Pragmatic markers in English and Italian film dialogue: Distribution and translation

Liviana Galiano
University of Pavia

Pragmatic markers are recognised to be a fundamental aspect of spoken language, in particular conversation, as they allow the processing of information within a specific context by providing the addressee with cues on how to interpret utterances. As far as audiovisual dialogue is concerned, pragmatic markers are considered as a hallmark of naturalness and orality which is fundamental to ensure the audience’s immersion in the world represented on screen. Thanks to both distributional and translation-oriented analysis of corpus data, the paper aims to compare the use of pragmatic markers in anglophone, dubbed Italian and original Italian film dialogues as well as highlight the strategies employed in translating English pragmatic markers into dubbed Italian.

Publication history

Date received: 2 May 2022

Date accepted: 6 March 2023

Published online: 4 July 2023

Table of contents

1.Introduction

The presence of elements typical of spoken language is essential to evoke the idea of orality in the mind of the audience of a film. Among features such as vocatives, expletives, interjections, conversational formulas, and so on, pragmatic markers are fundamental in dialogue not only because they recreate orality on screen (cf. Pavesi 2009 2009 “Dubbing English into Italian: A Closer Look at the Translation of Spoken Language”. In New Trends in Audiovisual Translation, ed. by Jorge Díaz Cintas, 197–209. Bristol, Blue Ridge Summit: Multilingual Matters. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Guillot 2016Guillot, Marie N. 2016 “Cross-cultural Pragmatics and Audiovisual Translation.” In Audiovisual Translation: Theoretical and Methodological Challenges, ed. by Yves Gambier, and Sara Ramos Pinto, 288–301. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Fowler 2020Fowler, Roger 2000 “Orality and the Theory of Mode in Advertisements.” In Changing Landscapes in Language and Language Pedagogy, ed. by Marie N. Guillot, and Marie Madeleine Kenning, 26–39. London: AFLS/Cilt.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar), but also for their procedural and intersubjective functions (cf. Aijmer 2002 2002 “Interjections in a Contrastive Perspective.” In Emotion in Dialogic Interaction, ed. by Edda Weigand, 103–124. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Waltereit and Detges 2007Waltereit, Richard, and Ulrich Detges 2007 “Different Functions, Different Histories: Modal Particles and Discourse Markers from a Diachronic Point of View.” Catalan Journal of Linguistics 6 (6): 61–80. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Beeching 2016 2016 Pragmatic Markers in British English: Meaning in Social Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) which facilitate the alternation of conversational turns, the interpretation of the speaker’s attitude and intentions, and the management of the speaker-hearer relationship.

The literature on audiovisual dialogue offers a host of studies on pragmatic markers and their translation in dubbing and subtitling (Chaume 2004Chaume, Frederic 2004 “Discourse Markers in Audiovisual Translating.” Meta 49 (4): 843–855. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Cuenca 2008Cuenca, Maria-Josep 2008 “Pragmatic Markers in Contrast: The Case of Well .” Journal of Pragmatics 40 (8): 1373–1391. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Valdeón 2008Valdeón, Roberto 2008 “Inserts in Modern Script-Writing and Their Translation into Spanish.” In Between Text and Image: Updating Research in Screen Translation, ed. by Delia Chiaro, Christine Heiss, and Chiara Bucaria, 117–132. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Romero Fresco 2009Romero Fresco, Pablo 2009 “Naturalness in the Spanish Dubbing Language: A Case of Not-So-Close Friends .” Meta 54 (1): 49–72. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Forchini 2010Forchini, Pierfranca 2010 ““Well, Uh No. I Mean, You Know. Discourse Markers in Movie Conversation.” In Perspectives on Audiovisual Translation, ed. by Łukasz Bogucki, and Krzysztof Kredens, 45–59. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Freddi and Malagori 2014Freddi, Maria, and Chiara Malagori 2014 “Discourse Markers in Audiovisual Translation.” In Multimodal Epistemologies: Towards and Integrated Framework, ed. by Arianna Maiorani, and Christine Christie, 191–209. London/New York: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar), yet this is the first attempt to compare the distribution of pragmatic markers in three varieties of film dialogue (anglophone, dubbed Italian and original Italian) in more than thirty films for each variety. Another major aspect of the present study is the reliance on the automatic retrieval of data (specifically, pragmatic markers) thanks to the machine-tagging of pragmatic categories (i.e., pragmatic markers, conversational formulas, response forms, general extenders, interjections).

The aims of the paper centre around three main points: first, finding out which forms of pragmatic markers occur in film English and Italian dialogue and how frequent each form is; second, observing the strategies involved in translating pragmatic markers from English into dubbed Italian and whether a translation filter can be identified; third, determining whether Italian dubbing comes closer to anglophone or Italian original dialogues as far as the use of pragmatic markers is concerned. The analysis will combine both distributional data and a fine-grained analysis of two films (Notting Hill and Boyhood).

The paper is structured as follows: Section 1 provides a description of pragmatic markers in spoken English and audiovisual dialogue and translation; Section 2 states the research questions, describes the corpus and the methodology, including a brief account of the development of the software for pragmatic tagging; the results of the analysis are discussed in Section 3; finally, conclusions are drawn in Section 4.

1.1Pragmatic markers in spoken English

Pragmatic markers are recognised to be a fundamental aspect of spoken language, in particular conversation, as they allow the processing of information within a specific context by providing the addressee with cues on how to interpret utterances (Brinton 1996Brinton, Laurel J. 1996 Pragmatic Markers in English. Grammaticalization and Discourse Functions. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Aijmer 2002 2002 “Interjections in a Contrastive Perspective.” In Emotion in Dialogic Interaction, ed. by Edda Weigand, 103–124. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Waltereit and Detges 2007Waltereit, Richard, and Ulrich Detges 2007 “Different Functions, Different Histories: Modal Particles and Discourse Markers from a Diachronic Point of View.” Catalan Journal of Linguistics 6 (6): 61–80. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Beeching 2016 2016 Pragmatic Markers in British English: Meaning in Social Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Crible 2017Crible, Ludivine 2017 “Towards an Operational Category of Discourse Markers. A Definition and its Model.” In Discourse Markers, Pragmatic Markers and Modal Particles: New Perspectives, ed. by Chiara Fedriani, and Andrea Sansò, 101–126. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). They are highly (inter)subjective elements (Beeching 2016 2016 Pragmatic Markers in British English: Meaning in Social Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) as they support the interlocutors in deciphering each other’s attitudes, intentions and perspective taken with respect to the propositional content of an utterance. Furthermore, being (inter)subjective means that pragmatic markers are salient elements in discourse, in that they fulfil a pivotal function of mediation and mitigation of face-threatening acts. Therefore, pragmatic markers express politeness, while also performing the procedural function of regulating conversational turns and ultimately the conversation flow allowing for hesitation, back-tracking, repair, and repetition (cf. Brinton 1996Brinton, Laurel J. 1996 Pragmatic Markers in English. Grammaticalization and Discourse Functions. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Aijmer 2002 2002 “Interjections in a Contrastive Perspective.” In Emotion in Dialogic Interaction, ed. by Edda Weigand, 103–124. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Diewald 2006Diewald, Gabriele 2006 “Discourse Particles and Modal Particles as Grammatical Elements.” In Approaches to Discourse Particles, ed. by Kerstin Fischer, 403–425. Amsterdam: Elsevier.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Fischer 2006Fischer, Kerstin ed. 2006 Approaches to Discourse Particles. Studies in Pragmatics 1. Oxford: Elsevier. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Beeching 2016 2016 Pragmatic Markers in British English: Meaning in Social Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar).

Pragmatic markers are formally heterogeneous: conjunctions, adverbs, prepositions, verbal expressions can all become relatively semantically bleached and used in a wider range of contexts with pragmatic – rather than traditionally semantic – functions (Beeching 2016 2016 Pragmatic Markers in British English: Meaning in Social Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). Frequent modern English pragmatic markers can be identified in the expressions well, I mean, you know, sort of, really, you see, so (see [1] below, PMs in bold) (Brinton 1996Brinton, Laurel J. 1996 Pragmatic Markers in English. Grammaticalization and Discourse Functions. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Aijmer 2002 2002 “Interjections in a Contrastive Perspective.” In Emotion in Dialogic Interaction, ed. by Edda Weigand, 103–124. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; see Beeching’s corpus-based study: Beeching 2016 2016 Pragmatic Markers in British English: Meaning in Social Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, 34).

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  1. ROISIN: Erm… Well, the music room’s locked up now. (Ae Fond Kiss, Ken Loach 2004)

  2. MARIN: No, you wouldn’t. I mean, she’s great. She’s totally brilliant, but she’s not your type. (Something’s Gotta Give, Nancy Meyers 2003)

  3. DANIEL: Well, I’m a bit of a night owl, you know. I got into the habit when I was looking after the misses, before she passed away. (I, Daniel Blake, Ken Loach 2016)

  4. KYLE: You have some sort of like, blood! (Lady Bird, Greta Gerwig 2017)

  5. HORTENSE: Just chilling out, really. (Secrets and Lies, Mike Leigh 1996)

  6. MR GREER: What they did, you see, they changed the grade there. They widened the street, I’m sure somebody told them that was an improvement… But now, you see, when it rains, and when there is fog and with this new angle […] (Michael Clayton, Tony Gilroy 2007)

