CONTRASTIVE VIEW ON EMPHASIS MARKERS

Abstract

The paper investigates the functioning of Emphasis Markers in English and Georgian political media discourse through a contrastive analysis. Emphasis markers are the subclass of commentary pragmatic markers - lexical expressions carrying representational meaning defining the whole message as well as procedural one, as a comment on any aspects of the basic message. Six subclasses of the commentary pragmatic markers can be distinguished according to the aspect of the basic message which is commented on: assessment markers, manner-of-speaking markers, hearsay markers, mitigation markers, emphasis markers and evidential markers.

Pragmatic markers are illocutionary force indicating devices that can be spotted almost in all languages. But there may be some similarities or differences in the peculiarities of their functioning in every other language. There may also be differences in their usage on the pragmatic level in different languages. Such variation depends on the linguo-cultural peculiarities of the nation which uses the language and the language itself.

The research resource is the corpus to be analyzed consisting of interviews chosen from English and Georgian printed and internet media from the section of politics (total 47 interviews). According to the aims of the study 1000-1000 pragmatic markers were found in each segment of the corpus. Close analysis of the texts of English and Georgian political interviews (based on the specially created data corpus mentioned) reveals the illocutionary force of expressing emphasis presented by special linguistic means - illocutionary force indicating devices, particularly by Emphasis Markers. 

Despite the fact, that the functioning of pragmatic markers in the political media discourse is greatly affected by the linguo-cultural character of the nation speaking the language, the article reveals that there is some similarity between the languages: the results show that the Emphasis Markers were found more in Georgian with a slight difference from its parallel English segment of the corpus. However, such markers are about 11% of commentary markers of both segments and are not represented in large numbers in either. This fact indicates that neither Georgian nor English-speaking respondent tends to often highlight any aspect of the main message.