Regulating Discourse

The present monograph addresses two focal topic areas, i.e. compliments and signposts. The first part of the study proposes a formal and functional taxonomy of a variety of language manifestations of compliments, approached here as the results of context-sensitive processes of complimenting. The strategies of complimenting are projected onto the interface of two typologically remote languages, English and Czech, with the aim to identify cross-language similarities and differences reflecting socio-cultural norms of expectations in different language communities. The second part surveys the outcomes of present-day corpus-based research and recent theorising on communicative functions of various discourse signposts used in spoken and written language, and proposes a model of a unified taxonomy, a network of discourse signposts by which to shelter formally heterogeneous but functionally comparable tokens under the roof of their shared prototypical function, i.e. to regulate communication. Selected English discourse markers are compared with their Czech equivalents with the aim to deduce conclusions applicable in translation, interpreting, and ELT.