Discourse Markers And Their Contribution To The Realization Of Coherence-A Pragma-cognitive Perspective

Coherence has always been one focus of study in modern linguistics. The studies on coherence undergo three main stages, namely semantic, pragmatic, and pragma–cognitive. Coherence is semantically viewed as an inherent property of text (Halliday & Hasan, 1976; van Dijk, 1977), which can be reached through connecting text with situational context by using cohesive devices or registers. However, semantic researches on coherence neither clearly differentiate the two terms—cohesion and coherence, nor properly delimitate the term register, so that sometimes register and context overlap each other. Hence, context cannot be properly sought through register. Pragmatist Grice therefore puts forward conversational implicature theory and principles of cooperation. Grice does not view cohesive devices and registers as necessary conditions for the realization of coherence; instead, he studies coherence from a pragmatic perspective and focuses on probing the implicature of text. He claims that inference is an important means to unearth the implicature of a text and to realize coherence. Nevertheless, a pragmatic approach cannot account for the psychological and cognitive factors in coherence realization. On the contrary, German linguists Gersbacher & Givón (1995:vii) pick up coherence as a mental phenomenon. Rather than following conventions to treat coherence as an internal property of a text, they view it as a property that emerges during text production and comprehension of the mentally represented text. However, among the studies on coherence from a pragma-cognitive perspective, Relevance Theory (RT) is comparatively more systematic. According to RT, communication is a dynamic ostensive-inferential process, in which the reader selects the relevant cognitive context through optimal relevance and realizes coherence by inferring from the interaction between text and the relevant cognitive context. However, although RT properly delimitates cognitive context, it does not provide a suitable means to activate the relevant cognitive context, in that the degree of optimal relevance has not been scientifically provided. Schiffrin (1987:126) mentions that discourse markers can provide contextual coordinates for a text; however, she does not make a deeper investigation. Lenk (1998a) also considers discourse markers as a kind of coherence indicator that plays an important role in coherence realization; and further proposes that coherence can be realized on two levels: local and global. Yet he does not clearly point out how discourse markers function to facilitate coherence. Such being the case, I choose Discourse Markers and Their Contribution to the Realization of Coherence——A Pragma-cognitive Perspective as my thesis topic. By studying the functions of discourse markers in the realization of coherence, I hope that this thesis can be helpful in further deepening the studies on discourse markers and the researches on coherence, and can provide some implications for teaching EFL reading. From a pragma-cognitive perspective, coherence is not an inherent property of text, but is a psychological construct that is developed during text production and comprehension of the mentally represented text (Gersbacher & Givón, 1995). In RT communication process, the hearer/reader first obtains linguistic meanings by decoding linguistic forms, then activates the relevant cognitive context through seeking the optimal relevance, and finally realizes coherence or achieves communication by inferring from the interaction between linguistic meanings and the relevant cognitive context. That is, communication and coherence are highly context-dependent. According to Sperber & Wilson (1986), cognitive context is not given beforehand during communication; it is activated and developed in the course of communication. Cognitive context is "a psychological construct, a subset of the hearer's assumptions about the world"(Sperber & Wilson, 1986:15). Successful communication and coherence realization are highly dependent on cognitive context; thus, how to choose or activate the relevant cognitive context is essential. Through making some necessary repairs to RT communication process, the classification of discourse markers by Ran Yongping (2000), and the two levels of coherence realization proposed by Lenk (1998a), the present thesis sets up a theoretical framework and demonstrates how discourse markers facilitate coherence realization by activating the relevant cognitive context. From a pragma-cognitive perspective, the theoretical framework explains the process of coherence realization. The hearer first decodes linguistic meanings from linguistic forms, then activates and foregrounds the relevant cognitive context with the help of discourse markers, and finally realizes...