Spoken Usage Treatment Of Stance Adverbs In English ALDs

Language is an important tool for human beings to communicate with each other. Human beings fulfill speech acts of communication, exchanging information and expressing feelings by means of language. The situation of people in communication forms a context, which can usually influence the interlocutors'minds, speech, and choice of words and so on. Stance adverbs, as a subcategory of adverb, are frequently used in spoken language to express the speaker's opinion, attitude, and style of speech and so on. English ALDs are the main tools to define meanings and usages of words, and whether their treatment of spoken usages of stance adverbs is appropriate or not will directly influence the learners'smooth communication and the consequent effects of communication. Therefore, the thesis tries to explore how spoken usages of stance adverbs are treated in English ALDs from the perspective of contextual theory. In order to find the shortcomings of Collins COBUILD Advanced Learner's English Dictionary (4th edn) (short for COBUILD4) and Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary (7thedn) (short for OALD7), to propose some suggestions for them, and to give some enlightenment to future lexicographical compilation, the author makes a comparative study between Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (3rdedn) (short for LDOCE3), being taken as a basis, COBUILD4, and OALD7.The main questions explored in this thesis are listed as follows:1) What is a stance adverb? What are the views taken in this thesis on context and stance adverbs? 2) How are spoken usages of stance adverbs treated in LDOCE3, COBUILD4 and OALD7? 3) Epistemic stance adverbs, again as a subcategory of stance adverbs, have high frequency in spoken language among three categories of stance adverbs. Then is the number of means of spoken usage treatment of all the epistemic stance adverbs the same in LDOCE3, COBUILD4 and OALD7? 4) What implications and suggestions on spoken usage treatment of epistemic stance adverbs can we get from LDOCE3?Major findings of the present study are stated as follows: Firstly, the views on context and stance adverbs taken in this thesis are definite. On the basis of literature reviews on context and stance adverbs, this thesis defines the views adopted on context are communicative context in Verscheren's contextual perspective, including four ingredients:language users, the mental world, the social world, and the physical world. The author gives a working definition of stance adverbs and also adopts Biber et al.'classification of stance adverbs. That is, they divide stance adverbs into three categories from semantic perspectives:epistemic stance adverbs, attitude stance adverbs and style stance adverbs. Then the author expounds the relations between context and stance adverbs:context can explain the meanings of stance adverbs and eliminate the ambiguous meanings; context can restrict the choice and employment of stance adverbs.Secondly, the means of spoken usage treatment of stance adverbs in three dictionaries are half similar and half different. The means of treating the spoken usage of stance adverbs in LDOCE3 are of six kinds:definition, conversational examples, labels, spoken phrases, usage notes and frequency. In COBUILD4, there are four kinds:definition, conversational examples, labels and frequency. In OALD7, there are five kinds:definition, conversational examples, labels, more about and which word. To sum up, LDOCE3 has more means of treatment than OALD7, and COBUILD4, the least.Thirdly, by means of comparative studies, we derive some more specific conclusions. Findings of comparative studies are summarized as follows:1) Although the number of means of spoken usage treatment of stance adverbs in LDOCE3 is the most, the number of means of the treatment of all the three categories is not the most. Therefore, this paper makes a comparative study about the means of the treatment of three categories of stance adverbs in three dictionaries. The consequent analysis shows that:for three categories of stance adverbs in LDOCE3 and OALDy, the number of means of spoken usage treatment of epistemic stance adverbs is the most while the treatment of attitude stance adverbs is the least. However in COBUILD4, the number of means of the treatment of three categories is the same, which are always four kinds of means.2) The first comparison has shown that the number of means of the treatment of epistemic stance adverbs in three dictionaries is the most, then isn't the case that all the entries of this kind are given the same amount of treatment? In order to prove this suspicion, the thesis makes a sample analysis of ten words of this kind, and then makes an analysis from two aspects—amount and means of spoken usage treatment. The analysis indicates that COBUILD4 and OALD7 are not equal to LDOCE3 in both amount and means of treatment.Finally, the results of the comparison and analysis indicate that it is necessary for us to propose some suggestions for COBUILD4 and OALD7. These suggestions are also proposed from aspects of amount and means of spoken usage treatment. The detailed suggestions will not be discussed here because they will be elaborated in chapter 5.In a word, through a tentative research on spoken usage treatment of stance adverbs, this thesis hopes that it can inspire more researchers to make a further study on stance adverbs. At the same time, this thesis hopes that English ALDs are able to pay special attention to means of treatment of stance adverbs in both spoken usages and written usages. At last, this thesis hopes that the revised suggestions proposed to COBUILD4 and OALD7 can offer some help for future lexicographical compilers and English teachers, so that more learning information and communicative information will be provided in the dictionaries for learners.