Chapter1 Introduction
1.1 Research Background
Discourse marker is the sequential dependant component in which the unit of speech is connected. According to this definition, discourse markers include connectives, feelings interjections, adverbs, and partial phrases. The most important characteristic of the discourse marker is that it does not constitute the semantic content of the discourse, that is, the existence of the discourse marker does not change the meaning of the words. Ran Yongping (2000) points out that the role of the discourse marker is to provide instructional information for the understanding of the discourse, which has directive function. Since the 1970s, discourse markers have become more and more popular, and the attention of foreign scholars has continued to this day. Since the beginning of the 21st century, with the continuous increase of domestic researchers, research content and genre are also becoming more and more abundant. Court English, American drama lines, classroom discourse, student writing, and translations have been involved in research of discourse markers. Based on the F-LOB corpus, Zhang Man, Song Xiaozhou (2017) studies the role and location of the metadiscourse markers in the written corpus including popular prose and news discourse; Based on the confrontation against the US Simpson case, Cui Fengjuan, Yu Cuihong (2015) studies the frequency and distribution of typical discourse markers in the real corpus.
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1.2 Significance of the Study
The study of discourse markers is part of the overall analysis of conversational coherence. Discourse coherence analysis mainly analyzes how the speaker and the listener jointly integrate form, meaning, and behavior together, and make the formed words play a communication role. This kind of discussion and research is of great help to us to deeply know and understand the nature, working principle, pragmatic function, the generation and understanding of meaning, the expression of pragmatic information, and the functional structure of discourse.
For English learners, the fundamental task of English as a second language teaching is not only to teach students English pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, and other ontology knowledge. The most important is to cultivate learners’ English communication skills. As an important linguistic phenomenon in daily communication, the correct use of discourse markers can promote the coherence of expression and ensure the smooth progress of the communication process. However, in the actual daily communication process, most English learners rarely use discourse markers, or often misuse discourse markers, which leads to the incoherence and even failure of verbal communication. These phenomena indicate that the study of discourse markers improves the pragmatic knowledge and pragmatic competence of English learners, and also has positive guiding significance and practical value in English teaching. I hope that through this research, learners can better grasp the discourse markers and improve the oral communication skills.
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Chapter 2 Literature Review
2.1 Definition of Discourse Markers
The term "discourse marker" was invented by Labov and Fanshel (1977). It was first introduced after they had researched the DM well. In subsequent years, discourse markers have drawn the attention successfully as increasing number of linguists devoting their attempts to researching them. Levinson (1983) was one of the earliest researchers exploring discourse markers in his book Pragmatics, and describes that in English. There were a large number of expressions and words implying the relationship between the former and the latter discourse. They showed more than one component of meaning in a complicated way, like and, so, therefore, but, however; after all, in conclusion.
Schiffrin was the first to research discourse markers systematically. Her treatise entitled Discourse Markers (1987) was regarded as being the most influential study of discourse markers in the 1980s. She studied the using situation of 11 specific discourse markers in the form of interview dialogue, including because, and, I mean, but, now, well, or; so, oh, then, and you know, and then she made a general summary and analysis of them. In her research, she declared "I define discourse markers at a more theoretical aspect as members of a functional words of verbal and non-verbal devices provide ongoing talk with contextual coordinates" . (Schifrin, 1987) In other words, she believed discourse marker was functional, and they just contributed to contextual linkage of two kinds. And she believed that discourse markers must have the following characteristics: (1) In syntax, they must be independent of the sentence; (2) They must be located in the initial place of sentence; (3) Their rhythm must have certain characteristics, such as stress, pause and sound weakening phenomenon; (4) They must play a role in both macro and microscopic aspects. She believes the function of discourse markers is to make sure the coherence of discourse.
