The Development of Generic ma(eth)ur/man for the Construction of Discourse Stance in Icelandic and Swedish

• Published in: Journal of pragmatics 2005-02, Vol.37 (2), p.143-155
• Main Authors: Ragnarsdottir, Hrafnhildur, Stromqvist, Sven
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0378-2166

The paper compares two lexical items, Icelandic ma(glottal stop)ur & Swedish man, for the construction of a detached, general discourse stance (Berman, Ragnarsdottir & Stromqvist, 2002). Both forms mean 'man', but they can also be used in a generic sense. In that usage, Icelandic ma(eth)ur is associated with several semantic, pragmatic, & stylistic constraints, whereas Swedish man is more freely applicable across contexts & genres. Data derived from 632 discourse tokens produced by 158 subjects were analyzed, focusing on frequency distributions of generic usages of ma(eth)ur/man with respect to age (10-11, 13-14, 16-17 years, adults), genre (narrative, expository), modality (speaking, writing), & language (Icelandic, Swedish). Both Icelandic & Swedish revealed a clear preference for using ma(eth)ur/man in expository discourse, a finding which validates the assumption that these terms play a role in the construction of a depersonalized, general discourse stance. Further, Swedish man was used considerably more frequently than Icelandic ma(eth)ur, a finding which is explained as due to the difference in the constraints restricting the domain of use of the apparently equivalent term in the two languages. By & large, two main factors were found to underlie the distributions of ma(eth)ur/man: general socio-cognitive development & culturally specific stylistic constraints. 4 Tables, 22 References. [Copyright 2004 Elsevier B.V.]