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Prompted by this question I got to thinking about the placement of the word now.

If it's placed before the comma, it refers to an immediate condition:

You don't want to answer this word-placement question now, do you?

You might want to answer the question, but the situation is not urgent. You could answer it tomorrow. In fact, it might preferable to answer that question tomorrow if, say, it was your lawyer talking to you and your answer was going on the record.

But if you place it this way,

You don't want to answer this word-placement question, now do you?

it hasn't anything to do with time. Now functions in a different capacity, but I'm not really sure what that is. An interjection, perhaps? Something else?

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Robusto
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    Now, now, do you really need to know? ... I'd regard this clause-initial now as a discourse marker equivalent to come or oh: a placatory slowing of the conversation and an invitation to reconsider. – StoneyB on hiatus Jan 04 '13 at 21:59
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    @StoneyB: Interesting that you think it's "placatory". I think it's the precise opposite. You wouldn't use it when speaking to someone in a deferential register, would you now? – FumbleFingers Jan 04 '13 at 22:45
  • @FumbleFingers Quite right; but I would use it with a peer: "Now, FumbleFingers, you don't really think people who carefully avoid splitting infinitives should be put up against a wall and shot." – StoneyB on hiatus Jan 04 '13 at 23:29
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    @FumbleFingers But now I see John Lawler's answer I realize that it does have the opposite use as well: "Now see here, you, who died and made you God?!" Context is everything. – StoneyB on hiatus Jan 04 '13 at 23:33
  • Now let's think about this. Yes, you could say now there is an invitation to reconsider. But in that particular sentence, isn't it always the case that including it either has no effect on the implied relationship between speaker and addressee, *or* it slightly accentuates the sense of "talking down to someone"? I can't see how the word now itself could be held to add (or even, underline) an element of "placation" that's not already there anyway. – FumbleFingers Jan 05 '13 at 16:54

3 Answers3

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The deictic temporal use of now is Semantic.

The meaning of the now of now do you? is not Semantic but Pragmatic. It's what's known as a Discourse Particle or Pragmatic Particle in the trade. It's called a Conversational Management Marker in this paper. (Very boring terminology, I agree. Science is like that; at least it's not in Latin.)

This particular now is often associated with (any combination of (images of)) a shaking finger gesture, a sneering facial expression, and a taunting intonation curve, together comprising a potential off-record face challenge, to put it in terms of politeness theory, one of the branches of pragmatics.

John Lawler
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  • Now I don't read IPA, and it's just taken me 5 minutes to track down this online IPA reader, which is apparently the best of a bad (or non-existent) bunch. I'm guessing @tchrist's ˌoʊkeɪˈhiːɹjəˌgoʊ might be Okay! Hi, J-Lo!, but I gotta say I'm surprised IPA apparently can't be easily (and clearly, intelligibly!) passed through speech synthesisers. – FumbleFingers Jan 05 '13 at 01:26
  • Couldn't resist. I added the first "now" after adding the comment, just so I could wonder exactly what it would convey there (bearing in mind *I* wasn't trying to say anything at the time - just playing with forms). – FumbleFingers Jan 05 '13 at 01:29
  • Nah - it's always "negative". – FumbleFingers Jan 05 '13 at 01:30
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    @FumbleFingers -- no, it's "Okay, here ya go" (in my dialect of English), as he hands me a pint of IPA, per request. Making puns is one of the Seven Warning Signs of Linguistics. – John Lawler Jan 05 '13 at 03:34
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    omg - I had no idea that IPA was known outside England. Haven't drunk it in years. Cheers for the cigar though - "I'll have whatever you're smoking!" (anyway, J-Lo would have been cuter! :) – FumbleFingers Jan 05 '13 at 04:48
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    The best IPA in America for both of you. Get it on draft, if possible. – Robusto Jan 05 '13 at 12:01
  • @Robusto: Sorry about that. I'm aiming more at clarifying than blinding, and I can't help being a scientist; been one all my life and it's too late to change at 70. – John Lawler Jan 05 '13 at 14:12
  • @FumbleFingers: IPA, in various versions (you would not believe some of the versions) is the most popular craft beer in (my part of) America, and I've also found this to be true during the last year in New York, Ann Arbor, Dallas, and Chicago. It's my favorite ale, too. – John Lawler Jan 05 '13 at 14:15
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    @JohnLawler: No, it's OK. I'm mollified by shiny objects. – Robusto Jan 05 '13 at 14:19
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    You might also consider Brutal IPA. – Robusto Jan 05 '13 at 15:08
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    @John: I was drinking IPA from a local brewery from about 15, but I never realised what it stood for until several years later - at which time I think I just assumed it was something brewed exclusively in UK SE (originally, so as to be capable of remaining potable after shipping all the way to India). Hands across the water and all that! I say you can definitely take the measure of a man from what he drinks (me and my business partner always used to hit the Laphroaig to prove our "corporate compatibility"! :) – FumbleFingers Jan 05 '13 at 15:10
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‘The Cambridge Guide to English Usage’ refers to words that ‘relate ideas to each other, helping to show the logic behind the information offered’ as conjuncts. Now, as used in the OP’s example, seems as if it might fit this description. The LSGSWE (‘Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English’), however, goes rather further, and places such words under the overall heading of ‘Linking adverbials’:

The main function of linking adverbials is to clarify the connection between two units of discourse. Because they explicitly signal the link between passages of text, they are important devices for cohesion.

The LSGSWE identifies six major semantic categories of linking adverbial: enumeration and addition, summation, apposition, result/inference, contrast/concession and transition. Now is given under the category of transitional adverbials, but it seems as if the authors have in mind such use as ‘Now, that may be true, but . . .’ It’s more likely that the use of now in the OP’s example is as one of those linking adverbials that 'mark a concessive relationship: they show that the subsequent discourse expresses something contrary to the expectations raised by the precedingclause.' Now is not given as an example under that category, but it seems similar to one or two that are. In particular, it seems to perform much the same function as terminal though.

Now as used in the OP’s example is likely to occur only in speech, and, as such, its sense will be enhanced by prosody rather than by punctuation.

(For anyone unfamiliar with it, the LSGSWE is the stripped-down version of the magisterial ‘Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English’.)

Robusto
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Barrie England
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I'm not really qualified to say what you should call the role of the word "now" in the second example, but I don't think it's right to say it hasn't anything to do with time.

To my mind, it's something like the opposite of a "hedge" (a mitigating word or sound used to lessen the impact of an utterance). Including "now" has the effect of emphasising that you want someone to pay attention/respond now (at this moment, not when/if they get around to it).

So I'll invent my own terminology, and call it an aggressive/belittling "anti-hedge". Alternatively (shamelessly swiped from StoneyB's comment above), it's a discourse marker which in OP's constructions is primarily intended to cast the speaker in a superior position to whoever he's addressing. As can be seen from the fact that repeating it at the start of an utterance conveys an immediate impression of a parent talking down to a child.

FumbleFingers
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