The role of discourse markers in the construction of multivocality in Israeli Hebrew talk in interaction

This study investigates the use of discourse markers in the "layering of voices" (Bakhtin, 1981) in Israeli Hebrew talk in interaction. Previous studies employed a definition of discourse markers having both a semantic and a structural component. The components of this definition coincided in 94% of the cases found in the database. The remaining 6% satisfied the semantic, but not the structural, component of the definition. The exceptions comprising these 6% are the subject of this study. A closer examination of these discourse markers shows that the majority of them are employed in 2 subcategories of multivocality: constructed dialogue and self-rephrasal. Both introduce a voice "of second order" into the discourse - either a voice of another person in some narrated world or the self-correcting voice of the speaker. The discourse markers differ also in their distribution across contextual realms (Becker, 1988/1995a) in a way that correlates with the role these markers play in constructing multivocality. Finally, the study illuminates the ways in which these atypical discourse markers fit in the general system of discourse markers segmenting Israeli Hebrew talk in interaction.