Contrastive Corpus Studies of Pragmatic Markers

Abstract

Abstract The articles in this special issue account for the use of pragmatic markers in a variety of languages by taking a contrastive approach and applying corpus methodology. This introduction article describes these notions and the way they are manifested in each contribution. The studies contribute to the fledging field of contrastive pragmatics, which encompasses investigations of pragmatic phenomena by comparing usage across or within languages. Contrastive studies aim to uncover differences and similarities observable in language use along different dimensions, most notably across languages or varieties of the same language, or across structurally or conceptually different usage domains (or combinations of these). The studies of pragmatic markers explore how contextual factors have a bearing upon language use and variation across the domains that are compared.