Russian discourse words ochevidno, vidimo and po-vidimomu in mass media texts and spoken discourse: a corpus analysis

Abstract

The paper describes functioning of three Russian discourse markers – ‘ochevidno’ (apparently), ‘vidimo’ (it seems) and ‘po-vidimomu’ (it seems / it looks as) – in mass media text and spoken discourse. Initially all three discourse markers functioned as adverbs of visual perception, but with time they changed their functional properties, In the modern Russian language they are used to indicate that the speaker is not completely sure that the information being reported corresponds to some state of affairs in the real world. The research is based on the data from the newspaper and oral subcorpuses of the Russian National Corpus. The purpose of the study is to conduct a quantitative analysis of corpus data and describe trends in the use of these discursive markers in two types of discourse. The result of the quantitative analysis shows differences in the frequency of use of the three words: in oral speech, speakers mark their uncertainty more often than in mass media texts. Since the process of pragmaticalization of the word ‘ochevidno’ (obviously) has not led to the loss of other variants of its use for a word form, corpus data make it possible to model the field structure of its semantics. The words ‘vidimo’ and ‘po-vidimomu’ show differences in their frequency of use; in addition, in oral speech, the discursive marker ‘povidimomu’ tends to be used in oral academic discourse. Qualitative analysis also makes it possible to identify additional functions implemented by the analyzed discursive markers, i.e., hedging, expressing irony, or moving from narration to free indirect speech.