  7. NIGEL: So, I’m the first real proof it’s all happening. (Saving Grace, Nigel Cole 2000)

The variability of the linguistic elements that can evolve into pragmatic markers is one of the challenges posed to scholars who have attempted to define a category of pragmatic markers (cf. Schriffin 1987Schiffrin, Deborah 1987 Discourse Markers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Brinton 1996Brinton, Laurel J. 1996 Pragmatic Markers in English. Grammaticalization and Discourse Functions. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Fraser 1999 1999 “What Are Discourse Markers?” Journal of Pragmatics 14: 219–236. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Aijmer and Simon-Vandenbergen 2006Aijmer, Karin, Ad Foolen, and Anne-Marie Simon-Vandenbergen 2006 “Pragmatic Markers in Translation: A Methodological Proposal.” In Approaches to Discourse Particles, ed. by Kerstin Fischer, 101–114. Oxford/Amsterdam: Elsevier.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Diewald 2006Diewald, Gabriele 2006 “Discourse Particles and Modal Particles as Grammatical Elements.” In Approaches to Discourse Particles, ed. by Kerstin Fischer, 403–425. Amsterdam: Elsevier.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Fischer 2006Fischer, Kerstin ed. 2006 Approaches to Discourse Particles. Studies in Pragmatics 1. Oxford: Elsevier. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Waltereit and Detges 2007Waltereit, Richard, and Ulrich Detges 2007 “Different Functions, Different Histories: Modal Particles and Discourse Markers from a Diachronic Point of View.” Catalan Journal of Linguistics 6 (6): 61–80. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). As a consequence of the fact that a classification based on word classes is unviable, the identification of pragmatic markers has mostly been based on syntactic and functional criteria. Syntactically, pragmatic marking expressions are parenthetical, meaning that they are prosodically and functionally detached from the other elements in the utterance, usually occurring at the peripheries of the utterance (Goss and Salmons 2000Goss, Emily L., and Joseph C. Salmons 2000 “The Evolution of Bilingual Discourse Marking System: Modal Particles and English Markers in German-American Dialects.” International Journal of Bilingualism 4: 469–484. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Brinton 2008 2008 The Comment Clause in English: Syntactic Origins and Pragmatic Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Beeching 2016 2016 Pragmatic Markers in British English: Meaning in Social Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) (see [1b], [1c], [1e], [1g] above). Functionally, pragmatic markers are typically employed to shift topic, add attitudinal information, regulate conversational turns, emphasise, clarify, seek confirmation, mark or treat content as shared knowledge, time-stall (Jefferson 1973Jefferson, Gail 1973 “A Case of Precision Timing in Ordinary Conversation.” Semiotica 9: 47–96. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Brown 1977Brown, Gillian 1977 Listening to Spoken English. London: Longman.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Erman 1987Erman, Britt 1987 Pragmatic Expressions in English: A Study of You Know, You See and I Mean in Face-to-Face Communication. Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Schriffin 1987Schiffrin, Deborah 1987 Discourse Markers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Holmes 1997 1997 “Story-Telling in New Zealand.” In Gender and Discourse, ed. by Ruth Wodak, 263–293. London: Sage. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Brinton 2003 2003 “Historical Discourse Analysis.” In The Handbook of Discourse Analysis, ed. by Deborah Schiffrin, Deborah Tannen, and Heidi E. Hamilton, 138–160. Malden: Blackwell Publishing.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Beeching 2016 2016 Pragmatic Markers in British English: Meaning in Social Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). However, even functional criteria may be misleading when attempting a subcategorisation of pragmatic markers, given their polysemy and the possibility to perform more than one function at the same time. This creates a higher risk of falling on subjective interpretations which may be more difficult to be met with a wide consensus in the scholarly community (Holmes 1997 1997 “Story-Telling in New Zealand.” In Gender and Discourse, ed. by Ruth Wodak, 263–293. London: Sage. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Beeching 2016 2016 Pragmatic Markers in British English: Meaning in Social Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). A final issue concerning the identification and classification of pragmatic markers revolves around the terminology, which has been varied (see Figure 1 below) and currently centred around three main labels i.e., pragmatic markers, discourse markers and modal particles (cf. Fedriani and Sansò 2017Fedriani, Chiara, and Andrea Sansò eds. 2017 Pragmatic Markers, Discourse Markers and Modal Particles. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar for a detailed discussion).

Figure 1.Terminology (Beeching 2016 2016 Pragmatic Markers in British English: Meaning in Social Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, 3)
Label Authors/works
discourse markers Schiffrin 1987Schiffrin, Deborah 1987 Discourse Markers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Lenk 1998Lenk, Uta 1998 Marking Discourse Coherence: Functions of Discourse Markers in Spoken English. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Schourup 1999 1999 “Discourse Markers. Tutorial Overview.” Lingua 107: 227–265. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Müller 2005Müller, Simone 2005 Discourse Markers in Native and Non-native English Discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
discourse particles Schourup 1985Schourup, Lawrence 1985 Common Discourse Particles in English Conversation. New York: Garland.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Barnes 1995Barnes, Betsy 1995 “Discourse Particles in French Conversation: (Eh) Ben, Bon, and Enfin .” The French Review 68 (5): 813–821.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Aijmer 1996Aijmer, Karin 1996 Conversational Routines in English: Convention and Creativity. London: Longman.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Fischer 2006Fischer, Kerstin ed. 2006 Approaches to Discourse Particles. Studies in Pragmatics 1. Oxford: Elsevier. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
modal particles
(Ahtönmgspartikeln)		 Weydt 1969Weydt, Harald 1969 Abtönungspartikel: Die deutschen Modalwörter und ihre französischen Entsprechungen. Bad Homburg: Gehlen.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, 1979 ed. 1979 Die Partikeln der deutschen Sprache. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, 2001 2001 “Partikelforschung.” In Lexicon der Romanistischen Linguistik, ed. by Günter Holtus, Michael Metseltin, and Christian Schmitt, Vol I/1, 782–801. Tübingen: Niemeyer.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, 2006 2006 “What Are Particles Good For?” In Approaches to Discourse Particles, ed. by Kerstin Fischer, 205–218. The Netherlands: Brill.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
punctors Vincent and Sankoff 1992Vincent, Diane, and David Sankoff 1992 “Punctors: A Pragmatic Variable.” Language Variation and Change 4: 205–216. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
connectives Fraser 1988Fraser, Bruce 1988 “Types of English Discourse Markers.” Acta Linguistica Hungarica 38: 19–33.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Bazzanella 1990 1990 “Phatic Connectives as Interactional Cues in Contemporary Spoken Italian.” Journal of Pragmatics 14: 629–647. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Lamiroy 1994Lamiroy, Beatrice 1994 “Pragmatic Connectives and L2 Acquisition: The Case of French and Dutch.” Pragmatics 4: 183–201.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Unger 1996Unger, Christopher 1996 “The Scope of Discourse Connectives: Implications for Discourse Organization.” Journal of Linguistics 32: 402–438. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Degand 2000Degand, Liesbeth 2000 “Causal Connectives or Causal Prepositions? Discursive Constraints.” Journal of Pragmatics 32: 687–707. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
pragmatic particles Beeching 2002Beeching, Kate 2002 Gender, Politeness and Pragmatic Particles in French. Pragmatics and Beyond: New Series 64. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
pragmatic expressions Erman 1987Erman, Britt 1987 Pragmatic Expressions in English: A Study of You Know, You See and I Mean in Face-to-Face Communication. Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
pragmatic markers Watts 1988Watts, Richard J. 1988 “A Relevance-Theoretic Approach to Commentary Pragmatic Markers: The Case of Actually, Really and Basically.” Acta Linguistica Hungarica 38: 235–260.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Redeker 1990Redeker, Gisela 1990 “Ideational and Pragmatic Markers of Discourse Structure.” Journal of Pragmatics 14: 367–381. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Caron-Prague and Caron 1991Caron-Prague, Josiane, and Jean Caron 1991 “Psychopragmatics vs. Sociopragmatics. The Function of Pragmatic Markers in Thinking-Aloud Protocols.” In Pragmatics at Issue: Selected Papers of the International Pragmatics Conference, Antwerp, August 17–22, 1987, ed. by Jef Verschueren, 29–36. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Brinton, 1996Brinton, Laurel J. 1996 Pragmatic Markers in English. Grammaticalization and Discourse Functions. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, 1998Brinton, Laurel J. 1998 “ ‘The Flowers Are Lovely; Only They Have No Scent’. The Evolution of a Pragmatic Marker in English.” In Anglistentag, Giessen, Proceedings, ed. by Raimund Borgmeister, Herbert Grabes, and Andreas H. Jucker, 9–33. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Andersen 1998Andersen, Gisle 1998 “The Pragmatic Marker Like From a Relevance-Theoretic Perspective.” In Discourse Markers, ed. by Andreas H. Jucker, and Yael Ziv, 147–170. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Erman 2001 2001 “Pragmatic Markers Revisited with a Focus on You Know in Adult and Adolescent Talk.” Journal of Pragmatics 33: 1337–1359. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Denke 2009Denke, Annika 2009 Native-like Performance. Pragmatic Markers, Repair and Repetition in Native and Non-native English Speech. Saarbrücken: VDM Verlag Dr. Müller.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Aijmer 2013 2013 Understanding Pragmatic Markers: A Variational Pragmatic Approach. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
hedges Holmes 1995Holmes, Janet 1995 Women, Men and Politeness. London: Longman.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Hyland 1998aHyland, Ken 1998a Hedging in Scientific Research Articles. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Coates 2013Coates, Jennifer 2013 Women, Men and Everyday Talk. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
boosters Holmes 1995Holmes, Janet 1995 Women, Men and Politeness. London: Longman.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Hyland 1998b 1998b “Boosting, Hedging and the Negotiation of Academic Knowledge.” Text 18 (3): 349–382.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, 2000 2000 “Hedges, Boosters and Lexical Invisibility.” Language Awareness 9: 179–197. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Beeching 2009 2009 “Procatalepsis and the Etymology of Hedging/Boosting Particles.” In Current Trends in Diachronic Semantics and Pragmatics. Studies in Pragmatics 7, ed. by Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen, and Jacqueline Visconti, 81–106. Bingley: Emerald.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
fumbles Edmondson 1981Edmondson, Willis 1981 Spoken Discourse: A Model for Analysis. London: Longman.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
conversational greasers Fillmore, cited in Kerbrat-Orecchioni 1992Kerbrat-Orecchioni, Catherine 1992 Les Interactions Verbales Tome II. Paris: Armand Colin.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, 196
illocutionary force indicating devices (lFIDs) Verschueren, Östman and Blommaert 1995Verschueren, Jef, Jan-Ola Östman, and Jan Blommaert 1995 The Handbook of Pragmatics. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
pragmatic force modifiers (PFMs) Nikula 1996Nikula, Tarja 1996 Pragmatic Force Modifiers: A Study in Interlanguage Pragmatics. Jyväskylä: University of Jyväskylä.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, 43–45; Lin 2010Lin, Chia-Yen 2010 “ ‘… That’s Actually Sort of You Know Trying to Get Consultants in …’: Functions and Multifunctionality of Modifiers in Academic Lectures.” Journal of Pragmatics 42: 1173–1183. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, 1174

Since it is not in the scope of the present paper to add to the discussion on the terminology and operationalisation of pragmatic markers, the label pragmatic marker (PM henceforth) is adopted in the terms outlined by Fraser (1996) 1996 “Pragmatic Markers.” Pragmatics 6 (2): 167–190.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, Aijmer and Simon-Vandenbergen (2006)Aijmer, Karin, Ad Foolen, and Anne-Marie Simon-Vandenbergen 2006 “Pragmatic Markers in Translation: A Methodological Proposal.” In Approaches to Discourse Particles, ed. by Kerstin Fischer, 101–114. Oxford/Amsterdam: Elsevier.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, and Beeching (2016) 2016 Pragmatic Markers in British English: Meaning in Social Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; i.e., as a broad label encompassing the linguistic expressions that perform a pragmatic function related to information processing: help the addressees to interpret the speaker’s perspective, attitude and other background information, turn-dealing, and face management. For reasons of space, the present study will not deal with interjections (e.g., oh, ah, mhm) and general extenders (e.g., and things like that) although, in fact, both conform to the definition of pragmatic markers adopted here.

