Besides as a connective (2014)

Please cite as: Hannay, Mike, Martínez Caro, Elena & Mackenzie, J. Lachlan (2014) Besides as a connective. In: Gómez González, M.A. Ruiz de Mendoza-Ibáñez, F., Gonzálvez, F. & Downing, A. (eds.) The Functional Perspective on Language and Discourse:

Applications and Implications. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 223-242.

Besides as a connective

Mike Hannay

Elena Martínez Caro

J. Lachlan Mackenzie

1. Introduction

Among the various uses of besides in contemporary English is its deployment as an additive

connective.1 Like moreover, furthermore, likewise, and in addition, it indicates that the

discourse unit it introduces is to be interpreted as additional to what has preceded. More

precisely, we may expect to find it where one or more arguments have already been given in

support of a proposition and a further argument is to be added. Grammarians have tended to

assume that the various additive connectives of English are interchangeable; dictionaries

usually define them in terms of each other; and style guides for both native and foreign

writers are normally satisfied to provide a simple list of additive connectives. If any

distinction is made, it is in terms of the etymological meaning of moreover and furthermore as

advancing the ongoing argument (cf. the presence of the morpheme more) and that of besides,

containing the morpheme side, as introducing subsidiary or tangential information.

Informal examination of the use of besides in context, however, suggests that it has

particular specificities of use that mark it off as unusual and as quite different from what is

generally assumed in the scholarly literature. Consider the following example from the BNC

Corpus (Davies 2004):

(1) So what are the odds on Anne and Tim staying together ’til death do them part, when all

the other Royals have failed? Statistics alone cannot give the answer. After all, there is a

100 per cent marriage failure rate for their generation of the House of Windsor. But they

will not have the pressures of other couples in which one is divorced. They will not have

1 Hannay and Mackenzie gratefully acknowledge financial support from the grants INCITE09 204 155PR (XUGA) and FFI2010-19380 (MICINN); Martínez Caro from grant FFI2009-07308 (MICINN).



worries over money, housing and difficulties with an ex-partner over the children.

Besides, Anne is recognised as the most level-headed of the Queen's children. She

very rarely puts a foot wrong -- and she is not likely to have made the same mistake

twice. (BNC: CBC – W_newsp_other_social) 2

Here, any other connective than besides seems inappropriate. In order to achieve greater

understanding why this should be, the present contribution relies on contextual analysis of

data drawn from different kinds of texts. An important inspiration for us is the pioneering

work of Chris Butler in corpus linguistics in general and in lexical corpus work in particular

(Butler 1985, 2000, 2008).

More specifically, we will build on previous studies of besides by Traugott (1997) and

Yeung (2009). Traugott, in a paper on the emergence and grammaticalization of discourse

markers in English, tracks the development of besides from a preposition/adverb denoting

non-central location (as in the Present-Day English preposition beside) to its contemporary

use as signalling an ‘afterthought’. The notion of afterthought entails two properties: finality

(since the afterthought comes after all preceding considerations) and tangentiality (since the

afterthought is not integrated into the conceptual structure that has gone before). Yeung, who

focuses on the use of besides in argumentation, similarly regards ‘afterthought’ as its primary

function (2009: 338), but she also sees it as reinforcing the ongoing argumentation and even

as clinching the argument. How can it be that besides is both tangential and decisive, as it

certainly seems to be in (1) above? This is what we intend to examine in this article,

proposing an analysis of the connective besides which accounts for how it functions in

different text types, including academic texts.

The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 provides a brief descriptive

overview of the connective besides in comparison to other grammatical functions it has in

Present-Day English, as well as providing a summary of Yeung’s (2009) analysis. Section 3

first presents our own analysis of the contemporary use of besides in data from the British

2 In the examples besides is marked off in bold and italics and the argument accompanying besides appears in bold. In some examples, some other parts where attention is focused may be also marked in bold as appropriate.



National Corpus (BNC; Davies 2004) and the Corpus of Contemporary American English

(COCA; Davies 2008), and Section 4 gives a historical perspective on the basis of a

consideration of 19th-century data from COHA (Davies 2010) and other sources. We conclude

with a summary of our main findings and their possible implications for linguistic analysis

and language teaching.

2. Besides in Present-Day English

2.1 Descriptive overview

Besides belongs to three categories in Present-Day English: preposition, phrase-final adverb

and connective. These are exemplified in (2-4) respectively, all taken from the BNC:

(2) Easton’s population, besides being Protestant, is also disproportionately middle class.

(BNC: A5Y – W_ac_polit_law_edu)

(3) … we’ve got more than enough assets to cover the borrowings we’ve got at the moment

and indeed many more besides. (BNC: JS9 – S_meeting)

(4) “It’s my job to get past him and his job is to stop me. Besides, I don’t think anyone sets

out with the intention of hurting people.” (BNC: CH3 – W_newsp_tabloid)

As a preposition, besides has a distinctly additive meaning, as against the locational meaning

of beside. Compare (5) and (6) in this context (both from Quirk et al. 1985: 680):

(5) Beside Mary there stood a young man.

(6) Besides Mary there were several other students in the hall.

When it occurs after negative expressions as in (7), besides is synonymous with except and

apart from (Swan 2005: 104).

