Imperatives of Visual and Auditory Perception and their Interpersonal Functions as Discourse Markers in Albanian Conversations

Abstract

This paper looks at interpersonal functions of visual and auditory perception imperatives in authentic conversations in Albanian language. Although they belong to the inventory of discourse markers that have received due attention in English scholarship, its equivalents in Albanian, shiko/d?gjo, have remained largely understudied in the context of spoken interaction. Therefore, the existing research on look/listen may serve as a basic framework for contrastive analyses of interpersonal functions of its functional counterparts in other languages. The sample analysis performed through AntConc is discussed within the scope of two theories, that of Speech Acts and that of Politeness and it confirms that the imperatives for visual and auditory perception play a major part in the realization of the illocutionary force of the speech act itself.  The main hypothesis underlying our investigation is that the analyzed markers appear in initial syntactic positions in Face-Threatening Acts (FTA) with the core function of signaling the aim of the illocutionary force of the speech act within which they appear, but also with other functions such as boosting or hedging the illocutionary force. To prove the hypothesis we conduct an analysis using data collected from authentic telephone conversations in Albanian whereby determining face threatening speech acts (speech acts considered as threatening the negative and positive face of the hearer (addressee)).  By discovering interpersonal functions of these widely-used discourse markers in Albanian we can enrich our understanding in conversational pragmatics and observe closely how new developments in communication are inciting changes in the way we interact.