1.2Pragmatic markers in audiovisual dialogue and dubbing

As far as audiovisual dialogue is concerned, pragmatic markers are considered as a hallmark of naturalness and orality (Taylor 2004Taylor, Christopher J. 2004 “The Language of Film: Corpora and Statistics in the Search for Authenticity. Notting Hill (1998) – A Case Study.” Miscelánea 30: 71–85.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Quaglio 2009Quaglio, Paulo 2009 Television Dialogue: The Sitcom Friends vs. Natural Conversation. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Forchini 2010Forchini, Pierfranca 2010 ““Well, Uh No. I Mean, You Know. Discourse Markers in Movie Conversation.” In Perspectives on Audiovisual Translation, ed. by Łukasz Bogucki, and Krzysztof Kredens, 45–59. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Espunya 2012Espunya, Anna 2012 “Sentence Connection in Fictive Dialogue.” In The Translation of Fictive Dialogue, ed. by Jenny Brumme, and Anna Espunya, 199–215. Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). Although used less frequently than in spontaneous spoken language (Taylor 2004Taylor, Christopher J. 2004 “The Language of Film: Corpora and Statistics in the Search for Authenticity. Notting Hill (1998) – A Case Study.” Miscelánea 30: 71–85.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar), pragmatic markers, together with other features such as vocatives, conversational routines and interjections, take on the role of creating the impression of spoken language in the minds of the audience (Fowler 2000Fowler, Roger 2000 “Orality and the Theory of Mode in Advertisements.” In Changing Landscapes in Language and Language Pedagogy, ed. by Marie N. Guillot, and Marie Madeleine Kenning, 26–39. London: AFLS/Cilt.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Pavesi 2009 2009 “Dubbing English into Italian: A Closer Look at the Translation of Spoken Language”. In New Trends in Audiovisual Translation, ed. by Jorge Díaz Cintas, 197–209. Bristol, Blue Ridge Summit: Multilingual Matters. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). Evoking the experience of spontaneous orality is fundamental to ensure the audience’s immersion in the world represented on screen (Pérez-González 2007Pérez-González, Luis 2007 “Appraising Dubbed Conversation. Systemic Functional Insights into the Construal of Naturalness in Translated Film Dialogue.” Translator 13 (1): 1–38. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Bucaria 2008Bucaria, Chiara 2008 “Acceptance of the Norm or Suspension of Disbelief? The Case of Formulaic Language in Dubbese.” In Between Text and Image. Updating Research in Screen Translation, ed. by Delia Chiaro, Christine Heiss, and Chiara Bucaria, 149–163. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Pavesi 2008 2008 “Spoken Language in Film Dubbing: Target Language Norms, Interference and Translational Routines”. In Between Text and Image. Updating Research in Screen Translation, ed. by Delia Chiaro, Christine Heiss, and Chiara Bucaria, 79–99. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Wissmath et al. 2009Wissmath, Bartholomäus, David Weibel, and Rudolf Groner 2009 “Dubbing or Subtitling? Effects on Spatial Presence, Transportation, Flow, and Enjoyment.” Journal of Media Psychology 21: 114–125.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar).

Despite the importance of pragmatic markers in recreating spontaneous spoken language on screen, a tendency has been highlighted in translation of audiovisual texts to omit these features. Less frequently, pragmatic markers are retained through literal translation and functional equivalence (Chaume 2004Chaume, Frederic 2004 “Discourse Markers in Audiovisual Translating.” Meta 49 (4): 843–855. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Cuenca 2008Cuenca, Maria-Josep 2008 “Pragmatic Markers in Contrast: The Case of Well .” Journal of Pragmatics 40 (8): 1373–1391. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Valdeón 2008Valdeón, Roberto 2008 “Inserts in Modern Script-Writing and Their Translation into Spanish.” In Between Text and Image: Updating Research in Screen Translation, ed. by Delia Chiaro, Christine Heiss, and Chiara Bucaria, 117–132. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Romero Fresco 2009Romero Fresco, Pablo 2009 “Naturalness in the Spanish Dubbing Language: A Case of Not-So-Close Friends .” Meta 54 (1): 49–72. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Freddi and Malagori 2014Freddi, Maria, and Chiara Malagori 2014 “Discourse Markers in Audiovisual Translation.” In Multimodal Epistemologies: Towards and Integrated Framework, ed. by Arianna Maiorani, and Christine Christie, 191–209. London/New York: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Guillot 2020 2020 “The Pragmatics of Audiovisual Translation: Voices from within in Film Subtitling.” Journal of Pragmatics 170: 317–330. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). The preference for omission in dubbing seems to respond to the need for lip-synching and matching the images on screen. A privilege, therefore, tends to be given to semantic equivalence to the detriment of (inter)subjective meaning and a consequent reduction in coherence (Chaume 2004Chaume, Frederic 2004 “Discourse Markers in Audiovisual Translating.” Meta 49 (4): 843–855. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Cuenca 2008Cuenca, Maria-Josep 2008 “Pragmatic Markers in Contrast: The Case of Well .” Journal of Pragmatics 40 (8): 1373–1391. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Valdeón 2008Valdeón, Roberto 2008 “Inserts in Modern Script-Writing and Their Translation into Spanish.” In Between Text and Image: Updating Research in Screen Translation, ed. by Delia Chiaro, Christine Heiss, and Chiara Bucaria, 117–132. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Romero Fresco 2009Romero Fresco, Pablo 2009 “Naturalness in the Spanish Dubbing Language: A Case of Not-So-Close Friends .” Meta 54 (1): 49–72. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Forchini 2010Forchini, Pierfranca 2010 ““Well, Uh No. I Mean, You Know. Discourse Markers in Movie Conversation.” In Perspectives on Audiovisual Translation, ed. by Łukasz Bogucki, and Krzysztof Kredens, 45–59. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Freddi and Malagori 2014Freddi, Maria, and Chiara Malagori 2014 “Discourse Markers in Audiovisual Translation.” In Multimodal Epistemologies: Towards and Integrated Framework, ed. by Arianna Maiorani, and Christine Christie, 191–209. London/New York: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). Nevertheless, most recently Furiassi (2021)Furiassi, Cristiano 2021 “Translating the Discourse Marker Combination Okay Then from English into Italian: Evidence from the American TV Series Fargo .” Textus 1: 101–130.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar in his analysis of okay then in the TV series Fargo observed that literal equivalents such as okay allora are the most frequent dubbing solutions uncovering a translation routine. In his analysis, the interpersonal functions are transferred to the dubbed version and omission is not found to be a preferred choice, possibly helped by the easy transferability of okay in Italian (see Pulcini and Damascelli 2005Pulcini, Virginia, and Adriana T. Damascelli 2005 “A Corpus-Based Study of the Discourse Marker ‘Okay’.” In Historical Linguistic Studies of Spoken English, ed. by Antonio Bertacca, 231–243. Pisa: Edizioni Plus.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Minutella 2018Minutella, Vincenza 2018 “Direct Anglicisms in Dubbed Italian. A Preliminary Study on Animated Films.” Lingue e Linguaggi 28: 193–209.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar).

2.Aims, corpus, and methodology

The present paper aims to describe the distribution of sixteen pragmatic markers in a corpus of thirty-two anglophone film dialogues and thirty original Italian film dialogues. The identification of the pragmatic markers in the two components relies on the automatic pragmatic tagging (Section 2.1 below) of the Pavia Corpus of Film Dialogue (PCFD henceforth). The sixteen pragmatic markers under study for each component i.e., anglophone and Italian, are the most frequent in each sub-corpus and the ones that could be easily retrieved automatically with the lowest error margin. A first analysis of the monolingual components alone will show which pragmatic markers are most frequently used in anglophone and original Italian film dialogue. Subsequently, a comparative analysis will be carried out between the dialogues of two anglophone films and their dubbed Italian version in order to investigate the strategies used to translate pragmatic markers in dubbing (Section 2.2 below). The pieces of information obtained from the different stages of the analysis will be brought together in a comparison between original anglophone dialogues, dubbed Italian dialogues and original Italian dialogues. The research questions that will be addressed are:

  1. What are the forms and frequencies of pragmatic markers in original anglophone and Italian film dialogue?

  2. Is Italian dubbing closer to original Italian or anglophone dialogues?

  3. What are the translation strategies employed for pragmatic markers in film dialogue?

The data are retrieved from the PCFD11. https://​studiumanistici​.unipv​.it​/?pagina​=p​&titolo​=pcfd which at present includes a parallel component of thirty-two anglophone films and their dubbed translation, and a comparable component of thirty original Italian films. The size of the parallel component is about 700,000 tokens whereas the comparable component consists of about 280,000 tokens. The film dialogues in the PCFD were manually transcribed by linguists and, besides the orthographic transcription of film lines, carry contextual information about the film scenes to help with the interpretation of dialogues, such as character speaking, scene setting, paralinguistic and non-verbal cues (e.g., whispering, nodding, etc.). The films included in the PCFD are particularly suited for the research on pragmatic markers since they were selected to lean towards the representation of spontaneous conversation, which is the preferred context of occurrence for PMs. Indeed, the films had to:

  • be set in contemporary times, representing contemporary dialogue;

  • have been successful, both with the critics and the general public;

  • have been released between 1990 and 2022.

As will be addressed in more detail in Section 2.1 below, all the components of the PCFD are tagged for parts of speech (POS henceforth) and pragmatic categories (see Galiano and Semeraro 2023Galiano, Liviana, and Alfonso Semeraro 2023 “POS and Pragmatic Tagging of Film Dialogue.” Corpus Pragmatics 7: 17–39. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). The tags allowed for the automatic retrieval, frequency countings and semi-automatic analysis of the PMs described in this paper. The data retrieved automatically were subsequently manually checked in order to leave out any instances of mis-labelling that could affect the frequency countings. The data will be displayed in rankings ordered from the most to the least frequent item (following normalised frequencies). Frequencies of occurrence will be displayed both in tokens and normalised (per thousand words) given the rather low frequencies of PMs in the dialogues (the highest frequency of occurrence is displayed by well with 1,103 tokens and a normalised frequency of 2.78 ptw). Combinations of PMs such as ‘well, you know’ or ‘just, I mean’ were not considered as chunks but as made up of two or more PMs as suggested by the pausing between the two PMs reproduced in the orthographic transcriptions by the commas.

