Claiming common ground with 'hoor' ...

In this article we conduct a pragmatic analysis of the Dutch utterance-final particle hoor (lit. ‘hear’). Apparently, hoor has contradictory uses. It expresses politeness (involvement, togetherness), but it can also contribute to the face-threatening force of an utterance. We argue that there is a core meaning that all uses share, which is that by adding hoor, speakers claim a proposition at issue to be part of the common ground. This core meaning will be shown to account for hoor’s key characteristics. Hoor expresses involvement and is often attached to speech acts that are intrinsically poli... Mehr ...