Echoic utterances: Concept, functions, and ostensive inferential relationships

Abstract

This paper analyzes the concept echoic utterance aiming to understand its origin, to disambiguate its definition, study and exemplify its ability to produce implicit content (conventional, unconventional and their respective subtypes) and to focus / emphasize previously mentioned ideas, and illustrate its versatility to perform multiple functions. Based on the diachronic review of the main investigations about echoicity and the creation of a corpus of examples taken from the press, we analyze its discursive sources (self-repetition and allo-repetition), its relationship with will and intention, and the possibility of creating presuppositions, tropic inferences, generalized or particularized conversational implicatures and guessworks. Finally, we study the functional power of echoic utterances to express, appeal, beautify, keep the communication channel open, create metalinguistic expressions, ironize, converse sarcastically, etcetera.