2.1Tagging of PMs in the PCFD

Stemming from the necessity to speed up the identification of pragmatic features in the corpus, Galiano and Semeraro (2023)Galiano, Liviana, and Alfonso Semeraro 2023 “POS and Pragmatic Tagging of Film Dialogue.” Corpus Pragmatics 7: 17–39. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar have developed a post-processor of POS-tagged data (CLAWS7)22. https://​ucrel​.lancs​.ac​.uk​/claws/ which produces pragmatic tags as output. The pragmatic categories tagged by the post-processor are: address forms (e.g., honey, dear), pragmatic markers (e.g., well, you know), conversational formulas (e.g., nice to meet you, see you later), general extenders (e.g., and stuff like that), and interjections (e.g., oh, mhm, er). The processor relies on both syntactic criteria i.e., the position in the sentence where the pragmatic expression occurs, and a list of lexical expressions commonly referred to in the literature as belonging to one of the five categories listed above (cf. among others Brown and Gilman 1960Brown, Roger, and Albert Gilman 1960 “The Pronouns of Power and Solidarity.” In Style In Language, ed. by Thomas Sebeok, 253–276. New Jersey: Wiley&Sons.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Brown and Ford 1961Brown, Richard, and Marguerite Ford 1961 “Address in American English.” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 62: 375–385. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Firth 1972Firth, Raymond 1972 “Verbal and Bodily Rituals of Greeting and Parting.” In Interpretation of Ritual, ed. by Jean S. La Fontaine, 1–38. London: Tavistock.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Braun 1988Braun, Friederike 1988 Terms of Address: Problems of Patterns and Usage in Various Languages and Cultures. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Aijmer 1996Aijmer, Karin 1996 Conversational Routines in English: Convention and Creativity. London: Longman.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Biber et al. 1999Biber, Douglas, Stig Johansson, Geoffrey Leech, Susan Conrad, and Edward Finegan 1999 Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. London: Longman.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Carter and McCarthy 2006Carter, Ronald, and Michael McCarthy 2006 Cambridge Grammar of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Waltereit and Detges 2007Waltereit, Richard, and Ulrich Detges 2007 “Different Functions, Different Histories: Modal Particles and Discourse Markers from a Diachronic Point of View.” Catalan Journal of Linguistics 6 (6): 61–80. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Brinton 2008 2008 The Comment Clause in English: Syntactic Origins and Pragmatic Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Aijmer and Simon-Vandenbergen 2011Aijmer, Karin, and Anne-Marie Simon-Vandenbergen 2011 “Pragmatic Markers.” In Discoursive Pragmatics, ed. by Jan Zienkowski, Jan-Ola Östman, and Jef Verschueren, 223–247. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Bonsignori et al. 2011Bonsignori, Veronica, Silvia Bruti, and Silvia Masi 2011 “Formulae across Languages: English Greetings, Leave-Takings and Good Wishes in Dubbed Italian.” In Audiovisual Translation in Close-up: Practical and Theoretical Approaches, ed. by Adriana Şerban, Anna Matamala, and Jean-Marc Lavaur, 23–44. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Aijmer 2013 2013 Understanding Pragmatic Markers: A Variational Pragmatic Approach. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Beeching 2016 2016 Pragmatic Markers in British English: Meaning in Social Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Fedriani and Sansò 2017Fedriani, Chiara, and Andrea Sansò eds. 2017 Pragmatic Markers, Discourse Markers and Modal Particles. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar).

As far as the category of pragmatic markers is concerned, the list of lexical expressions to be tagged as PMs by the processor was obtained from the literature on the matter and includes: well, (al)right, just, you know, sort of, I mean, I think, anyway(s), so, though, you see, really, like, sure, look, okay then (Carter and McCarthy 2006Carter, Ronald, and Michael McCarthy 2006 Cambridge Grammar of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Waltereit and Detges 2007Waltereit, Richard, and Ulrich Detges 2007 “Different Functions, Different Histories: Modal Particles and Discourse Markers from a Diachronic Point of View.” Catalan Journal of Linguistics 6 (6): 61–80. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Brinton 2008 2008 The Comment Clause in English: Syntactic Origins and Pragmatic Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Aijmer and Simon-Vandenbergen 2011Aijmer, Karin, and Anne-Marie Simon-Vandenbergen 2011 “Pragmatic Markers.” In Discoursive Pragmatics, ed. by Jan Zienkowski, Jan-Ola Östman, and Jef Verschueren, 223–247. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Aijmer 2013 2013 Understanding Pragmatic Markers: A Variational Pragmatic Approach. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Beeching 2016 2016 Pragmatic Markers in British English: Meaning in Social Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Fedriani and Sansò 2017Fedriani, Chiara, and Andrea Sansò eds. 2017 Pragmatic Markers, Discourse Markers and Modal Particles. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Furiassi 2021Furiassi, Cristiano 2021 “Translating the Discourse Marker Combination Okay Then from English into Italian: Evidence from the American TV Series Fargo .” Textus 1: 101–130.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). Being pragmatic markers parenthetical i.e., not syntactically connected to the rest of the clause (Brinton 2008 2008 The Comment Clause in English: Syntactic Origins and Pragmatic Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Aijmer 2013 2013 Understanding Pragmatic Markers: A Variational Pragmatic Approach. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar), the processor was instructed to tag the expressions listed above as PMs only if they were found at the beginning, middle or end of the sentence and surrounded by punctuation (see well as adverb in [2a] vs PM in [2b] below):

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  1. MASON SR: Alright. Be well. (Boyhood, Richard Linklater 2014)

  2. IVAN: Well, she isn’t used to be emotional, I think. (Locke, Steven Knight 2013)

The same process was employed to tag the pragmatic categories on the Italian dialogues, both dubbed and original. Although the Italian POS tagset is different from the English one (see Appendices A and B), the pragmatic tags are the same across languages, which is ideal for the sake of comparison, namely address forms (AF), pragmatic markers (PM), conversational formulas (CF), general extenders (EXT), and interjections (I). The POS-tagged texts in Italian were produced by the annotation tool33. http://​linguistic​-annotation​-tool​.italianlp​.it/ developed at the Institute of Computational Linguistics ‘Antonio Zampolli’ in Pisa. The tagged files were saved in .txt format and subsequently fed to the Italian version of the post-processor for pragmatic tagging. A qualitative analysis of the pragmatically tagged output (both original and dubbed Italian) found an accuracy rate of 97.5% or higher on the samples tested.

Focusing on the category of Italian pragmatic markers, the list of expressions provided to the post-processor for tagging includes: allora, dai, ecco, (va) bene, insomma, su, beh/be’, vabbè/va be’, sai, guarda, comunque, vedi, dico, tipo, d’accordo, voglio dire. The list was created drawing on the literature on the matter (cf. Bazzanella and Borreguero Zuloaga 2011Bazzanella, Carla, and Margarita Borreguero Zuloaga 2011 “ Allora e entonces: problemi teorici e dati empirici.” Discourse Markers in Romance Languages, Oslo Studies in Language 3 (1): 7–45.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Ghezzi and Molinelli 2014Ghezzi, Chiara, and Piera Molinelli eds. 2014 Discourse and Pragmatic Markers from Latin to the Romance Languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Fedriani and Sansò 2017Fedriani, Chiara, and Andrea Sansò eds. 2017 Pragmatic Markers, Discourse Markers and Modal Particles. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Fiorentini 2017 2017 “Italian Discourse Markers and Modal Particles in Contact.” In Pragmatic Markers, Discourse Markers and Modal Particles, ed. by Chiara Fedriani, and Andrea Sansò, 417–437. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Badan Linda 2021Badan, Linda 2021 “Verb-based Discourse Markers in Italian: Guarda, Vedi, Guarda Te, Vedi Te .” In Pragmatic Markers and Peripheries, ed. by Daniel Van Olmen, and Jolanta Šinkuniene, 144–170. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) as well as a corpus-based bottom-up analysis of two films in the PCFD (see Section 2.2 below).

2.2Qualitative analysis of PMs in two English films and their dubbed version: Boyhood and Notting Hill

Research question 3 concerns the investigation of the translation strategies employed in dubbing English pragmatic markers into Italian. The question is answered by carrying out a qualitative analysis of the original and dubbed Italian dialogues of two films: Boyhood (R. Linklater, 2014) and Notting Hill (R. Michell, 1999). The films were selected according to the frequency of PMs in the original version, which is highest in both compared to other films in the corpus (see Appendix C). Adopting a qualitative perspective, the dialogues of the two films were manually analysed in order to find out which PMs are used, how frequently and which translation strategies were employed to transfer them into the dubbed dialogues. The texts in the corpus are accessed in the aligned form displayed below (from Michael Clayton, Tony Gilroy 2007):

MICHAEL I remember you. Mi ricordo di te.
PLAYER 1 ‘Cause I lost a lot of weight since then. Ho perso parecchio peso da allora.
MICHAEL You bought some hair too. Ti sei comprato anche i capelli.

The translation strategies were identified in a bottom-up fashion by comparing the dialogues in the two languages. The frequencies of occurrence for each translation strategy were then calculated. Drawing on Baker’s (1992)Baker, Mona 1992 In Other Words: A Coursebook on Translation. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar taxonomy of translation strategies,44.Seven translation strategies: (1) more general word (superordinate), (2) neutral/less expressive word, (3) cultural substitution, (4) loan word with or without explanation, (5) paraphrasis, (6) paraphrasis with unrelating words, (7) omission. the data obtained describe on a fine-grained level how the occurrences of a particular PM are translated into Italian and the frequencies of occurrence for each translation strategy are calculated in percentages out of the total number of occurrences of the PM under investigation. For example, the PM like in the Italian version of Boyhood is omitted 50% of the times, translated as tipo (Eng. like) 30% of the times, as come (Eng. as/like) and ecco (Eng. there you go) 10% of the times it occurs in the film. From a more general point of view, the translation strategies of all the PMs occurring in the dialogues of the two films were compared in order to highlight any common trend or routinised translation, e.g., whether omission is preferred or not.

3.Results

3.1Forms and frequencies

The automatic search for elements tagged as PMs in the anglophone component of the PCFD returned a list of sixteen most frequent expressions (see Table 1 below). PMs represent 0.97% of the anglophone film dialogue (9.71 ptw).