(7) He has nothing besides his salary [= except his salary, apart from his salary]



The additive meaning is also found in the phrase-final adverb, as in (3) above. Note that in

both (2) and (3) besides can be replaced by in addition (to):

(2´) Easton’s population, in addition to being Protestant, is also disproportionately middle

class.

(3´) … we’ve got more than enough assets to cover the borrowings we’ve got at the moment

and indeed many more in addition.

Where besides is a connective and functions as a conjunct, however, as in (4) above,

replacement with in addition is not readily possible:

(4´) “It’s my job to get past him and his job is to stop me. ??In addition, I don’t think anyone

sets out with the intention of hurting people.”

Notice that the prepositional phrase besides this can also function as a conjunct and in keeping

with the prepositional status of besides has a simple additive meaning:

(8) The statistical analysis was carried out according to the intention to treat principle: all

patients, including withdrawals from treatment and patients with poor compliance,

remained in the group to which they were assigned by randomisation. Besides this, we

present a per-protocol analysis which is restricted to a group of patients in which study

protocols were followed throughout. (COCA: acad, Lancet)

The connective besides typically occurs clause- or sentence-initially and at any rate

immediately before the discourse unit containing the relevant argument. Sometimes the

position is not strictly initial in that it is preceded by a coordinating conjunction. This is

usually and, as in (9):

(9) I’d also say travel has helped me change from being a pessimist to being an optimist.

Hope is a better message than fear or scarcity, and besides, which side would you rather



be on? What are your favorite countries? South Africa and Syria. Can you share your

most trying moments in travel? (COCA: magaz, Psychology Today)

The discourse function of the connective besides has, with the exception of the study by

Yeung (2009) to be discussed in Section 2.2, had little attention in the literature. Most of the

existing statements come from textbooks intended for learners of English or from studies of

learner discourse. Whereas Hornby (2005) simply states that it is used “for making an extra

comment that adds to what you have just said”, Ball (1986: 27) invokes the receiver when he

defines the function of besides as being “to add a new piece of information or evidence in

order to convince the listener or reader”. The Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English

(2003) states no more than that it is used “when adding another reason”, although it does add

that it is a feature of spoken English. Other dictionaries are more specific: for instance,

Cobuild (2009) observes that besides “is used to emphasize an additional point that you are

making, especially one that you consider to be important”; and Rundell (2007) notes that it is

used “when you are adding another stronger reason to support what you are saying”.

The notion that the point introduced by besides is stronger or more important than those

which precede is also implicit in the study by Gilquin and Maquot (2007: 6), who go further,

however, claiming that the typical function of besides is “to introduce a final point or

argument that is decisive”. The same idea can be found in Hannay and Mackenzie (2009:

251), who describe the use of besides as a signal to introduce the last argument to support a

claim, an argument which will be “the decisive one, perhaps even strong enough to make the

other arguments more or less irrelevant”. Taken together, then, existing treatments suggest

that besides is appropriate where the point it introduces is (a) the last one in a chain, (b)

stronger than the preceding ones and (c) potentially decisive; in addition there is mention of

convincing the addressee and of besides as belonging to the spoken medium.

2.2 Yeung’s (2009) analysis

The only existent study fully devoted to besides is that of Yeung (2009). She focuses on the

difficulties experienced by advanced learners of English, specifically by Chinese-speaking



learners in Hong Kong, who are shown – in a comparison with native-speaker writers – to

overuse besides massively in their academic writing. Using the Cobuild Database, she

observes that in the subcorpora of native-speaker editorials and research articles (as well as

the abstracts), the connective besides is completely absent. Yeung concludes that besides is

generally inappropriate in academic writing and that, to judge by their liberal use of the

connective, her learners are unaware of this fact. Examining a range of contexts in which

learners made unidiomatic use of besides, she surmises that the fault lies with their textbooks,

which offer the user a basket of conjuncts, without indicating when each is usable and when it

is not.

Yeung’s work extends to all the genres in the Cobuild Database, and there she finds 183

tokens of besides as a sentence-initial connective. In the genres where it does occur (largely

conversational and narrative), Yeung identifies five rhetorical functions of besides. Firstly,

besides occurs in argumentative passages of conversations and narrations, and Yeung

exemplifies the co-occurrence of besides with various linguistic structures (such as

conditionals and negation) that are typical of such contexts. Secondly, she points out that

language users intend the additive connective besides to spark off an inference. Yeung’s third

observation – in keeping with the literature summarized in Section 2.1 – is that besides

strongly tends to mark the final point in an argument. Not only that, but that point is often

“more basic” and “sometimes stronger”, and helps to “clinch the argument” and “give a sense

of finality” (2009: 337). The fourth function of besides identified by Yeung is mentioned only

briefly and pertains to its being ‘a link for a different viewpoint’ (2009: 338); since there is a

lack of clarity here about the notion ‘viewpoint’, we will return to this concept. Her final

claim is that besides is a marker of afterthought, which she later identifies as its ‘primary

function’ (2009: 338).

All in all, Yeung’s paper has the merit of providing a much more thorough account of

besides than was available before. However, the five points do not gel into a unified

understanding of when it is appropriate in discourse. This is the challenge that we turn to in

Section 3.



