Little words, big meaning – Ideational and pragmatic markers in fictional war discourse

Serhii Zasiekin

doi:10.29038/

Authors

Serhii Zasiekin University College London, UK; Lesya Ukrainka Volyn National University, Ukraine

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.29038/

Keywords:

discourse-pragmatic markers, ideational markers, procedural meaning, LIWC, Bohdan Lepky, fictional war discourse

Abstract

War discourse has gained importance amid today’s global instability due to war-related trauma. Because war often involves trauma, its fictional representation may disrupt language coherence (Bifulco, 2022; van der Kolk, 2014). Discourse coherence, marked by specific linguistic cues, helps readers connect ideas. Without such markers, structure remains implicit, potentially hindering interpretation. From this perspective, ideational and pragmatic discourse markers—little linguistic items that structure and organize text (Redeker, 1990)—are vital. These connectives have “procedural meaning” (Blakemore, 2002), guiding readers to comprehension with less cognitive effort (Sperber & Wilson, 1995). This article examines how such little words with procedural meaning function in fictional war discourse. Using the Ukrainian version of LIWC2015 (Taraban et al., 2022; Pennebaker et al., 2015) and a Welch Two Sample t-test in R, on the basis of the established specific weight of categories in the two sets of texts, it was possible to identify markers of trauma discourse in Lepky's wartime stories. The results demonstrated that war fiction exhibited a statistically significant reduction in text coherence signals, namely discourse markers, both ideational and pragmatic (Zasiekin, 2016). Additionally, there was a greater prevalence of 'tentative' words, or 'mitigation' (Caffi, 2013) pragmatic markers and 'affect' words, including indicators of anxiety with a focus on the present. The findings provide fresh insights into how discourse markers influence structuring traumatic experiences of individual authors or characters depicted in fiction

Acknowledgements

I acknowledge the support of funding from the British Academy, UK

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