The Communicative Function of English Parenthetical Constructions

Abstract

The main function of parenthetical constructions is to characterize the sentence from the position of the speaker to the listener. In English parenthetical constructions are essential, since they not only connect ideas, sentences, paragraphs making them more cohesive, but also introduce contrast or opposition, emphasis or agreement, purpose, result or conclusion, etc.

We try to demonstrate how parenthetical constructions provide and convey communicative functions in spoken and written discourse. However, one should also note that parenthetical constructions cannot carry out the communicative shifts independently; hence the certain communicative shift is relatively dependent on the context.