| Pragmatic markers are a type of linguistic expressions that are used to signal sequential discourse relationship and that do not exert any effect on the truth value of the utterance but express attitudinal and procedural meanings. During the past two decades or so, research concerning the functions and use of "pragmatic markers" has developed into an impressive field of its own, resulting in extensive research on this topic in various languages and in multifarious respects. For a while, pragmatic markers of any kind were merely considered "fillers" used in spoken language, or optional items empty of lexical meaning that were assumed not to contribute anything to the proposition of the utterance or sentence in which they occur. Yet gradually they have been recognized as to fulfill important functions on the textual as well as on the interpersonal levels of discourse. The present thesis attempts to systematically summarize relevant researches to pragmatic markers to date with view to helping readers gain a full-scale and more macroscopic point of view of this special linguistic phenomenon and providing some implications for EFL instruction in Chinese environment through a case study.This thesis consists of six chapters, centering around four main chapters, from 2 to 5, covering the issues revealed in the above research objectives to be obtained.The first chapter serves as an introduction to the term "pragmatic markers" on the surface level. The preceding historical researches have undergone the diversion from torpor to fervor towards this special linguistic entity. In these fruitful studies, a host of different terms is used for those particular items under consideration on account of varied approaches and purposes. Additionally, in this chapter the author expounds several causes for the employment of the term pragmatic markers among the miscellaneous terminology, the most important one being the distinct and primary pragmatic function of this group of linguistic expressions. Following the brief introductory part, Chapter 2 is concerned with the panoramic delineation of pragmatic markers, addressing such issues as the definition, characterization, function and classification of these items. Heterogeneous definitions have been put forward in the past studies, dealing with multiple and various aspects of a group of similar items in discourses, with individual studies tending to focus on different pragmatic functions of the items under investigation. Almost all of the researchers have observed some of the features of pragmatic markers, whereas none has displayed all of them despite the fact that those features can in some sense be viewed to be the decisive tests for demarcating Pragmatic markers. In view of the differing roles that pragmatic markers play in different circumstances, researchers have provided varied taxonomic schemata, all of which prove to be constructive and informative.The relatively long Chapter 3 deals with the theoretical approaches to the study of pragmatic markers. Scholars on pragmatic markers have conducted a lot of theoretical studies. Different linguistic theories are employed to account for pragmatic markers in one aspect or another. The present thesis attempts to combine the theory of coherence relations, relevance theory and grammaticalization theory which can constitute appropriate complementary frameworks with which to perform the analysis of Pragmatic markers comprehensively.Generally speaking, research on Pragmatic markers can be mainly conducted synchronically or diachronically. The former is usually put within two major theories illustrating the interpretation of the primary function of the markers, namely the discourse coherence theory and the relevance theory. And the latter is in the theory of grammaticalization. According to coherence theorists (Schiffrin, Lenk, Redeker, Fraser, etc.), pragmatic markers contribute to discourse coherence as contextual coordinates, anchoring an utterance into more than one discourse component and indexing utterances... |
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