The role of intonation in my analysis

Although my analysis of discourse markers is primarily an analysis of how particular expressions are used to organize conversational interaction, the impact that a single expression has in conversation may differ depending upon the way in which it is said. For example, oh with a rising intonation might be interpreted as a request for confirmation, as in:

But the same expression with a falling intonation might be interpreted not as a request for confirmation, but as an acknowledgement:

Because the role of intonation is important, I have paid attention to it in my transcription conventions (see below). I have also discussed intonation when it makes a systematic contribution to the interpretation of an expression. But intonation has not received nearly as much attention as two other factors in my analysis: the expression being used as a marker (its linguistic properties) and the conversational (textual, interactional, etc.) context of the expression. It is my hope that an understanding of these two factors will act as a foundation for a more thorough analysis of the prosody of discourse markers.