3. Data analysis

For our own analysis we used the interface developed by Davies (2004, 2008) and extracted

data from two corpora: the British National Corpus (BNC; Davies 2004) and the Corpus of

Contemporary American English (COCA; Davies 2008). These corpora share a number of

text types, which enabled us to compile data from spoken discourse, news texts, magazines

and academic texts. For each corpus we extracted the first 50 examples from each text type;

however, for the BNC this was not possible as for some text types there were less than 50

cases in total. The total number of cases in our sample is 359.

Our data confirm that the connective besides tends to occur in an argumentative setting.

The relevant segments of the texts in our sample all involve a simple argument string which

consists of a claim, one or more arguments in support of the claim, and a besides argument.

The data also confirm that, rather than just providing an additional argument to the previous

ones already presented, besides introduces a crucial point to the discussion, the argument that

seals it.

In our data, however (and this constitutes our new claim), we have found that the

connective besides functions in two, related but also sufficiently distinct, main environments.

In the first, besides precedes a final argument in the same line of thought as the previous ones

stated before, providing thus an objective final argument which serves to reinforce and clinch

the ongoing discussion. The besides argument here clearly entails the notion of finality

(introducing the final argument in a set of several, related, claims) but also commonly signals

afterthought. We see the notion of afterthought as expressing that the besides argument is

used after the discussion seems to have come to an end, and once the language user realizes

there is one more argument that she3 would like to add, which is the one introduced by

besides. This ‘objective’ function of besides will be discussed in 3.1.

In the second environment, the besides argument is typically different in kind from the

preceding argument(s), bringing a personal, attitudinal dimension into the discourse. As we

3 In keeping with a practice we approve of, the generic speaker/writer will be referred to as ‘she’ and the hearer/reader as ‘he’.



will see in Section 3.2, where this function of the connective is discussed, the besides

argument redirects the discourse to a more strongly interactive plane. The language user,

having presented one or more arguments for her claim, monitors the effectiveness of her

argumentation and concludes that a more personal appeal to the addressee is needed to clinch

the argument. She invites the addressee to see the matter at hand from a joint, intersubjective

viewpoint and in that way succeeds in convincing him. The besides argument thus seems

stronger because of its personal appeal. It is not an afterthought, but a reorientation that can be

the basis for a new line of discourse.

In this section we seek to characterize the nature of the argument in these two

environments, looking at certain features, of a qualitative and linguistic character, associated

with each of them.

3.1. ‘Besides’ as an objective marker

Example (10) provides a good illustration of the function of besides as an ‘objective marker’.

In this use, the connective introduces a final point in a given discussion; the language user

employs it to follow the same line of thought and to give an additional argument to the

discussion at hand:

(10) Local cynics say fulfilment of the prediction would justify the name of the piazza in

which the tower leans – the Field of Miracles. But for Pisa, which has lost much of its

income from tourism since the tower was closed more than two years ago for safety

reasons, the real miracle is that work is to start at last. Bitter controversy about the

best way of saving the tower caused long delays. The tower, it was generally believed,

was unlikely to fall for at least a century. But there were fears that it would soon lean

too far to be corrected. Now the first phase of recovery – strapping the lowest loggia

with five steel bands between four and 16 inches thick – could be completed by Easter.

Their purpose, the commission says, is to apply what it calls ‘circumferential pre-

compression’ to the tower at its most critical point. Prof Piero Pierotti of Pisa



University, one of the most vociferous opponents of the project, says that using metal

bands instead of cables may damage the tower’s marble. ‘Besides, that is not the point

where it is weak,’ Prof Pierotti added. Prof Pierotti also has doubts about the second

phase – using 600 tons of lead weights under the base of the tower on its northern side

to prevent the angle of incline growing. He said that (...) (BNC: AHX –

W_newsp_brdsht_nat_misc)

In (10) there is a general discussion about the best way of saving and restoring the famous

Tower of Pisa and how that has caused “bitter controversy” in Italy (cf. the first line in bold in

the extract). The writer mentions two phases of recovery that have been proposed. The first

involves “strapping the lowest loggia with five steel bands between four and 16 inches thick”

and related to this, two positions are reported, that of the commission in charge of the

recovery of the tower and that of one of the most important opponents of the project. Besides

introduces the second and final argument given by this opponent to reject the plans for the

first phase of recovery. Notice that right after that, the discussion moves on to the second

phase of recovery. Besides thus rounds off the discussion relating to the first phase and is thus

a good illustration of the notion of finality associated with the besides argument.

The following example, in which the focus is on a school in Chicago against the

background of the question how to fix America’s worst schools, can be seen as an illustration

of the afterthought function. The writer is commenting on whether a change of teaching staff

is a requirement for improving the quality of teaching in schools in the US. In the discourse

preceding the besides argument, several ideas are provided for and against this position,

including the parents’ opinion on this. The besides argument brings about an additional

viewpoint – that the improvement can be made even without having to change the staff –

given as an afterthought to the previous discussion, which permits the reader to view the

previous discussion from a different perspective:

(11) Many turnaround experts – and a number of principals – argue that without replacing the

staff, it is impossible to achieve the radical change that’s necessary, or to get the adults



to embrace it. Unions and others say such wholesale turnovers often do away with the

people who know the kids best, including many who are outstanding teachers. They

argue that outside the big urban districts, it’s simply not possible or practical to change

the teaching staff. Parents, in particular, are often outraged to see teachers they love lose

their jobs. Besides, some schools have managed to improve without replacing staff.

