Yeah-No That Was a Great Idea: A Discourse Analysis of “yeah-no”

RM 215

Discourse markers are words or phrases that affect and manage the structure of a conversation. What’s unique about discourse markers is how they tend to go beyond lexical or grammatical constructions, enriching discourse analysis. They relate to the placement of conversational utterances such as yeah or no within a given context. Studying the pragmatic nuances of discourse markers will not only help us understand semantic implications, but will also show how they are transmitted. This project seeks to examine the usage of year and no as they are uttered concurrently (e.g. yeah-no that was a great idea). We have speculated that this construction, in any given context is some sort of face-saving action. Research on these particular concurrent markers is relatively new, but seems to reflect our pre-conceived sentiments that the utterance of yeah-no effects intonation, turntaking, and even has age and gender implications. In order to discern their functionality, we plan to examine varying data sets from online corpuses. From those examinations we are aiming to trace the regional origins and social landscape of these discourse markers. This study will further suggest the high frequency of yeahno occurring in informal political conversations and aspects of institutional talk. Perhaps one of the most common utterances in modern spoken languages, yeah and no have a multitude of pragmatic functions. More often than not, the placement of these markers in conversations deviate from there nominal context. The occasions and audiences are the pretext for the linguistic patterns we will be observing.