Table 1.Pragmatic markers in the anglophone component of the PCFD
PM Eng – Original – Token Eng – Original – Normalised (ptw)
well 1,103 2.78
(al)right  683 1.79
you know  470 1.23
I mean  333 0.82
so  309 0.81
look  174 0.46
come on  135 0.35
like   87 0.22
anyway   82 0.21
really   77 0.20
sure   76 0.20
though   62 0.15
I think   46 0.12
(you) see   40 0.10
just   28 0.07
sort of    9 0.02
Total 3,714 9.71

The most frequent PM is well (see [3a] below), which is used as a turn-taker introducing a subjective, often divergent, perspective without threatening the face of the addressee (Schourup 2001 2001 “Rethinking Well .” Journal of Pragmatics 33: 1025–1060. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Defour 2008Defour, Tine 2008 “The Speaker’s Voice. A Diachronic Study on the Use of “Well” and “Now” as Pragmatic Markers.” English Text Construction 1 (1): 62–82. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar), prefacing self-correction or as an expression of surprise (Beeching 2016 2016 Pragmatic Markers in British English: Meaning in Social Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). Following in the ranking are the PMs alright or right (see [3b] below) with the function of expressing agreement, compliance or simple acknowledgement of the addressee’s perspective, and you know (see [3c] below), which fulfils a pause-filling, attention-getting, and agreement-seeking function (Beeching 2016 2016 Pragmatic Markers in British English: Meaning in Social Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). I mean and so (see [3d–e] below) display similar frequencies of occurrence (0.82 ptw and 0.81 ptw respectively). The former is used to clarify and justify as well as hedge, while the latter is used as a turn-taker or turn-yielder, whether it is found in initial or final position (Forchini 2010Forchini, Pierfranca 2010 ““Well, Uh No. I Mean, You Know. Discourse Markers in Movie Conversation.” In Perspectives on Audiovisual Translation, ed. by Łukasz Bogucki, and Krzysztof Kredens, 45–59. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Beeching 2016 2016 Pragmatic Markers in British English: Meaning in Social Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Biber et al. 2021 2021 Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar), with a summarising and reformulating function (Fraser 1996 1996 “Pragmatic Markers.” Pragmatics 6 (2): 167–190.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). Further down the ranking are less frequent PMs such as look, come on, like, anyway, really, sure, and so on (see Table 1 above). Look (see [3f] below) is used with an attention-directing and turn-taking function, sometimes asking for the interlocutor’s understanding of the speaker’s point of view (Brinton 2001Brinton, Laurel J. 2001 “From Matrix Clause to Pragmatic Marker: The History of Look-Forms.” Journal of Historical Pragmatics 2 (2): 177–199. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). PM come on (see [3g] below) is used as a hortative encouraging the interlocutor to be cooperative (Andersen 2011 2011 Pragmatic Markers and Sociolinguistic Variation: A Relevance-Theoretic Approach to the Language of Adolescents. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) and perhaps overcome a potentially conflictual situation. Like (see [3h] below) is used to hedge, fill pauses, exemplify, and emphasise (Beeching 2016 2016 Pragmatic Markers in British English: Meaning in Social Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) but also to imply shared knowledge (Ranger 2018Ranger, Graham 2018 Discourse Markers: An Enunciative Approach. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). Anyway (see [3i] below) conveys a concessive attitude towards digressions, concludes and changes topic and signals corrections (Ranger 2018Ranger, Graham 2018 Discourse Markers: An Enunciative Approach. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). Really (see [3j] below) works as an emphasiser, turn-regulator, also suggesting the interlocutor to trust the speaker’s word. With similar functions, sure ([3k] below) also conveys agreement and good disposition (Kallen 2005Kallen, Jeffrey L. 2005 The Semantics and Pragmatics of SURE in Irish English. Available at: https://​www​.researchgate​.net​/publication​/345177664​_The​_semantics​_and​_pragmatics​_of​_SURE​_in​_Irish​_English [accessed Feb 22 2022].). Though ([3l] below) introduces or concludes an utterance which is in contrast with what previously said or with some presuppositions (Lenker 2010Lenker, Ursula 2010 Argument and Rhetoric. Adverbial Connectors in the History of English. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). I think ([3m] below) is used as a hedge to minimise the impact of what is being said by making it sound subjective (Ranger 2018Ranger, Graham 2018 Discourse Markers: An Enunciative Approach. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). You see or see ([3n] below) directs the interlocutor’s attention and appeals to their cooperation given their ability to ‘see’ what the speaker is trying to show (see Erman 1987Erman, Britt 1987 Pragmatic Expressions in English: A Study of You Know, You See and I Mean in Face-to-Face Communication. Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). Just ([3o] below) is used to tone down assertions and point to a particular portion of the utterance. Finally, sort of ([3h] below) conveys approximation and tentativeness thus hedging face-threatening acts (Beeching 2016 2016 Pragmatic Markers in British English: Meaning in Social Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar).

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Examples of PMs in the films of the PCFD

  1. Well, a dozen people heard the shots. (Crash, Paul Haggis 2004)

  2. Right. Again. You know what? (I, Daniel Blake, Ken Loach 2016)

  3. You know, all I’m asking for is a normal amount of perspective. (Notting Hill, Roger Michell 1999)

  4. I mean, all my friends were being left for Donny Osmond or David Cassidy. (Sliding Doors, Peter Howitt 1997)

  5. So you think we scared them, don’t you? (Erin Brockovich, Steven Soderbergh 2000)

  6. Look, when I get to the other hand, I’ll call…(Locke, Steven Knight 2013)

  7. But he’s, come on, a little old for Charlotte. (Autumn in New York, Joan Chen 2000)

  8. You have some sort of, like, blood! (Lady Bird, Greta Gerwig 2017)

  9. Anyway, as far as Lynn goes, why- why would I do that? (Autumn in New York, Joan Chen 2000)

  10. Really, Helen, you’re being suckered. (Dead Man Walking, Tim Robbins 1995)

  11. Sure. Bad games, bad pay, bad towns, bad flights, bad hotels, real bad food. (My Best Friend’s Wedding, P. J. Hogan 1997)

  12. Though, as I hope this essay shows, your acceptance, while it would thrill me, will not define me. (Spanglish, James L. Brooks 2005)

  13. We’re ready to order here, I think. (The Runaway Bride, Garry Marshall 1999)

  14. Now, the problem is that I don’t know her hat size, you see, and I don’t wanna ask her… (Autumn in New York, Joan Chen 2000)

  15. I don’t usually even try to, like, vocalise my thoughts or feelings or anything. Just, I don’t know, it just never sounds right. (Boyhood, Richard Linklater 2014)

Turning to the Italian components of the corpus, in Table 2 below a comparison is drawn between the most frequent PMs in original Italian dialogues and Italian dialogues dubbed from English, both retrieved automatically via pragmatic tag searches.

Table 2.Pragmatic markers in the original and dubbed Italian component of the PCFD
PM Ita – Original (tokens) Ita – Original (ptw) PM Ita – Dubbed (tokens) Ita – Dubbed (ptw)
dai  639 2.20 allora  541 1.58
allora  207 0.71 aai  432 1.26
ecco  190 0.66 (va) bene  427 1.25
(va) bene  156 0.54 d’accordo  312 0.91
guarda  140 0.48 ecco  290 0.85
vabbè/va be’  139 0.48 insomma  203 0.59
d’accordo   93 0.32 su  159 0.47
insomma   79 0.27 beh/be’  147 0.42
su   73 0.25 sai  143 0.42
sai   63 0.22 voglio dire   64 0.19
comunque   55 0.19 guarda   58 0.17
beh/be’   41 0.14 comunque   45 0.13
vedi   27 0.09 vedi   28 0.08
voglio dire   25 0.09 dico   11 0.03
dico   13 0.04 tipo    4 0.01
tipo    3 0.01 vabbè/va be’    2 0.01
Total 1,943 6.69 2,866 8.38

Overall, PMs represent 0.67% (6.69 ptw) of the Italian original dialogues and 0.83% (8.38 ptw) of the Italian dubbed dialogues highlighting a first difference between the two varieties. This also means that Italian dubbed dialogues display a slightly more similar frequency of PMs to anglophone dialogues than Italian original dialogues, which, however, is not significant (p = 0.108). As far as the formal realisations of PMs are concerned, the difference between original Italian and dubbed Italian dialogues is not crucial. The most frequent PMs are dai, allora, va bene, ecco in both varieties (see Table 2 above). Similar to English PM come on, dai ([4a] below) fulfils a prompting function and asks for the interlocutor’s cooperation (Ghezzi and Molinelli 2014Ghezzi, Chiara, and Piera Molinelli eds. 2014 Discourse and Pragmatic Markers from Latin to the Romance Languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). PM allora (Eng. lit. then) ([4b] below) is used as a turn-taker, pause-filler and emphasiser (Bazzanella et al. 2007Bazzanella, Carla, Cristina Bosco, Alessandro Garcea, Barbara Gili Fivela, Johanna Miecznikowski, and Francesca Tini Brunozzi 2007 “Italian Allora, French Alors: Functions, Convergences and Divergences.” Catalan Journal of Linguistics 6: 9–30. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Bazzanella and Borreguero Zuloaga 2011Bazzanella, Carla, and Margarita Borreguero Zuloaga 2011 “ Allora e entonces: problemi teorici e dati empirici.” Discourse Markers in Romance Languages, Oslo Studies in Language 3 (1): 7–45.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). Bene and va bene (Engl. lit. well, goes well) ([4c] below) are used to accept the interlocutor’s perspective or agree with them. When found in utterance-initial position, these expressions also work as turn-takers, similarly to allora, without necessarily entailing the positive implication of acceptance (Lindbladh 2015Lindbladh, Sara 2015 “La semantica e pragmatica dei segnali discorsivi italiani: un confronto tra bene, va bene, be’ e va be’ ” available at: https://​www​.goteborgsuniversitet​.se​/infoglueCalendar​/digitalAssets​/3097043168​_BifogadFil​_Sara%20Lindbladh,%20text,%20seminarium%2027%20okt​.pdf). According to its position in the utterance, PM ecco (Eng. there you go/here you are) ([4d] below) resumes a topic in conversation, expresses agreement or disappointment, concludes a comment or justification, mitigates face-threatening acts and fills pauses (Bazzanella 1995 1995 “I segnali discorsivi.” In Grande grammatica italiana di consultazione – vol. 3, ed. by Lorenzo Renzi, Giampaolo Salvi, and Anna Cardinaletti, 225–260. Bologna: Il Mulino.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; De Cesare 2010De Cesare, Annamaria 2010 “Gli impieghi di ecco nel parlato conversazionale e nello scritto giornalistico.” In Il parlato nella scrittura italiana odierna: riflessioni in prospettiva testuale, ed. by Angela Ferrari, and Annamaria De Cesare, 105–148. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar).

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Examples of the PMs dai, allora, (va) bene, ecco in the films of the PCFD

  1. Dai, dai…a che ora hai la premiazione? (Casomai, Alessandro D’Alatri 2002)

    [Eng: Come on, come on…what time do you have the award ceremony?]55.In all the examples, semi-literal translations into English are provided within square brackets.

  2. Allora, abbiamo fatto la spesa, poi abbiamo mangiato, e adesso facciamo una passeggiata. (Caterina va in città, Paolo Virz 2003)

    [Eng: So, we did the shopping, then ate, and now we’re going to take a walk.]

  3. Bene, abbiamo trovato la capoclasse. (Lezioni di cioccolato, Claudio Cupellini 2007)

    [Eng: Alright, we’ve found the class leader.]