(COCA: news, Christian Science Monitor)

In our sample, besides has been found in combination with certain formal features

which enhance its argumentative value in rhetorical discourse and which help express the

meanings that we have associated with it. Among these features, the use of evidential markers

indicating the source of the argument following besides (3.1.1) and the brevity of the clause

where this argument occurs (3.1.2) are mainly used in instances where besides functions as an

objective marker.

3.1.1 Argument deriving from a different source

As a connective introducing an argument in the same line of thought, besides may be

accompanied by indicators that the information transmitted comes from a third party rather

than from the speaker herself. Thus, subordinate and comment clauses are used as markers of

evidentiality, where the source of the information in the argument is identified as deriving

from a third party. See the following examples:

(12) Proud tenants show visitors the beautifully designed prefabricated homes, with central

heating, air-conditioning, and fitted kitchen, which a team from Italy completed in July.

It is temporary accommodation which puts most permanent local housing to shame.

Ariak Chopanyan and his wife offer coffee while four small children rush about the

brand-new, single-storey house. Two are her brother’s children – their parents died in

the disaster. ‘We are supposed to move from here when our new flats are ready, but no

one will want to go. Besides, the new houses will be tall,’ he said. (BNC: A8X –

W_newsp_brdsht_nat_report)



(13) The European Commission last year proposed that all EC railways should separate track

operation from running services, in the hope that it would then be easier to open up

national railways to outside competition. And Sweden successfully split its railway track

from services in 1988. Mr Rifkind is lukewarm about the idea. He fears that a private-

sector British track-owner would be a monopolist with little incentive to be efficient.

Besides, as BR executives cogently argue, the quality of the track and the services that

run on it are increasingly linked. The next advance in signalling will be the introduction

of computers-in-the-cab. (BNC: ABK – W_pop_lore)

By presenting the argument introduced by besides as being associated with a third party, the

writer avoids the responsibility for the trustworthiness of that argument. In (12), however, this

function is combined with the use of an evaluative marker (cogently), expressing a positive

stance of the writer towards that argument. Further examples include similar subordinate

clauses such as as is evident and parenthetical clauses with a reporting verb, such as he said, X

adds and others.

Parenthetical phrases, of the type of according to X and to X, can have the same

function. Along the same lines, the point introduced by besides in (14) is associated with a

different source by the use of a passive with a mental predicate of cognition (expect):

(14) That decision called for the establishment of joint working parties, for each of the

subject areas, with responsibility for devising guidelines for the new syllabuses and

specifying the detailed criteria relating to their assessment. The activities of these joint

working parties was [sic] extensive and entailed the substantial involvement of teachers

in Scotland in curriculum development work. The intention clearly was to make sure

that guidelines developed reflected enterprising classroom practice. Besides, within the

central guidelines, schools and teachers themselves were expected to exercise their

skills and responsibilities for determining what pupils should learn. (BNC: acad,

CN5 – W_acad_polit_law_edu)

3.1.2 Brevity of the clause expressing the argument following ‘besides’



The pragmatic force of the argument introduced by besides can be reinforced by the use of a

brief clause which, being put simply and sharply, stresses the point put forward in the

argument. This is the case of the clause following besides in (15):

(15) The life of the high aristocracy was lived on the move and in the open; tranquillity and

privacy evaded them. For a lord’s status was directly related to the size of following he

could support, and the larger his entourage the more frequently he had to move from

estate to estate to feed them. The count of Flanders was usually accompanied by

between fifty and a hundred armed men; the duke of Aquitaine took a hundred knights

with him on a visit to the viscount of Ventadour. Besides, there were the animals.

Duke Robert of Burgundy expected Gilly, an estate of St Germain-des-Prés, to provide

food for his dogs as well as lodging for his horses and their grooms. (BNC: EA7 –

W_acad_humanities_art)

In this extract, the writer discusses the life of the high aristocracy in France in the 10th to 12th

centuries, and how these people were constantly on the move (from estate to estate) and

accompanied by their entourage, basically armed men and knights. In that context, besides

introduces a shift of local topic by means of a brief clause (an existential), which presents the

animals the high aristocrats also needed to attend to. This example, from our subcorpus of

academic texts, illustrates a certain degree of ‘informalization’ of discourse (cf. Leech et al.

2009: 239-240, 247) recently evidenced in the academic text-type, mainly in the field of the

humanities and also sometimes present in the social sciences. Thus, contrary to the results

found by Yeung (2009) on the total absence of instances of besides in academic texts, our data

do show some instances of besides in this text-type, although the effect is generally informal.

This issue will be further commented on in the Conclusion.

3.2. ‘Besides’ as an (inter)subjective marker

As anticipated above, a second environment where besides is found, according to our data, is

where it introduces an argument which is different in kind from the preceding one(s),



providing a personal and, to the extent that it involves the addressee, an intersubjective

dimension to the discourse that follows.

