The Pragmatic Functions of I think in Different Genres

Authors

  • Ning Yang School of Foreign Languages, Shandong University of Technology

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.30564/ret.v4i3.3245

Abstract

The present paper aims to examine the occurrence of I think in different genres. A collected data of I think from graduate student research interview and objectivism group study within Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English (MICASE) is analyzed. Both quantitative and qualitative analyses are included and the selection tool Antconc 3.4.4 are adopted in the study. By using concordance, all the context including I think are collected. Meanwhile, some phrases (such as I think so, what I think, I think of, etc.) are deleted from the analysis. It is found that I think in different positions and with different collocations fulfill different pragmatic functions respectively. The phrase I think is very frequent in GSRI and OSG, which is due to the nature of the discourse, where the participants are engaged in the communication. From the perspective of syntax and collocation, a lot of examples are analyzed in details. It is found that the interpretation of I think cannot be reached without exploring its linguistic context. In addition, a more detailed observation of linguistic context of I think in OSG and GSRI is explored. Some epistemic certainty (certainly, really, etc.) are included in research interview, with the function of emphasis and deliberation. The study might help to reconsider the functions of I think in different genres.

Keywords:

I think; Tentative meaning; Deliberative meaning; Utterance

References

[1] Aijmer, K. (1997). I think- an English modal particle. In T. Swan & O. J. Westvik, Modality in Germanic language. Historical and comparative perspectives. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. 1-47.

[2] Biber, D., Johansson, S., Leech, G., Conrad, S. & Finegan, E. (1999). Longman grammar of spoken and written English.

[3] Biber, D., Conrad, S. & Cortes V. (2004). If you look at…: lexical bundles in university teaching and textbooks. Applied Linguistics. 25/3: 371-405.

[4] Biber, D. & Barbieri, F. (2007). Lexical bundle in university spoken and written registers. English for Specific Purposes (27): 263-286.

[5] Brown, P. & Levinson S. (1987). Politeness: some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. In O’Keeffe, A., Clancy, B. & Adolphs, S. (2011). Introducing Pragmatics in Use. Routledge.

[6] Caton, Charles E. (1969). On the general structure of the epistemic qualification of things said in English. Foundations of Language 2:37-66.

[7] Chafe, Wallace L. & Nichols, Johanna (1986). Evidentiality: The Linguistic Coding of Epistemology. Abolex Publishing Corporation.

[8] HE An-ping, XU Manfei. 2003. Small words in Chinese EFL learners’ spoken English. Foreign Language Teaching and Research (bimonthly). 446-452.

[9] Holmes, J. (1990). Hedges and boosters in women’s and men’s speech. Language and Communucation, 10 (3).

[10] HU Jian. (2005). Pragmatic functions of I think in English interactions. Research in Foreign Language and Literature. Vol 5: No. 4.

[11] Karkkainen, E. (2003). Epistemic in English conversation: A description of its interactional functions, with a focus on I think. John Benjamins Publishing Company.

[12] Lindemann, S. & Mauranen, A. (2001). “It’s just real messy”: the occurrence and function of just in a corpus of academic speech. English for specific purposes:459-475.

[13] Qi, Y., & Ding, Y. (2011). Use of formulaic sequences in monologues of Chinese EFL learners. Systems, 39(2), 164-174.

[14] Rafieyan, V. (2018). Knowledge of formulaic sequences as a predictor of language proficiency. International Journal of Applied Linguistics & English Literature, 7 (2), 64-69.

[15] Simon-Vandenbergen, A, M. (2000). The function of I think in political discourse. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, Vol.10. No. 1.

[16] Sinclair, J. (1991). Corpus, concordance, collocation. Oxford: OUP.

[17] Wray, A. (2000). Formulaic language in second language teaching: principle and practice. Applied Linguistics 21/4: 463 489.

[18] XU Manfei & HE Anping. (2011) Comparing “I think” in Chinese and British University Students’ Spoken English. Contemporary Foreign Languages Studies. No.3, March, 2011.

[19] XU Jiajing & XU Zongrui. (2007) Discourse management chunks in Chinese college learners’ English speech: a spoken corpus based study. Foreign Language Teaching and Research (bimonthly). Vol, 39, 439-442.

Downloads

Issue

Vol. 4 , Iss. 3 (July 2021)

Article Type

Articles

License

Copyright and Licensing

The authors shall retain the copyright of their work but allow the Publisher to publish, copy, distribute, and convey the work.

Review of Educational Theory publishes accepted manuscripts under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). Authors who submit their papers for publication by Review of Educational Theory agree to have the CC BY-NC 4.0 license applied to their work, and that anyone is allowed to reuse the article or part of it free of charge for non-commercial use. As long as you follow the license terms and original source is properly cited, anyone may copy, redistribute the material in any medium or format, remix, transform, and build upon the material.

License Policy for Reuse of Third-Party Materials

If a manuscript submitted to the journal contains the materials which are held in copyright by a third-party, authors are responsible for obtaining permissions from the copyright holder to reuse or republish any previously published figures, illustrations, charts, tables, photographs, and text excerpts, etc. When submitting a manuscript, official written proof of permission must be provided and clearly stated in the cover letter.
The editorial office of the journal has the right to reject/retract articles that reuse third-party materials without permission.

Journal Policies on Data Sharing

We encourage authors to share articles published in our journal to other data platforms, but only if it is noted that it has been published in this journal.