The parenthetical discursive level

This paper proposes a revision of the status of the long parenthetical (i.e., formed by more than one phonological word) within the theoretical framework of Language into Act Theory (L-AcT). Using empirical evidence from spontaneous speech corpora, we argue that the long parenthetical should not be understood as a non-illocutionary informational unit within an informational pattern but rather as a distinct discursive level. Our findings indicate that the parenthetical level temporarily suspends the illocutionary level, allowing the speaker to momentarily distance themselves from the here and now of the ongoing utterance to provide additional metalinguistic information or perform secondary illocutions. We show evidence that indicates that the parenthetical level is structured around illocutionary units, follows the same organizational principles as other discursive levels, and exhibits distinct prosodic characteristics, including lower average f0 and higher articulation rate. Additionally, we show that the parenthetical level is recursive and can also occur within the metaillocutionary level. Finally, evidence from gestural studies suggests that transitions to the parenthetical level are accompanied by systematic changes in gestural pattern, similarly to how it occurs at the metaillocutionary level.