RIS ID
115508
Abstract
This article explores how we take responsibility for our past actions in language, using an ideational perspective. It focuses on the way we construe actions in transitive and ergative language patterns and from this develop a cline of responsibility, which has maximum responsibility at the one end and minimum responsibility at the other. The article examines a number of instances of language use from different genres and registers with this cline to determine the extent to which language users take responsibility (or not) for their actions through language.
Publication Details
Dreyfus, S. (2017). 'Mum, the pot broke': Taking responsibility (or not) in language. Discourse and Society: an international journal for the study of discourse and communication in their social, political and cultural contexts, 28 (4), 374-391.