Wait, espera, peraí: Signalling discourse model misalignment in English, Spanish, and Portuguese

Abstract

English wait and Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese espera/pera/peraí ‘wait (there)’ are derived from imperatives that signal physical waiting. Using examples from tweets, text messages, and spoken interactions, we offer an exploratory investigation of the metadiscursive functions of these wait-forms as discourse markers that signal the need to pause and adjust interlocutors' mental discourse models of the common ground (CG) before proceeding.

We show that wait-forms appear in dialogues and monologues, to signal misalignment with an interlocutor or with one's own expectations, and can be triggered by both linguistic and non-linguistic material in the CG or a speaker's own mental model. Wait-forms introduce expressions of surprisal, challenge presuppositions, refer back to unresolved discursive material, and convey sarcasm—all of which share the core pragmatic effect of initiating repair of a perceived misalignment in speakers' mental models of the ongoing discourse. Tests of pragmatic function show that these wait-forms are constrained to refer to content assumed to be part of the CG (Wait, didn't you hear the news?) and that their removal results in loss of an important pragmatic cue that relates the upcoming modification to existing CG content.

Our analysis contributes to the body of pragmatic-typological literature on the cross-linguistic uniformity of discursive repair strategies. It goes beyond this research, however, in highlighting the role that discourse markers can play in CG management in dialogues, and furthermore demonstrating their capacity to indicate self-initiated misalignment of a speaker's mental model in monologues, despite the origins of these forms as addressee-oriented imperatives.