The ‘Drama-Queen’ and Other Conditionals in Real Discourse

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Published: Jun 15, 2018
DOI: https://doi.org/10.47743/lincu-2018-1-0116
Keywords:
conditionals ‘interactional’ conditionals conditionals in context corpus linguistics

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Nadina Cehan
Independent scholar

Abstract

The formal approach to conditionals, treating them in a decontextualized manner, has been the most developed. The present paper shows how problematic this approach can be when conditionals are studied in context. One large class of conditionals could be termed ‘interactional’, and includes formulaic if-clauses of politeness, conditionals which soften the message, speech-act conditionals emphasizing the relevance of some information given beforehand, and paratactic conditionals making promises or issuing threats. It is to this eclectic class that the ‘drama queen’ conditional is added. Recently discovered, this conditional does not deal with either truth or hypotheticality, but with the human emotions of the people who face their reality and compare it with their own past. Not unlike the conditionals that relay the message “It’s absurd!”, the ‘drama queen’ conditionals convey the message “It’s unimaginable!”.

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How to Cite
Cehan, N. “The ‘Drama-Queen’ and Other Conditionals in Real Discourse”. Linguaculture, vol. 9, no. 1, June 2018, pp. 99-106, doi:10.47743/lincu-2018-1-0116.
Issue
Vol. 9 No. 1 (2018)
Section
Articles
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Author Biography

Nadina Cehan, Independent scholar

Nadina Cehan is currently an independent researcher. She holds an MA in TEFL from Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iaşi and a PhD in English linguistics from Babeş-Bolyai University of Cluj. She has conducted research on conditionals and counterfactuals in English, standard versus nonstandard language, standardisation and dialects. Her publications include corpus studies on English counterfactuals and conditionals, studies on computer games and learning, and a book on Nonstandard Counterfactuals in English. At the moment, she is interested in the history of English grammar writing.

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