A Contrastive Study Of Discourse Marker In English Argumentation Through Pragmatics And Cognition

This paper aims at exploring the pragmatic and cognitive differences on the use of discourse markers (DMs) based on the same topic of 22 English compositions(argumentation)by native English speakers and 126 English compositions by Chinese English majors. This study is a quantitative study based on the relevance theory and Halliday's (1995) classification of the discourse marker. Discourse markers are discussed horizontally (in terms of number) and vertically (in terms of type). The results suggest that from pragmatics, Chinese English majors have the problem of overuse and deficiency use on DMs. Overuse appears when DM is used to construct the semantic relevance such as apposition, addition, spatio-temporal and causal-condition, but deficiency use often appears when DM is used to construct the semantic relevance such as clarification and variation. The results also show that, in cognition native English speakers and Chinese English majors have different cognitive models in the different levels of sentences. In the inner-sentence level, Chinese English majors prefer using DMs to symbolize the horizontal addition of the information while native English speakers prefer using DMs to involve the reader into the inner processing of information; in the cross-/supra-sentence level, Chinese English majors like constructing sub-ordinate clauses but native English speakers tend to construct co-ordinate clauses. As for communication, Chinese English majors are more self-centered in the process of using discourse markers, but native English speakers involve the reader into the processing of information by using DMs and leave more room for the reader to make his own inference. The questionnaire shows that the cognitive ability influences the choices of discourse markers in text, which leads to the different cognition models of Chinese English majors and native English speakers. The implications of this study lie in that more attention should be paid to the inner processing of DMs, and the consciousness of communication in writing should be enhanced.