An Adaptation-Relevance Perspective On Discourse Markers

Discourse Markers (hereafter, DMs), a number of special words, phrases or structures indicating all kinds of logical relationships between utterances, are widely used in most languages. In verbal communication, they do not contribute to proposition content of the utterances to which they are attached, instead they are used as an adaptive device helping to manage and maintain the on-going interaction (Ran, 2002: 10), and thus impose great influence upon the production and interpretation of utterances. Since DMs are so pervasively used in daily language, the proper employment and interpretation of them consist of a considerable part of pragmatic competence.Research on DMs begin in 1970s and during the past dozens of years, it has turned into a growth industry in linguistics. After reviewing different approaches to DMs, the present study holds that none of them offer a comprehensive and fruitful description for the production and interpretation of DMs. Therefore, this dissertation tentatively proposes an adaptation-relevance theoretical model, an effectively complementary theoretical framework based on Adaptation Theory and Relevance Theory, and account for DMs within this framework, aiming at some findings which can shed light on further research pursuing a...