Maschler2018

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Maschler2018
BibType ARTICLE
Key Maschler2018
Author(s) Yael Maschler, Gonen Dori-Hacohen
Title Constructing a genre: Hebrew ('ani) lo yode'a / lo yoda'at ‘(I) don’t know’ on Israeli political radio phone-ins
Editor(s)
Tag(s) EMCA, Mental verb constructions, affective and epistemic stance, hedging, self-repair, avoidance strategies, Hebrew
Publisher
Year 2018
Language English
City
Month
Journal Text & Talk
Volume 38
Number 5
Pages 575-604
URL Link
DOI https://doi.org/10.1515/text-2018-0015
ISBN
Organization
Institution
School
Type
Edition
Series
Howpublished
Book title
Chapter

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Abstract

We explore employment of the Hebrew construction ('ani) lo yode'a / lo yoda'at (lit ‘[I] not m/f-sg.know’), roughly equivalent to English ‘I don’t know’, by callers and hosts in 80 interactions on Israeli political radio phone-in programs, as compared with its functions in casual conversation. Five uses were attested in the corpus of radio phone-ins and correlated with the syntactic form of complementation (if available) for each token of the construction: (i) expressing literal lack of knowledge; (ii) expressing epistemic stance of uncertainty / hedging; (iii) gaining cognitive processing time in the midst of self-repair; (iv) expressing affective stance of contempt or criticism; and (v) avoidance strategies. While most of these uses are common to both genres, some are unattested in casual conversation. By exploring the functions of the ('ani) lo yode'a / lo yoda'at construction and their distribution according to institutional role, the study (i) sheds further light on the use of the construction and its evolvement through use; and (ii) shows how hosts and callers exploit this specific construction in ways that establish the Israeli political radio phone-in institutional genre.

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