Book section : Chapter
The demonstrative ProTag construction in social interaction: a historical perspective
- Abstract:
- The ProTag construction includes an apparently meaningless pronoun in the right periphery of the clause, as in it’s an awkward one this and They’re nice, those. All types of demonstrative pronoun – singular, plural; distal, proximal – can be employed in this construction, which is attested in Present Day British English and has been identified in historical varieties as well. This paper focuses on the functions of the demonstrative ProTag construction, providing the most detailed diachronic study to date of the contributions that these seemingly superfluous pronouns make in interactions. Based on data from the Chadwyck-Healey English Drama collection, a corpus of 3,874 plays dating from the 13th to the 20th century and comprising approximately 56 million words, we investigate the functions and inherent multifunctionality of this construction. Far from being meaningless, we find that the presence of a demonstrative ProTag has long been utilized by playwrights to express important facets of social interaction. While the origins of the construction appear to be rooted in the subjective function, intersubjective functions are attested from the early 17th century. The ProTag construction thus has a centuries-long history in English as a means of organizing the flow of information between co-participants in interactive contexts.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
Actions
Access Document
- Files:
-
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(Preview, Accepted manuscript, pdf, 1.4MB, Terms of use)
-
- Publisher copy:
- 10.1515/9783111509105-008
Authors
- Publisher:
- De Gruyter Mouton
- Host title:
- Language in Social Interaction: Studies in Interaction Management, Social Behavior and Grammar in Interaction
- Pages:
- 207-236
- Chapter number:
- 8
- Series:
- Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs
- Series number:
- 394
- Place of publication:
- Berlin / Boston
- Publication date:
- 2025-11-28
- Edition:
- 1
- DOI:
- ISSN:
-
1861-4302
- EISBN:
- 9783111509105
- ISBN:
- 9783111508634
- Language:
-
English
- Keywords:
- Subtype:
-
Chapter
- Pubs id:
-
2299174
- Local pid:
-
pubs:2299174
- Deposit date:
-
2025-10-11
- ARK identifier:
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Walter de Gruyter GmbH,
- Copyright date:
- 2026
- Rights statement:
- © 2026 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston, Genthiner Straße 13, 10785 Berlin.
- Notes:
- This is the accepted manuscript version of the article. The final version is available online from De Gruyter Mouton at https://dx.doi.org/10.1515/9783111509105-008
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