Please – from courtesy to appeal: the role of intonation in the expression of attitudinal meaning

Abstract

Intonation is known to convey many nuances of meaning, both emotional and attitudinal, but a way of explaining how these meanings arise has so far remained elusive. While some emotions may have direct correlates in a speaker's voice, such correlates are harder to find for attitudinal meanings. The word please is typically a routine expression of courtesy, but data from the International Corpus of British English (ICE GB) reveals please to be a pragmatic marker with a wide range of expressive functions. This study, which uses a quantitative approach combined with qualitative analysis, has implications for the study of other pragmatic particles, and also provides the basis for the understanding of attitudinal intonation in a wider context.

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