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2.2 Studies on Discourse Markers
2.2.1 Studies on Discourse Markers Abroad
Svartvik (1980) mentioned that Randolph Quirk was the first to notice the linguistic phenomenon of discourse markers. In 1953, he first talked about some continually-appearing modifiers such as you see, you know, and well in the lecture "A Random Conversation- Some Characteristics of Daily Speaking". He pointed that such modifiers had no effect on the transmission of linguistic information and appeared to be meaningless, but they were abundant in spoken language, even in Shakespeare’s plays.
After the 1970s, with the development of pragmatics and cognitive pragmatics, the focus on the generation and understanding of people's dialogue language has increased, and the study of discourse markers has been officially launched. Before the mid-1980s, the scholars paid more attention to the study of individual discourse markers. Labov & Fanshel (1977) explicitly used the term discourse marker when referring to a usage of “well”. In the mid-to-late 1980s, the study of discourse markers has been more comprehensive and more systematic. In terms of definition, semantics, and function of discourse markers, three theories represented by Schiffrin, Fraser and Blackemore and two schools represented by "continuing factions" and "related factions" appeared.
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Chapter 3 Theoretical Framework .................................. 13
3.1 Discourse markers .................................. 13
3.1.1 Definitions of Discourse Markers .................................... 13
3.1.2 Features of Discourse Markers ........................................ 16
Chapter 4 Methodology ......................................... 41
4.1 Research Questions........................................41
4.2 Methods ............................................. 42
4.3 Corpus and the Retrieving Tool ................................. 42
Chapter 5 Results and Discussion .......................................... 44
5.1 Sequential Markers as Discourse Markers and their Function ... 48
5.1.1 the Application of Sequential markers ............................ 49
5.1.2 Function: Keeping Coherence ......................................... 55
Chapter 6 Factors Influencing the Use of Discourse Markers
6.1 Social variables
It is often the case that functions of discourse markers are situated and generated in a specific context. That is, social context accounts for the use of discourse markers in actual communication. Up to now, many studies have dealt with the pragmatic functions of discourse markers in specific situations. Some pay attention to the patterning of these functions in different social settings. Some focus on the influence of the roles and relationships of interlocutors on the use of discourse markers in speech interactions. For instance, Redeker finds that the distribution of the two types of discourse markers- ideational and pragmatic markers is complementary: a higher frequency of pragmatic markers occurs in conversations between friends than those between strangers. Jucker and Smith (1998) claim that the presentation markers like, well, you know are more frequently used in interactions between familiar people and the reception markers oh, yeah are more frequently used between strangers. In this section, we revolve around the constraints on the use of discourse markers by such social factors as interaction situation, speaker role and speech community, because they represent the characteristic features of conversational context, and their influence on the distribution of discourse markers reflect the most distinctive functional patterns of discourse markers in interactive discourse.
This chapter will show the results and findings of the research. The frequency and distribution of discourse markers will be counted so that we will find the characteristics of the usage of Theresa May.
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Chapter 7 Conclusion
7.1 Summary of the Research
Discourse markers are not a newly discovered linguistic entity. Many contributions have been done to the field of discourse markers and great achievements have been made. In general, there are three approaches studying discourse marker, which are coherence-based approach, represented by Schiffrin, the grammatical-pragmatic approach, represented by Fraser and the relevance-theoretical approach, represented by Blakemore. The major findings of this thesis are presented as follows:
Firstly, this thesis takes the relevance-theoretical account of discourse markers after reviewing the three main approaches and making the conclusion that relevance theory has the stronger interpretability than the other two approaches. Secondly, the sequential marker has the highest frequency, and the frequency of occurrence of and, but, so is the highest. The information intensifying marker ranks the
second, such as: all, just, and today. Tactic markers and attitudinal markers are third and fourth. I know, it means, and that means are the most frequently appearing tactic markers, while I think and I believe are typical attitudinal markers.
Thirdly, the sequential markers imply the order of development of things and keep the coherence of discourse; the information intensifying markers emphasize certain information and enrich the content of the discourse; the attitudinal markers indicating speakers' viewpoint and promote interpersonal interaction; the tactic markers act as politeness strategy and conform to the specific context.
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