Forms and Functions of Meta-Discourse

Part III: Meta-discourse in spoken Italian

5 Meta-discourse and speaker-oriented domain

5.1 Introduction

As stated in the introduction to this work, the aim of this research was to answer the following questions: when, how and why do speakers comment through a parenthetical, de-verbal strategy, that is, a comment clause? This chapter is focused on those CCs referring to the speaker-oriented domain, that is, on those CCs conveying the speaker’s subjective attitude towards what he/she is saying (Grenoble 2004: 1956; González 2005: 53). To put it otherwise, the CCs under scrutiny express the speaker’s stance, intended as “a public act by a social actor through overt communicative means” (Du Bois 2007: 163). Both the functions related ...