  4. Ecco, allora vuole essere così cortese da ospitare al suo tavolo questi signori, che stanno un po’- un po’ pressati. (La cena, Ettore Scola 1998)

    [Eng: There you go, so would you be so kind as to accommodate these gentlemen at your table? They’re a bit- a bit stressed.]

Differences in preferences emerge, however, for less frequent PMs: guarda and va be’/vabbè are much more frequent in original Italian than dubbed Italian, beh/be’ and voglio dire are more frequent in dubbed Italian. PM guarda (lit. look) ([5a] below) is used to take the conversational turn, direct the attention of the interlocutor and at times to anticipate disagreement (Ghezzi and Molinelli 2014Ghezzi, Chiara, and Piera Molinelli eds. 2014 Discourse and Pragmatic Markers from Latin to the Romance Languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). Despite the shared origins with the PMs va bene and bene, the phonologically reduced forms va be’/vabbè and beh/be’ perform different functions (Lindbladh 2015Lindbladh, Sara 2015 “La semantica e pragmatica dei segnali discorsivi italiani: un confronto tra bene, va bene, be’ e va be’ ” available at: https://​www​.goteborgsuniversitet​.se​/infoglueCalendar​/digitalAssets​/3097043168​_BifogadFil​_Sara%20Lindbladh,%20text,%20seminarium%2027%20okt​.pdf). Va be’/vabbè ([5b] below) may introduce a note of disagreement, but also an attitude of resignation with the aim of concluding a conversation or the discussion of a particular topic (Dardano 2012Dardano, Maurizio 2012 “Vabbè, embè e compagnia bella.” In Noio volevàn savuàr. Studi in onore di Edgar Radtke del sessantesimo compleanno, ed. by Silvia Natale, Daniela Pietrini, Nelson Puccio, and Till Stellino, 27–40. Frankfurt am Main / Berlin / Bern / Bruxelles / New York / Oxford / Wien: Peter Lang.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). Beh/be’ ([5c] below) expresses obviousness, takes the conversational turn while hinting that the content it is introducing is not easy to explain or represents a dispreferred answer (Lindbladh 2015Lindbladh, Sara 2015 “La semantica e pragmatica dei segnali discorsivi italiani: un confronto tra bene, va bene, be’ e va be’ ” available at: https://​www​.goteborgsuniversitet​.se​/infoglueCalendar​/digitalAssets​/3097043168​_BifogadFil​_Sara%20Lindbladh,%20text,%20seminarium%2027%20okt​.pdf). PM voglio dire ([5d] below) introduces self-correction and reformulation while conveying an underlying uncertainty (Bazzanella 1986Bazzanella, Carla 1986 “I connettivi di correzione nel parlato: usi metatestuali e fatici.” In Parallela 2. Aspetti della sintassi dell’italiano contemporaneo, ed. by Lichem Klaus, Mara Edith, and Susanne Knaller, 35–45. Tübingen: Gunter Narr.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Fiorentini 2016Fiorentini, Ilaria 2016 “Segnali discorsivi italiani in situazione di contatto linguistico. Il caso degli indicatori di riformulazione.” Quaderns d’Italià 21: 11–26. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar), similarly to English I mean.

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PMs guarda, vabbè, beh, voglio dire in the films of the PCFD

  1. Guarda, arriva sempre un momento in cui si distrae, parte, va non so dove. (La stanza del figlio, Nanni Moretti 2001)

    [Eng: Look, there’s always gonna be a moment when he gets distracted, when he drifts away, and goes I don’t know where.]

  2. Sì, vabbè, lo dice sempre ma poi non lo fa mai. (Le fate ignoranti, Ferzan Özpetek 2001)

    [Eng: Yeah, well, he’s always saying that but he never does.]

  3. Beh, ha mandato curriculum ovunque, prima o poi l’occasione giusta arriverà. (Perfetti sconosciuti, Paolo Genovese 2016)

    [Eng: Well, he’s been sending resumes everywhere. Sooner or later the right opportunity will come along.]

  4. Ma, voglio dire, il film lo danno anche domani, no? (Casomai, Alessandro D’Alatri 2002)

    [Eng: But, I mean, the film will be on tomorrow as well, won’t it?]

Sai, comunque, vedi, dico, su and tipo occupy similar positions in the ranking of the two varieties (see Table 2 above). These approximately correspond in their functions to the English PMs you know, anyway, you see, I mean and sort of/like respectively. Indeed, as shown in (6) below, sai ([6a] below) appeals to shared knowledge to seek agreement (Bonola and Stoyanova 2020Bonola, Anna, and Nataliya Stoyanova 2020 “Discourse and Pragmatic Markers in Italian Linguistics: Trends and Methods.” Voprosy Jazykoznanija (1): 124–147. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar), comunque ([6b] below) fulfils a resuming and topic-closing function (Fiorentini 2017 2017 “Italian Discourse Markers and Modal Particles in Contact.” In Pragmatic Markers, Discourse Markers and Modal Particles, ed. by Chiara Fedriani, and Andrea Sansò, 417–437. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) and may also correct what was previously said or some presupposition (see [6b] below). Vedi ([6c] below) directs the addressee’s attention and relies on their cooperation in understanding what is being said (Badan 2021Badan, Linda 2021 “Verb-based Discourse Markers in Italian: Guarda, Vedi, Guarda Te, Vedi Te .” In Pragmatic Markers and Peripheries, ed. by Daniel Van Olmen, and Jolanta Šinkuniene, 144–170. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). Dico ([6d] below) is used to reformulate and emphasise (Khachaturyan 2011Khachaturyan, Elizaveta 2011 “Una classificazione dei segnali discorsivi in italiano.” Discourse Markers in Romance Languages 3 (1): 95–116.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar), su ([6e] below) is used with the same functions as dai, sometimes even in combination with it (i.e., dai su) (Cognola and Cruschina 2021Cognola, Federica, and Silvio Cruschina 2021 “Between Time and Discourse: A Syntactic Analysis of Italian Poi .” Annali di Ca’ Foscari. Serie Occidentale 55: 87–116. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). Tipo ([6f] below) is used to hedge or exemplify (Voguera and Borges 2017Voguera, Miriam, and Carla Borges 2017 “Vagueness Expressions in Italian, Spanish and English Task-Oriented Dialogues.” Normas 7 (1): 57–74. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar).

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Examples of the PMs sai, comunque, vedi, dico, su, tipo in the films of the PCFD

  1. Oggi, sai, c’è il saggio di Morgana! (Mi piace lavorare, Francesca Comencini 2004)

    [Eng: Today, you know, Morgana’s got her ballet recital.]

  2. Beh, comunque, lasciamo stare. (La pazza gioia, Paolo Virz 2016)

    [Eng: Well, anyway, forget it.]

  3. Vedi, io e te, ci siamo sempre beccati. (L’aria salata, Alessandro Angelini 2006)

    [Eng: You see, you and I, we’ve always hit it off.]

  4. Dico, io come candidato vesto male. (Diverso da chi, Umberto Carteni 2009)

    [Eng: I mean, for a candidate, I dress poorly.]

  5. È pubblica, ma adesso è occupata da noi, su … (Come te nessuno mai, Gabriele Muccino 1999)

    [Eng: It’s public, but now we’re using it, come on…]

  6. Tipo, te non te lo chiedi mai a quanti anni moriremo? (Come te nessuno mai, Gabriele Muccino 1999)

    [Eng: Like, do you never ask yourself how old we’ll be when we die?]

By observing the similarities and differences between original and dubbed Italian related to the use of PMs, a correlation could be hypothesised between the translation needs and the distribution of PMs in dubbed dialogues. In other words, some Italian PMs could have proven particularly convenient in the rendering of English PMs in dubbing although drifting away from the tendencies displayed by original Italian. This will be further explored in Section 3.2 with the analysis of the translation strategies employed for PMs in two films.

3.2Translation of PMs in film dialogue: The case study of Notting Hill and Boyhood

The case study concerning the translation strategies employed in the translation of PMs in two anglophone films Notting Hill and Boyhood into Italian highlighted the tendency to omit PMs (see Table 3 below) or to translate them with expressions that would transfer the core semantics of the original PM.

The two films display the same hierarchy of frequency of PMs found for the whole PCFD (see Section 3.1 above) with well, you know, I mean and alright being much more frequent than the other 6 PMs identified in the dialogues (see Table 3 below). The first translation strategy analysed here is omission, which is observed to be a preferred translation strategy in Boyhood where 53.57% of PMs are omitted, whereas only 22.82% of PMs are omitted in Notting Hill (see Table 3).

Table 3.Forms and frequencies of PMs in Notting Hill and Boyhood and percentages of omission
Tot (Notting Hill) Tot (Boyhood) Deleted (Notting Hill – Italian dubbed) Deleted (Notting Hill – %) Deleted (Boyhood – Italian dubbed) Deleted (Boyhood – %)
WELL  69  85 17     24.64  32 37.65
YOU KNOW  22  65 14     63.64  49 75.38
I MEAN  19  56  7     36.84  32 57.14
(AL)RIGHT  15  48  2     13.33  25 52.08
SO  10   4  5  50   2    50
REALLY   2   2  2 100   1    50
OKAY   0   5  0   0   4    80
LIKE   0  10  0   0   5    50
ANYWAY   0   2  0   0   0     0
JUST   0   3  0   0   0     0
Total 206 280 47     22.82 150 53.57

Among the most frequently omitted PMs are you know in both Notting Hill and Boyhood, I mean and (al)right in Boyhood, while well is less frequently omitted. Less frequent PMs such as so, really and like are also omitted; however, their frequencies of occurrence are too low to be able to infer a translation trend from the data (see Table 3 above). When considering the functions of the omitted PMs, it appears that omission is bound to happen more frequently with PMs that contextually work as pause fillers and are less essential from a procedural and intersubjective point of view (as appears to be in [7] below). In order to substantiate this deduction, a fine-grained analysis of the omitted PMs in the original and dubbed dialogues is required, which, however, is not in the scope of the present work. It must be noted that, even when mainly working as fillers, omitting so many occurrences of PMs still represents a translation loss in both textual coherence (Chaume 2004Chaume, Frederic 2004 “Discourse Markers in Audiovisual Translating.” Meta 49 (4): 843–855. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Cuenca 2008Cuenca, Maria-Josep 2008 “Pragmatic Markers in Contrast: The Case of Well .” Journal of Pragmatics 40 (8): 1373–1391. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Valdeón 2008Valdeón, Roberto 2008 “Inserts in Modern Script-Writing and Their Translation into Spanish.” In Between Text and Image: Updating Research in Screen Translation, ed. by Delia Chiaro, Christine Heiss, and Chiara Bucaria, 117–132. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) and the reproduction of orality, naturalness, and spontaneity in the dialogue.

