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Article published In: Linguistics in the Netherlands 2025
Edited by Kristel Doreleijers, Remco Knooihuizen and Eva van Lier
[Nota Bene 2:2] 2025
► pp. 373–388

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Modal particles in workplace coaching in German

An exploratory study of coaches’ use

 | University of Klagenfurt
 | University of Klagenfurt
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Open Access publication of this article was funded through a Transformative Agreement with University of Klagenfurt.

Published online: 31 October 2025
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https://doi.org/10.1075/nb.00039.sch
Abstract
Coaching is a fast-growing learning and development format. While its overall effectiveness is empirically established in psychological research, there is little linguistic research on how particular discursive practices are used in coaching interactions to co-construct such effectiveness. This paper focusses on modal particles and investigates their use in workplace coaching in German. Drawing on four coaching processes from the QueSCo corpus, it specifically analyses coaches’ particle use across various sentence types. Results show that coaches construct themselves as neutral process managers by using particular modal particles: in questions, they mainly use the most neutral particles denn and eigentlich, in orders, they mainly use softening particles such as mal, and in declaratives, particles such as ja that mark common ground dominate.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Modal particles
  • 3.Corpus
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1General observations
    • 4.2Modal particles in questions
    • 4.3Modal particles in orders
    • 4.4Modal particles in declaratives
    • 4.5Distribution and evolution of the coaches’ MP usage
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
References (35)
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