3.2.1 A sense of ‘absoluteness’

The besides argument in this use presents a different perspective with respect to the other

argument(s) given. It represents an all-powerful argument, with a sense of ‘absoluteness’,

suggesting that all other possible arguments are superfluous to the discussion. Thus, consider

the following example:

(16) In court, cold case investigator Linda Branchflower offered a review. The e-mails, she

said, revealed Mechele was manipulating Kent, conning him, and at the same time

plotting with Carlin to kill him. For example, in one e-mail Carlin tells Kent he’s no

romantic rival. He couldn’t be. In essence, he says, I’m fat, I’m bald, have no social

graces; and besides, I’m impotent. But at the same time, Carlin was e-mailing Mechele

expressing his deep love, thanking her for giving him the most special night of his life.

(COCA: spok, Dateline NBC 9:00 PM EST NBC)

In this extract, reporting on an investigation into the murder of a man called Kent Leppink,

the idea that the man speaking (Carlin) is impotent is presented, in the discussion about him

being a possible ‘romantic rival’, as the absolute argument which puts all previous ones given

in the shade. Notice how the besides argument is the basis for the further discourse, as

illustrated in the sentence that follows the one including besides.

Another relevant example is the following, where the idea of ‘the president having

been shot’ is presented as a strong, crucial point in the discussion, with the sense of ‘nothing

else matters now’:

(17) I first was sent down to the police station because we had heard a man had been arrested

who had a load of dynamite in his car. It turned out that he had nothing to do with it. He

was just a demolition contractor. But then I went back to the ‘Star-Telegram,’ and I'd

just walked in the door when the phone rang on the city desk. I picked up the phone, and



a woman said, Is there anybody there who can give me a ride to Dallas? Well, I said,

Lady, you know, this is not the taxi service. And besides, the president's been shot.

She said, Yes, I know. I heard it on the radio, and I think my son is the one they’ve

arrested. Well, it was Lee Harvey Oswald’s mother. I forgot all that business about not

being a taxi service. I asked her where she lived... (COCA: spok, CNN_KingWknd)

Where besides has this connotation of ‘absoluteness’, the examples may contain expressions

such as anyway, in any case and others, reinforcing the absolute nature of the argument.

Consider (18-19) in this respect:

(18) If the conspiracy theory is an argument, then it is not directed rhetorically against its

obvious object. Conspiracy theorists do not address their argument to the enemies

identified by the theory, for they are deemed to be beyond argument. Nothing will

dissuade them from their evil plans. Besides, in any case, they know about the

conspiracy, and consequently the conspiracy theorist has no hidden truths to announce

to the conspirators. (BNC: FA9 – W_acad_soc_science)

(19) During his second visit to take pictures at Angkor, Izu visited a government-run hospital

and saw a seven-year-old girl die as he and her father sat at her side. The same age as his

own daughter back in the States, she had been in a coma for three days but had received

no medical treatment because the place had little to offer; the doctors at government

facilities seemed to concentrate on their own, better-paying private practices. And

besides, her family couldn’t have afforded it anyway. Though his otherworldly black-

and-white images would eventually make him well-known in photography circles, Izu

was not a rich man or a famous man or a powerful man. But the instant that the girl died,

he became a determined man: he would bring medical treatment to the children of

northern Cambodia. (COCA: magaz, TownCountry)

3.2.2 Providing a personal view



One important aspect of this second use of besides, as an (inter)subjective marker, is to signal

an emotive, personal value for the user, with the preceding arguments being dismissed as

being more rational, or closer to the matter at hand. This is connected with the idea of the

‘crucial point’ mentioned above in the sense that the very emotive nature of the argument

indicates that it decisive, crucial, for the speaker.

In this use, besides combines with evaluative expressions, indicating a positive or

negative attitude or stance towards the argument. Consider (20):

(20) But that first dive gave me the taste. And I wanted to do much more. To actually see

crabs scuttling across the floor and live sponges and even real live fish was astonishing.

I had only ever seen them in a tank or on a slab and this was totally different. To see

them within their realm, led me to understand why divers go on and on about fish and

viz.4 And the viz was good. Most of the dives that week had at least 10 metres. One was

15. But it was not to be a happy underwater sampling session. I was there to learn to

dive and it was not without its problems. In particular – mask clearing. I hated it then

and I hate it now. I think of it with loathing and dread; have visions of designing the no-

need-to-clear-mask and then return to reality. It was one of those unfortunate, ghastly

necessities. Every sport has one. As soon as the cold water hit my sinuses, I started to

gag and panic. I finned madly for the surface, and was told off very severely for making

an ascent like a pricked balloon. But eventually I got it right, I had to – I couldn’t do the

advanced course without the basic one under my belt. And besides, the diving was so

spectacular. There is so much life in this area. (BNC: ARE – w_magaz_pop_lore)

In this extract, the speaker narrates a first experience with scuba diving. The argument

accompanying besides is used by the speaker to summarize why s/he decided to take it up.

The whole experience of diving is characterized as “spectacular” and “astonishing” by the

speaker, compensating any inconvenience associated with this sport (such as “mask clearing”,

according to the narrator).

