) is not a further elaboration of the description in lines l and 2.…”

“…In this respect, the interactional style of young people has been perceived äs highly emotional, expressive, and dramatized (e.g., Nordberg 1985). The dramatic features of such styles have often been linked to certain genres, such äs conversational storytelling for instance (e.g., Eriksson 1994Eriksson , 1997, where the role of direct speech äs an evaluative and dramatic device has been investigated (e.g., Dubois 1989;Eriksson 1997: 190-197;Maybin 1996), äs has been the use of onomatopoeia and sound effects (e.g., Nordberg 1986Nordberg , 1992.…”