Exploring the fuzzy boundaries between newsmarks and change-of-state tokens in High German and Low German talk-in-interaction – A variational-pragmatic and interactional perspective

By adopting the approaches of variational pragmatics and interactional analysis, this paper presents a comparative analysis of ‘newsmarks’ as token-based responses, registering a prior turn as new information in mundane conversation in two different varieties of one language, namely North-West High German (NHG), a regional near-standard variety, and the Westphalian Low German dialect variety (LoG). It aims to illustrate how a variational perspective can further our understanding of analytic concepts that are largely based on single-language studies. In particular, we address the fuzzy boundaries between newsmarks and change-of-state tokens (CoSTs). Based on a mixed methods approach of quantitative and qualitative analysis, we show that NHG and LoG differ in the formats routinely used for marking a prior as news. Moreover, our study reveals that while in NHG newsmarks and CoSTs tend to be lexically specialized resources, speakers of LoG routinely deploy polyfunctional resources such as the CoST achso as newsmarks. In addition, we discuss the role of prosody as a contextualization cue in the use of achso as a polyfunctional token. In sum, this paper sheds new light on the continuum between newsmarks and CoSTs in talk-in-interaction and contributes to our understanding of these indexes in comparative variational pragmatics. • Combines variational pragmatics and interactional analysis on newsmark research. • Focus on two varieties, i.e., northwest High German (NHG) and Low German (LoG). • Quantitative analysis reveals impact of variety and age on newsmark use in German. • Speaker-related differences in the use of ‘signature newsmarks’. • Fuzzy boundary between newsmark and change-of-state token use only in LoG.