Besemeres, Mary & Wierzbicka, Anna (2003). Pragmatics and cognition: The meaning of the particle lah in Singapore English. Pragmatics & Cognition, 11(1), 3-38. DOI: 10.1075/pc.11.1.03bes
This paper tries to crack one of the hardest and most intriguing chestnuts in the field of cross-cultural pragmatics and to identify the meaning of the celebrated Singaporean particle lah, the hallmark of Singapore English. In pursuing this goal, the authors investigate the use of lah and seek to identify its meaning by trying to find a paraphrase in ordinary language that would be substitutable for lah in any context. In doing so, they try to enter the speakers’ minds, and as John Locke urged in his pioneering work on particles, published in 1691, “observe nicely” the speakers’ “postures of the mind in discoursing”. At the same time, they offer a general model for the investigation of discourse markers and show how the methodology based on the NSM semantic theory allows the analyst to link pragmatics, via semantics, with the study of cognition.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