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Excerpt from Notting Hill

WILLIAM Er, my friend Max is cooking and he is generally acknowledged to be the worst cook in the world. But, um, you know, you could hide the food in your handbag or something.

The other strategies for rendering English PMs in the Italian dubbed dialogues are displayed in Table 4 below. A first observation concerns the variety of expressions used to translate a single PM. For example, well is translated with seven different expressions in Notting Hill and five in Boyhood. Variation is present even when translating the least frequent PMs such as like, anyway and just which display two or three alternatives. A second observation regards the word classes of the expressions employed to translate English PMs in the Italian dialogues: English PMs do not always correspond to Italian PMs but may be translated with connectives, interjections, verb phrases, response forms, adjectives, and periphrases (see Table 4 below).

Table 4.Translation of PMs into Italian (Notting Hill and Boyhood)
TOT (Notting Hill) TOT (Boyhood) Other strategies (Notting Hill – ITA) Other strategies (Boyhood – ITA)
WELL   69   85 Bè (38), bene (4), ma (3), allora (2), interjections (3), sai (1), ecco (1) beh (44), allora (3), interjections (3), ma (2), e dimmi (1)
YOU KNOW   22   65 ecco (3), sai (3), insomma (2) sai (13), insomma (1), sì (1), nel senso che (1)
I MEAN   19   56 insomma (6), voglio dire (5), su (1) voglio dire (10), insomma (8), cioè (4), comunque (1)
(AL)RIGHT   15   48 certo (7), (va) bene (4), d’accordo (1), capisco (1) (va) bene (9), allora (4), okay (2), d’accordo (2), fatto (1), beh (1), bravi (1), già (1), eh (1), forza (1)
SO   10    4 allora (3), sì (1), perciò (1) allora (2)
REALLY    2    2 0 in realtà (1)
OKAY    0    5 0 mhm (1)
LIKE    0   10 0 tipo (3), come (1), ecco (1)
ANYWAY    0    2 0 comunque (1), allora (1)
JUST    0    3 0 beh (1), solo (1), è che (1)
Total 206 280

For example, in Boyhood the PM you know is translated with the response form sì (Eng. ‘yes’) and the periphrasis nel senso che (Eng. lit. ‘in the sense that’). In Notting Hill the PM I mean is translated with the verb phrase capisco (Eng. lit. ‘I understand’), and in Boyhood with the response form okay, the verb phrase fatto (Eng. lit. ‘done’), the plural adjective bravi (Eng. lit. ‘good’-2PL), and the hortative speech act forza (Eng. lit. ‘strength’, meaning come on/let’s go; see Table 4 above). However, English PMs are translated with Italian PMs or other functionally pragmatic elements (i.e., interjections) more often than ‘non-pragmatic’ expressions (see Table 5 below; e.g., imperatives, adjectives, past participles), thus guaranteeing that the procedural and intersubjective functions of PMs are transferred into the Italian dubbed dialogues.

Table 5.Pragmatic and non-pragmatic translations of English PMs into Italian dubbed dialogues (Notting Hill and Boyhood)
Pragmatic – PM Pragmatic – Interjections Non-pragmatic
WELL 98 6 1
YOU KNOW 22 0 2
I MEAN 31 0 1
(AL)RIGHT 28 1 7
SO  5 0 2
REALLY  0 0 1
OKAY  0 1 0
LIKE  4 0 1
ANYWAY  2 0 0
JUST  0 1 2

Despite the variability of the linguistic expressions used to translate PMs, consistent tendencies can be identified in translation concerning a series of preferred correspondences between English and Italian PMs. These preferences can be best observed in the translation of the four most frequent PMs in the two films, namely well, you know, I mean and (al)right. Indeed, well is most often translated with variants of Italian bene (Eng. lit. ‘well’), namely bè/beh (55.07% and 51.76% of the times well occurs in Notting Hill and Boyhood respectively) and bene (5.79% of the times in Notting Hill) (see [8] below). The reasons for such preference may be found in the semantic and pragmatic overlapping of bene and bè/beh with well as well as the phonological similarities between the English and Italian expressions in terms of length and vowel sound which helps lip-sync.

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Translation of well in Boyhood

MASON Well, I think it must be, if you flick water into the air just right, it’ll turn into a wasp. Beh, io dico, che secondo me, se dai un colpetto all’acqua nell’aria nel modo giusto si trasforma in vespa.

You know is frequently rendered as sai (16.63% and 20.01% of the times you know occurs in Notting Hill and Boyhood respectively) (see [9] below), which reproduces the semantic core of knowing in Italian (sai literally translates to ‘you know’) as well as the procedural and intersubjective pragmatic functions. It should be pointed out that you know is also the PM with the highest percentages of omission (see Table 3 above), therefore the percentages of translation of you know into sai should still be considered as indicators of translation preferences.

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Translation of you know in Notting Hill

MARTIN Shall I, uh, go and get you a cappuccino? You know, ease the pain a bit. Vuoi che ti prenda un cappuccino? Sai, lenisce il dolore.

I mean is frequently translated with the expressions insomma (Eng. lit. ‘in sum’) and voglio dire (Eng. lit. ‘I want to say’) (see [10] below). Insomma translates 31.57% of the occurrences of I mean in Notting Hill and 14.28% in Boyhood, whereas I mean is translated with voglio dire 26.31% of the times it occurs in Notting Hill and 17.85% of the times it occurs in Boyhood. The expression insomma does not transfer the core semantics of I mean as voglio dire does, yet coming closer to the target language which displays a preference for the former over the latter (cf. insomma and voglio dire in original Italian dialogues in Table 2 above). Furthermore, insomma is a convenient choice for lip-sync given the phonological similarity with I mean in terms of nasal consonants and length. Voglio dire retains the semantic core of I mean, i.e., reformulation, yet with a lower degree of naturalness and idiomaticity.

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Translation of I mean in Boyhood (a) and Notting Hill (b)

  1. SAMANTHA But I mean, who dusts anymore? Insomma, è una cosa che non si fa più.

  2. ANNA No, I mean, if it’s fine with you, I’ll be your date. No, voglio dire, se va bene per te, ti accompagno.

Finally, (al)right is most frequently translated with va bene (Eng. lit. ‘goes well’, meaning ‘it’s okay’) or its reduced form bene (see [11] below). This happens 26.6% of the times in Notting Hill and 18.75% of the times in Boyhood. Notting Hill also displays a preference to translate (al)right with certo (Eng. lit. ‘sure’) which happens 46.6% of the times. Both (va) bene and certo preserve the semantics of agreement; the former also keeps its procedural turn-taking and topic-shifting role, while the latter emphasises compliance with the interlocutor thus preserving the intersubjective function.

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Translation of (al)right in Notting Hill

WILLIAM Right, that’s it. Sorry. Bene, ora basta. Scusa.

4.Conclusion

The availability of a corpus of film dialogue (PCFD) which is tagged for parts of speech as well as pragmatic categories has allowed the automatic retrieval and semi-automatic investigation of pragmatic markers in the original anglophone dialogues, their dubbed Italian versions and in original Italian dialogues. The research questions this paper aimed to answer concerned the distribution (i.e., forms and frequencies) of pragmatic markers in the three varieties of film dialogue in order to assess how similar they are to each other as far as the use of pragmatic markers is concerned. Furthermore, both the comparison of the distribution of pragmatic markers between varieties and the case study on the translation of pragmatic markers in two films (i.e., Notting Hill and Boyhood) aimed to gain deeper insight into the translation practices employed with pragmatic markers in order to find out whether routine translations and a translation ‘filter’ (Hervey and Higgins 1992Hervey, Sandor, and Ian Higgins 1992 Thinking Translation. A Course in Translation Method: French to English. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; or ‘filters’ for Katan 2004Katan, David 2004 Translating Cultures: An Introduction for Translators, Interpreters and Mediators. London/New York: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) are observable.

The distributional analysis highlighted that pragmatic markers are frequent features in film dialogue and are present in a variety of forms both in English and Italian. Functionally, pragmatic markers are essential to the speech flow in that they perform procedural and intersubjective tasks: they regulate turn-taking, topic closing or shifting, convey the speaker’s attitude towards content and help to build and maintain the speaker-hearer relationship by asking to cooperate in interpreting what is being said (e.g., you know, you see) and saving face by hedging face-threatening speech acts (e.g., well, I mean) thus working as politeness devices (Brown and Levinson 1987Brown, Penelope, and Stephen C. Levinson 1987 Politeness: Some Universals in Language Use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). Pragmatic markers in film dialogue perform a further function of evoking the idea of orality, naturalness and spontaneity on screen, which, together with other typical features of spoken language, is ultimately supposed to promote the audience’s emotional participation (Taylor 2004Taylor, Christopher J. 2004 “The Language of Film: Corpora and Statistics in the Search for Authenticity. Notting Hill (1998) – A Case Study.” Miscelánea 30: 71–85.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Pavesi 2008 2008 “Spoken Language in Film Dubbing: Target Language Norms, Interference and Translational Routines”. In Between Text and Image. Updating Research in Screen Translation, ed. by Delia Chiaro, Christine Heiss, and Chiara Bucaria, 79–99. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Quaglio 2009Quaglio, Paulo 2009 Television Dialogue: The Sitcom Friends vs. Natural Conversation. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Wissmath et al. 2009Wissmath, Bartholomäus, David Weibel, and Rudolf Groner 2009 “Dubbing or Subtitling? Effects on Spatial Presence, Transportation, Flow, and Enjoyment.” Journal of Media Psychology 21: 114–125.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Forchini 2010Forchini, Pierfranca 2010 ““Well, Uh No. I Mean, You Know. Discourse Markers in Movie Conversation.” In Perspectives on Audiovisual Translation, ed. by Łukasz Bogucki, and Krzysztof Kredens, 45–59. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar).

