Imperative-Based Dialogic Constructions and Discourse Units | John Benjamins

This book weaves together constructions, imperatives, dialogicity, and discourse units. How can that be? This is precisely the question it sets out to answer by working at the crossroads of Construction Grammar (CxG), Corpus Linguistics (CL), and Interactional Linguistics (IL). Profiting from this cross-fertilising synergy, the book singles out BELIEVE (YOU) ME, BELIEVE IT OR NOT, THINK AGAIN and MIND YOU as its objects of study, offers an empirical analysis of their properties and situates them within an entrenched and far-reaching, yet conveniently ‘camouflaged’, network of dialogic perspectivisation. In so doing, the book provides novel insights into the mental state verbal fillers of the constructions alongside their imperative-induced non-compositionality and dialogicity which motivate their function as discourse unit framing agents and, per extension, discourse operators. The book thus makes a case for CxG’s ability to go beyond its word-, or phrase-based ‘comfort zone’ and address phenomena at a micro-, meso- and macro-discourse level with across-the-board benefits.