4 Viz is divers’ jargon for ‘underwater visibility’.



In Section 1 we presented the paradoxical question of how besides could be both

tangential and decisive at the same time, as attested in our data (cf. (1) above, for instance).

Associating the use of besides with providing a personal view would justify treating the

argument put forward as being crucial or decisive for the speaker (although perhaps not for

another person). Thus, being crucial and being an aside (i.e. tangential), on this view, do not

actually have to be in opposition. The idea of ‘asideness’ may have to do with the

foregrounding of the emotional, subjective status of the argument, and the personal nature

may at the same time give it its crucial flavour, sweeping everything else aside.

3.2.3 The use of humour and/or irony

Humour can appear in combination with besides to give the argument a sense of ‘aside’ and is

associated with the aspects of ‘different perspective’ and ‘personal view’ observed in sections

3.2.1.and 3.2.2. Humour can be used to deflect attention from the discussion, by providing an

aside argument which allows a new view of the matter. Consider (21):

(21) ‘What I can be upset about last season is that we didn’t make it to the playoffs and didn’t

see what we could do on that big stage that comes with the playoffs,’ Beckham said. ‘I

want to get into the playoffs. That’s the only goal in my mind. You get on that stage, it’s

anyone’s game. I agree with Peavy: Anything less than winning the division and getting

to the playoffs is a disappointment. That’s not pressure on us. That’s just a goal.’ First

up, though, is some side work. Beckham will help the Sox ticket-sales office by making

phone calls to Sox fans on Thursday as part of the kickoff to SoxFest. ‘There was no

short straw – I volunteered to do this,’ Beckham said. ‘I'm looking forward to getting

our fans excited to come out. I think this year will be something special. Besides, if this

baseball thing doesn’t work out, maybe I have a future in sales.’ (COCA: news,

sports)

Here Gordon Beckham, a baseball player from the Sox who has volunteered to do some sales-

promoting job among fans, jokes about the idea of going into sales if his usual activity –

baseball – does not bring about the expected results.



3.2.4 ‘Besides’ in combination with rhetorical questions

As we said above, instances of besides from our sample include the use of linguistic features

which co-occur with it and can be associated with each of the two main functions of besides.

One of these is the use of rhetorical questions, occurring in examples where besides is an

(inter)subjective marker.

In combination with besides, and following the connective, rhetorical questions can

contribute to the meaning of ‘absoluteness’, emphasize an obvious point or express that there

may be another viewpoint associated with the present argument. The following extracts are

examples of besides followed by a rhetorical question:

(22) Today, it’s the suburbs of L.A. Tomorrow it might be Las Vegas. Whenever they hear

the call of a delinquent storage locker, the Dotsons hop in their black Escalade and

cruise to the next battle that finds first-timers and veterans bidding on mystery contents

they can look at but not touch. ‘We just had to meet these Storage Wars guys,’ says

Sirenia de la Cruz, holding 2-month-old Benjamin. She plans to join the bidding fray. ‘It

seems a bit risky, but life’s a risk. Besides, who knows what you might find?’ (COCA:

news, USA TODAY, Homeland, Calif.)

(23) The domestic dairy has taken over our social diary. A seemingly endless procession of

well-meaning visitors fills each day, marvelling (quite rightly) at Laura's peachlike feet

and milk-sated, magpie chucklings. From time to time we emerge from the factory to

buy raw materials at Safeway or Mothercare, and in the end my daily discipline only

echoes the great Baconian System when I purchase a frozen chicken. ‘Children sweeten

labours,’ he wrote; and I suppose that is true, when it is all a labour of love. Besides,

what nobler work of civilisation could there be than a child happily asleep? (BNC:

AHC – W_newsp_brdsht_nat_misc)

4. A historical perspective



In the preceding section, it became clear that Present-Day English besides, alongside its

objective use as an indicator of finality or afterthought (3.1), has a range of more

(inter)subjective usages (3.2). An examination of data from earlier periods of English strongly

suggests that until the twentieth century besides was not markedly distinct from other

connectives and generally lacked the functions identified for current usage. The Oxford

English Dictionary glosses besides as ‘in addition’ or ‘introducing a further consideration’

and for its 19th-century examples interestingly shows besides occurring in clause-medial

rather than initial position:

(24) i. It drew Nurture besides, and life, from human fears. (‘Isabella’, Keats, 1820)

ii. There is besides, this great significant fact. (Bright, 1859)

iii. There are, besides, many marble slabs with long Greek inscriptions. (Howett

1863, tr. Bremer)

None of these examples suggests finality or afterthought, and the OED does not mention these

as aspects of its meaning; its additive glosses for besides seem quite appropriate for these

cases.

To learn more about the historical background to the current use of besides, examples of

its use in the nineteenth century were examined by taking samples from the on-line Corpus of

Historical American English (COHA; Davies 2010), focusing – to limit the search – on the

period 1810-1815 and the years 1840, 1870 and 1900 and using {besides ,} as the search

string; additional data were drawn from a selection of plays and novels from the on-line

facility Project Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org/). The data (all from written genres, of

course) show that, much more than in present-day writing, besides occurs in argued prose,

where its function – confirming the impression gained from the OED – is indistinguishable

from other additive conjuncts. Consider the following example from 1815 (strongly

abbreviated for lack of space; emphasis added), in which the author, a pacifist, is defending

the proposition that “actual hostilities have a natural tendency to increase difficulties and to

spread abroad the destroying evil”:



(25) It is almost impossible for any two nations to be long engaged in war without interfering

with the rights and privileges of other nations, (...). Besides, the belligerent nations ...

use every art and persuasion to get the neighboring nations to join them (...).

