Por un lado, por otro: discourse organization, informative structure and argumentation

Abstract

The discourse markers por un lado, por otro lado ‘on the one hand, on the other hand’ have been studied by different authors as a correlative pair that organizes discourse by introducing two discourse segments as answers (comments) to the same topic. Nevertheless, the role of the argumentative contexts in which they appear has not received enough attention yet. The aim of this article is to demonstrate through a series of descriptive analysis with corpus examples how conceptual meaning plays a pivotal role in transferring an argumentative value to both discourse organizers.