SEELANGS Digest - 27 Nov 2007 to 28 Nov 2007 - Special issue (#2007-273)

[Yokoyama, Olga]

Just a comment on the "crutch words"/"stalling tactics" mentioned in the
on-going discussion of translation (cf. the quotes below). These words
and phrases, which are often accused of "littering" the language,
actually have very important discourse functions such as hedging,
soliciting a response, expressing a certain stance, etc. etc. They are
particularly important in person-to-person (hence, oral) communication,
where communication heavily depends on interlocutor attitudes. These
words and phrases exist in every language and are being widely studied
by discourse-oriented linguists (just one example: the co-occurrence of
the English "y'know" with pauses of 0.5 msec or longer in malfunctioning
male-female conversation). 

Diachronically, what now looks like a legitimate lexical item often
originated as a word or phrase that used to function just like any of
the "litter" phrases now do; consider, e.g., the clitic "ved'",
originally from the full-fledged verb "vedeti". Many of the "litter"
words/phrases in current use are in the process of lexicalization, as is
evident from their reduced phonological shapes: "y'know" sounds very
different from a full two-word sequence "you know". 

That written texts are often consciously purged of these words/phrases
in certain written traditions is itself a phenomenon peculiar to these
written traditions. But when necessary, even in written English, say,
hedging can be accomplished, but this is usually done by other means,
such as by inserting the bookish "evidently", "allegedly" or even by
explicit clauses like "although this is not entirely certain". Like
esthetic judgements, what consitutes "good writing" (or "good speaking")
is never an absolute or universal matter.    

[quoting Renee Stillings: Oh, and drop all the crutch words. Russian,
both written, and verbal, is often littered with ambiguous
(non-committal ...) terms like "v principe," "vozmozhno," etc. In nearly
all cases these can just be dropped for the sake of good writing ... or
speaking. I can't tell you how many times a question along the lines of
"How's the weather today?" is answered by "V principe, kholodno." Is it
or isn't it???] 

[quoting Paul Gallagher: Listen to some man-in-the-street interviews on
TV and you'll hear the same stalling tactics here -- "I mean," "you
know," etc. In the presidential debates, you hear "the fact of the
matter is" (which generally introduces a lie, but that's another kettle
of worms)...]


Olga T. Yokoyama
Professor
Department of Applied Linguistics and TESL 
University of California, Los Angeles

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