What Do Indicating Devices Indicate

Abstract

Fotion (1975) has identifiee! a class of discourse phenomena he calls Indicating Devices. These devices are best understood as ways of foregrounding the speaker's attitudes towards different layers of meaning in his utterance. This can be seen in the fact that different classes of Indicating Devices correspond to the different layers of meaning identified by Dascal and Katriel's (1977, 1979) Onion Model. In what follows we will briefly outline our Onion Model of utterance-meaning, demonstrating its utility for the analysis of specifie discourse phenomena the conversational uses of the connective but and the phenomenon of conversational digressions. We will then identify and illustrate the class of phenomena that fall under the label of Indicating Devices, elaborating on Fotion's suggestions for their analysis in a number of ways. Our discussion will indicate how our model can contribute to a better understanding of the conversational uses of various types of Indicating Devices, couching their analysis in a more comprehensive conceptual frame.

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