Moreover, the nations who first engage in the contest always widen the breach between

themselves by war. (...) Besides, new difficulties constantly arise. The passions

become inflamed, and ... (David Dow Lodge, War inconsistent with the religion of

Jesus Christ)

Here the first argument is (as is to be expected) not marked by any conjunct; the second and

the fourth (and last) are marked by besides and the third by moreover. What is noticeable

about besides in passages like this, apart from its occurrence before a non-final argument (the

second), is the absence of any of the distinctive features that we have identified for

contemporary usage; besides is here entirely equivalent to moreover, indicating simply ‘in

addition’.

In the following example from 1840, besides marks the second of three arguments and

again is purely additive in function. The author is providing arguments for the proposition that

“The colonists [under the reign of James II] hardly considered themselves as permanently

settled”:

(26) They were looking for a more propitious soil, and at one time came nigh leaving their

frail and temporary habitations at Plymouth, and removing to the fertile valley of the

Connecticut. Besides, they lived rather as a social than a political community,

bound together as one family, by common interests and objects, and enduring

common sufferings and privations. And it is not strange that, under such

circumstances, they should have left us a record of so few of their public acts. Our

surprise should rather be that … (North American Review, April 1840)

Here the first argument is unmarked, and the third is introduced by and. This objective

additive use of besides continues to be prevalent towards the end of the century, as shown by



the following passage, which deals with the 18th-century Italian jurist Cesare Beccaria’s

arguments against the use of torture:

(27) As to torture before condemnation he holds it a grievous wrong to the innocent, "for in

the eye of the law, every man is innocent whose crime has not been proved. Besides, it

is confounding all relations to expect that a man should be both the accuser and

the accused, and that pain should be the test of truth (Edward J. Lowell, d. 1894,

The Eve of the French Revolution.)

In the argued prose of the 19th century, then, besides is little more than an additive. Like other

connectives, it is free – as shown in the OED data – to appear in clause-medial position, as in

the following convoluted sentence from 1900 by an author who was later to become President

of the USA (1913-1921):

(28) It is, indeed, forbidden, besides, to consider the repeal of republican government

(Woodrow Wilson, The State: Elements of Historical and Practical Politics).

Here the medial position between auxiliary and lexical verb is occupied by one conjunct

indeed, only for a further medial position, before the extraposed subject, to be occupied by

besides. Initial position clearly dominates in the data, however.

In the majority of instances of besides in drama or in conversational passages in

novels, its meaning is again simply that of addition. Consider the following passage from

Lady Windermere’s Fan (Oscar Wilde, 1892; from Project Gutenberg), where Lord

Windermere has expressed a wish to go to his wife. Mrs. Erlynne wishes to prevent this by

stating she has gone to bed with a headache. Lord Windermere insists and then Mrs. Erlynne

replies, “rising hurriedly”:

(29) Oh, no! It’s nothing serious. She’s only very tired, that is all. Besides, there are people

still in the supper-room. She wants you to make her apologies to them. She said she

didn’t wish to be disturbed.



Here the two arguments carry equal weight, with besides being understood as ‘what’s more’.

However, there are cases in the data where typical characteristics of present-day usage

can already be found. In the following passage from the COHA Corpus, Baldy is expressing

interest in a young man’s invention, a steam locomotive; the young man replies:

(30) “I wish you wouldn’t ask me, for I don’t want to sell it, until I have had it some

time. Besides, it isn’t finished yet.” “It ain’t,” exclaimed Baldy, in surprise. “Why, it

works, what more do you want?” (Edward Sylvester Ellis, The Huge Hunter Or, the

Steam Man of the Prairies, 1870)

The speaker is here presenting the unfinished state of the machine as an ‘absolute’ argument,

in a brief clause; this clearly prefigures the modern usage identified in Section 3.2. The sense

of greater involvement of the addressee, another aspect of modern usage (cf. 3.2.2), is perhaps

apparent in the following passage from the COHA Corpus, in which Peter is teasingly

contesting Marietta’s denial that she is a witch:

(31) “It's a part of the game to deny it. But I have no intention of sprinkling you with holy

water – so don’t be frightened. Besides, if you should do anything outrageous – if you

should turn into a black cat, and fly away on a broomstick, for example – I could

never forgive myself. But I’ll thank you to employ a little of your witchcraft on my

behalf, all the same. (…)” (Henry Harland, The Cardinal’s Snuff-Box, 1840)

Peter wants a favour from Marietta. In order to achieve this purpose, he ingratiates himself

through the use of humour (the black cat, the broomstick), and it may be significant that this

strategy is signalled by besides.

