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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

Betty Lou Dubois
Betty Lou Dubois
Affiliation:
Department of Communication Studies, New Mexico State University
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Abstract

To investigate discourse and interactive functions of quote 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 of hey with context were extracted from the Brown Corpus of American English. Only 26 possible tokens, the majority from radio and television, were located; one instance in Brown indicates 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 a rhetorical answer to an unasked question. Although pseudoquotation can be found either without discourse marker or with other discourse marker, hey is 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)

Type
Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 18 , Issue 3 , September 1989 , pp. 343 - 359
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

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