As far as the translation of pragmatic markers in the film dialogues of Notting Hill and Boyhood is concerned, a tendency to omit these features was observed in Italian dialogues, in particular with the pragmatic markers you know and I mean. Reliance on omission inevitably leads to translation loss and simplification of the complexity of the original dialogue (Baker 1996 1996 “Corpus-based Translation Studies: The Challenges that Lie Ahead.” In Terminology, LSP and Translation: Studies in Language Engineering, in Honour of Juan C. Sager, ed. by Harold Somers, 175–186. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Pavesi 2003Pavesi, Maria 2003 “A Look ‘into’ Simplification and the Translation of Motion Events in Science.” In Complexity in Language and Text, ed. by Lavinia Merlini Barbaresi, 147–168. Pisa: Plus.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Formentelli 2014Formentelli, Maicol 2014 “Exploring Lexical Variety and Simplification in Original and Dubbed Film Dialogue.” In The Languages of Dubbing: Mainstream Audiovisual Translation in Italy, ed. by Maria Pavesi, Maicol Formentelli, and Elisa Ghia, 141–166. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). When pragmatic markers are retained in dubbed Italian, each pragmatic marker corresponds to a variety of forms in translation which allow to transfer at least the core semantics of the original English pragmatic marker. These findings are in line with what was already found in the literature for other languages and in smaller corpora of films (Chaume 2004Chaume, Frederic 2004 “Discourse Markers in Audiovisual Translating.” Meta 49 (4): 843–855. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Cuenca 2008Cuenca, Maria-Josep 2008 “Pragmatic Markers in Contrast: The Case of Well .” Journal of Pragmatics 40 (8): 1373–1391. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Valdeón 2008Valdeón, Roberto 2008 “Inserts in Modern Script-Writing and Their Translation into Spanish.” In Between Text and Image: Updating Research in Screen Translation, ed. by Delia Chiaro, Christine Heiss, and Chiara Bucaria, 117–132. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Romero Fresco 2009Romero Fresco, Pablo 2009 “Naturalness in the Spanish Dubbing Language: A Case of Not-So-Close Friends .” Meta 54 (1): 49–72. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Freddi and Malagori 2014Freddi, Maria, and Chiara Malagori 2014 “Discourse Markers in Audiovisual Translation.” In Multimodal Epistemologies: Towards and Integrated Framework, ed. by Arianna Maiorani, and Christine Christie, 191–209. London/New York: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Guillot 2020 2020 “The Pragmatics of Audiovisual Translation: Voices from within in Film Subtitling.” Journal of Pragmatics 170: 317–330. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). Despite the absence of a one-to-one correspondence between English and Italian pragmatic markers and the variety of Italian renderings for each English pragmatic marker, preferred tendencies in translation could be observed: (i) English pragmatic markers are most often translated with Italian pragmatic markers rather than non-pragmatic linguistic expressions; (ii) well is most often translated with beh/be’ or bene; (iii) you know is most often translated with sai; (iv) I mean is frequently translated with insomma or voglio dire; (v) alright is frequently translated with (va) bene or certo. Routine translations (Pavesi 2008 2008 “Spoken Language in Film Dubbing: Target Language Norms, Interference and Translational Routines”. In Between Text and Image. Updating Research in Screen Translation, ed. by Delia Chiaro, Christine Heiss, and Chiara Bucaria, 79–99. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) seem to be motivated by two main reasons: one is the possibility to maximise the number of semantic and pragmatic traits of the original pragmatic marker transferred into the target language; the second reason is the congeniality of some forms to lip-sync in terms of length and types of phonemes involved (e.g., front vowels, nasal consonants), which also seems to motivate less natural choices for Italian such as the reliance on voglio dire, which is not particularly frequent in original Italian dialogues. Considering both distributional and translation-related data, it is possible to conclude that dubbed Italian comes closer to anglophone dialogues than original Italian dialogues as far as the use of pragmatic markers is concerned.

Notes

4.Seven translation strategies: (1) more general word (superordinate), (2) neutral/less expressive word, (3) cultural substitution, (4) loan word with or without explanation, (5) paraphrasis, (6) paraphrasis with unrelating words, (7) omission.
5.In all the examples, semi-literal translations into English are provided within square brackets.

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Appendix A.English Tagset (CLAWS 7 + pragmatic tags)

Pragmatic tags

AF Address forms (honey, darling, Miss, Sir, etc.)
RF Response forms (yes, no, yep, nope, yeah, okay, etc.)
PM Pragmatic markers (well, just, you know, sort of, I mean, I think, anyway(s), so yeah, so, though, you see, really, okay then)
CF Conversational formulas (How are you? (Are) you okay? Nice to meet you, please, (Good)bye, see you (later), take care, thanks, thank you (very/so much), etc.)
EXT General extenders (or something, and everything, and things, etc.)

Other tags

PRES Presentative (there is/are, etc.)
PPYS Subject you
PPYS Direct object you

UCREL CLAWS7 Tagset

APPGE possessive pronoun
AT article
AT1 singular article
BCL before-clause marker (e.g., in order to)
CC coordinating conjunction (e.g., and, or)
CCB but
CS subordinating conjunction (e.g., if, because)
CSA as
CSN than
CST that
CSW whether
DA after-determiner or post-determiner (e.g., such, former)
DA1 singular after-determiner (e.g., little, much)
DA2 plural after-determiner (e.g., few, several)
DAR comparative after-determiner (e.g., more, less, fewer)
DAT superlative after-determiner (e.g., most, least, fewest)
DB before determiner or pre-determiner (all, half)
DB2 plural before-determiner (both)
DD determiner (e.g., any, some)
DD1 singular determiner (e.g., this, that)
DD2 these, those
DDQ which, what
DDQGE whose
DDQV whichever, whatever
EX existential
FO formula
FU unclassified word
FW foreign word
GE genitive marker
IF for
II general preposition
IO of
IW with, without
JJ general adjective
JJR general comparative adjective (e.g., older, better)
JJT general superlative adjective (e.g., oldest, best)
MC cardinal number (two, etc.)
MC1 singular cardinal number (e.g., one)
MC2 plural cardinal number (e.g., sevens)
MCGE genitive cardinal number (two’s, 100’s)
MCMC hyphenated number (40–50)
MD ordinal number (e.g., first)
MF fraction (e.g., two-thirds)
ND1 noun of direction (e.g., north)
NN common noun (e.g., sheep)
NN1 singular common noun (e.g., book)
NN2 plural common noun (e.g., books)
NNA title (e.g., M. A.)
NNB preceding title (e.g., Mr., Prof.)
NNL1 locative (e.g., Island)
NNL2 plural locative (e.g., Islands)
NNO numeral (e.g., dozen)
NNO2 numeral, plural (e.g., hundreds)
NNT1 temporal, singular (e.g., day)
NNT2 temporal, plural (e.g., days)
NNU unit of measurement (e.g., in, cc)
NNU1 singular unit (e.g., centimetre)
NNU2 plural unit (e.g., feet)
NP proper noun (e.g., IBM)
NP1 singular proper noun (e.g., London)
NP2 plural proper noun (e.g., Browns)
NPD1 singular weekday (e.g., Sunday)
NPD2 plural weekday (e.g., Sundays)
NPM1 singular month (e.g., October)
NPM2 plural month (e.g., Octobers)
PN indefinite pronoun (none)
PN1 indefinite pronoun, singular (e.g., anyone)
PNQO whom
PNQS who
PNQV whoever
PNX1 oneself
PPGE Possessive pronoun (e.g., mine)
PPH1 it
PPHO1 him, her
PPHO2 them
PPHS1 he, she
PPHS2 they
PPIO1 me
PPIO2 us
PPIS1 I
PPIS2 we
PPX1 reflexive (e.g., yourself)
PPX2 plural reflexive (e.g., yourselves)
PPY you
RA adverb (e.g., else)
REX adverb introducing appositions (namely, e.g.)
RG degree adverb (very, so)
RGQ how
RGQV however
RGR comparative adverb (more, less)
RGT superlative adverb (most, least)
RL locative adverb (e.g., alongside)
RP adverb, particle (e.g., about, in)
RPK adv., catenative (about in be about to)
RR general adverb
RRQ where, when, why, how
RRQV wherever, whenever
RRR comparative adverb (e.g., better)
RRT superlative adverb (e.g., best)
RT adverb of time (e.g., now)
TO infinitive (to)
UH interjection (e.g., oh)
VB0 be
VBDR were
VBDZ was
VBG being
VBI be, infinitive
VBM am
VBN been
VBR are
VBZ is
VD0 do
VDD did
VDG doing
VDI do, infinitive
VDN done
VDZ does
VH0 have
VHD had
VHG having
VHI have, infinitive
VHN had (past participle)
VHZ has
VM modal auxiliary (can, will, etc.)
VV0 lexical verb (e.g., give)
VVD past tense of lexical verb (e.g., gave)
VVG -ing participle of lexical verb (e.g., giving)
VVI infinitive
VVN past participle of lexical verb (e.g., given)
VVZ -s form of lexical verb (e.g., gives)
XX not
ZZ1 letter of the alphabet (e.g., A)
ZZ2 plural letter of the alphabet (e.g., A’s)

Appendix B.Italian tagset

AF Address forms (signora, signore, signorina, tesoro, amore, professore, professoressa, dottore, dottoressa, papà, mamma, etc.)
RF Response forms (sì, no, okay, d’ accordo, etc.)
PM Pragmatic markers (dai, ecco, allora, insomma, dico, su, sai, comunque, beh, vabbe, bene, sai, tipo, vedi, guarda, d’ accordo, dai su, a dire il vero)
CF Conversational formulas (ciao, ehi, sera, arrivederci, grazie, prego, salve, benvenuto, benvenuta, benvenuti, buongiorno, scusi, per favore, etc.)
EXT General extenders (eccetera, o altro, piuttosto che, o cose così, o cose del genere, etc.)
POS tags: file:///C:/Users/Utente/Documents/Tagging/ISST-TANL-POStagset.pdf

Appendix C.Frequencies of occurrence of PMs in the anglophone component of the PCFD (ptw)

Film TOTAL
Thelma and Louise  9.19
The Crying Game  4.03
Four Weddings and a Funeral  7.30
Dead Man Walking  2.88
Secrets and Lies  9.12
My Best Friend’s Wedding  5.71
Sliding Doors  9.62
Notting Hill 14.23
The Runaway Bride  6.11
Autumn in New York  7.04
Erin Brockovich  7.62
Saving Grace  4.80
Finding Forrester  5.05
Ocean’s Eleven  2.66
Bend It Like Beckham  5.10
One Hour Photo  5.82
Lost in Translation  7.43
Something’s Gotta Give  8.92
Ae Fond Kiss  7.09
Crash  4.42
Spanglish  4.50
Match Point  8.86
The Holiday 10.17
The Queen  4.27
Michael Clayton  3.04
Two Lovers  7.66
Looking for Eric  9.09
Another Year  6.82
The Best exotic Marigold Hotel  4.56
Locke  7.81
Boyhood 10.61
I, Daniel Blake  9.89
Lady Bird  3.97
Finding Your Feet  7.38

Address for correspondence

Liviana Galiano

University of Pavia

Via Cavallini 5

27100 Pavia (PV)

Italy

liviana.galiano@unipv.it

Biographical notes

Liviana Galiano is a Researcher at the University of Pavia (Italy). Her work is currently focused on the study of the complexity of film dialogue as input for L2 English learners. During her studies at Lancaster University (UK) she became interested in corpus linguistics applied to English grammar studies. Her work focuses on the study of spoken features and their relation to diatopic and diamesic variation. Her research also intersects elements of cognitive linguistics and linguistic typology.

 
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