Nevertheless, the meaning components of the 20th and 21th century uses of besides

identified in Section 3, both the objective ones identified in 3.1 and the (inter)subjective ones

described in 3.2, are generally not present in the 19th-century data. Where they do occur, they

appear to be contextual effects, with the basically additive meaning of besides being enriched



by properties of the contexts in which it occurs. It is plausible to imagine that these contextual

effects have gradually become conventionalized, especially in conversational interaction

which is heavily dependent upon markers with an intersubjective, dialogical component. This

specialization of besides for conversational use is supported by the observation that it has

gradually been dropping out of use in writing in English, to judge by Figure 1, which shows –

using the Google N-Gram Viewer program available on line at

http://books.google.com/ngrams – the frequency of sentence-initial besides, moreover, in

addition, furthermore and likewise in Google’s massive database of American English writing

for the period 1810 to 2008. Bearing in mind that besides often occurred clause-medially in

19th-century English, we see that throughout that century it was clearly the most frequent

member of the set (with in 1810 an incidence of over 1 in every 20,000 words) but tailed off

in 20th-century writing to outrank only the never-favoured likewise. The rise of the objective

in addition in initial position is striking.

@@ Insert Figure 1 here

5. A final word on findings and implications

Our examination of corpus data has convinced us that the connective besides in Present-Day

English is not only additive in meaning but also has a range of characteristic objective and

(inter)subjective functions. The 19th-century data, which very largely lack these functions,

suggest that they are a relatively recent development and that besides, although the preferred

additive conjunct 200 years ago, gradually retreated from the written language and developed

the functions we have identified in conversational interaction. However, as formal writing has

become more colloquialized in recent decades, less distant and more interactive, so some of

the conversational functions have found their way into academic English, specifically in

social sciences and such ‘soft’ disciplines as history and art history.

In this brief article, we have focused on besides as the marker, in Present-Day English,

of the final argument in a sequence. Future research could look at the extent to which the

besides-marked argument functions as the launching-pad for the discourse that follows the



argument that has been closed. Our impression is that besides functions not only to conclude

an argument but often also to introduce a new line that takes the discourse in a new direction.

Similar research into the use of the other additive connectives could reveal unsuspected

functions beyond that of mere addition.

Like Yeung (2009), we see possible implications for the advice given to advanced

students. Not only should students be warned against (over)use of besides in academic

writing, but where they do decide to use it, they should be aware of the presence of an

argumentative chain and of the special functions of besides in it: besides is not

interchangeable with other connectives.

References

Ball, W.J. 1986. Dictionary of Link Words. London: Macmillan.

Butler, Christopher S. 1985. Computers in Linguistics. Oxford: Blackwell.

Butler, Christopher S. 2000. “Corpus linguistics and the teaching and learning of languages”.

In Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference of AEDEAN, Pere Gallardo and

Enric Llurda (eds), Lleida: Universita de Lleida. 15-27.

Butler, Christopher S. 2008. “The subjectivity of basically in British English”. In Pragmatics

and Corpus Linguistics: A Mutualistic Entente, Jesús Romero-Trillo (ed.), Berlin and

New York: Mouton de Gruyter. 37-63.

Cobuild. 2009. Collins Cobuild Advanced Dictionary. Glasgow: Collins and Boston MA:

Heinle Cengage Learning.

Davies, Mark. 2004. BYU-BNC. (Based on the British National Corpus from Oxford

University Press). Available online at http://corpus.byu.edu/bnc/.

Davies, Mark. 2008. The Corpus of Contemporary American English: 450 million words,

1990-present. Available online at http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/.

Davies, Mark. 2010. The Corpus of Historical American English: 400 million words, 1810-

2009. Available online at http://corpus.byu.edu/coha/.



Gilquin, Gaëtenelle and Magali Paquot. 2007. “Spoken features in learner academic writing:

Identification, explanation and solution”. In Proceedings of the Fourth Corpus

Linguistics Conference, Matthew Davies, Paul Rayson, Susan Hunston and Pernilla

Danielsson (eds), University of Birmingham, UK.

http://ucrel.lancs.ac.uk/publications/CL2007/paper/204_Paper.pdf, consulted on 29

September 2012.

Hannay, Mike and J. Lachlan Mackenzie. 2009. Effective Writing in English: A

Sourcebook. 2nd edition. Bussum: Coutinho.

Hornby, A.S. 2005. Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 7th edition. Oxford: OUP.

Leech, Geoffrey, Marianne Hundt, Christian Mair and Nicholas Smith. 2009. Change in

Contemporary English: A Grammatical Study. Cambridge: CUP.

Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English. 2003. 4th edition. Harlow: Pearson.

Quirk, Randolph, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey N. Leech and Jan Svartvik. 1985. A

Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London: Longman.

Rundell, Michael. 2007. Macmillan English Dictionary for Advanced Learners. 2nd edition.

Oxford: Macmillan.

Traugott, Elizabeth C. 1997. “The role of the development of discourse markers in a theory of

grammaticalization”. Paper presented at ICHL XII, Manchester 2005.

http://www.wata.cc/forums/uploaded/136_1165014660.pdf, consulted on 29 September

2012.

Yeung, Lorrita. 2009. “Use and misuse of ‘besides’: A corpus study comparing native

speakers’ and learners’ English”. System 37: 330-342.



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