The discourse marker znači in Serbian: An analysis of semi-formal academic discourse

Abstract

© 2014, International Pragmatics Association. All rights reserved. Among the rare treatments of discourse markers in South Slavic languages (Mišković 2001, 2003; Fielder 2008; Dedaić and Mišković-Luković 2010; Premilovac 2010; Mišković-Luković and Dedaić 2012), the Serbian discourse marker znači, evolved from the lexical verb značiti (‘to mean’), has so far gone unnoticed. Based on a corpus of approximately 6.5 hours of recorded semi-formal student-teacher conversations, the paper analyzes the pragmatic aspects of the discourse marker znači. The key questions that are addressed are: (a) what discursive environments znači occurs in; and more importantly, (b) what pragmatic effects the speakers intend to achieve by using this discourse marker. The pragmatics of znači is explored in order to establish whether in each individual case it is used (a) as a marker of various types of reformulation, such as expansion or compression, (b) as a means of concluding, or (c) whether it serves an interactional function.