A Contrastive Study Of English And Chinese Discourse Markers From The Perspective Of Pragmatic Functions

Discourse markers (DMs) are pervasively used in daily communication. They have attracted more and more researchers' attention. In western countries, there are mainly two approaches to the study of DMs: coherence-based approach represented by Schiffrin, and relevance-based approach represented by Blakemore. The research on Chinese DMs lags far behind compared with that on many other languages. He Ziran and Ran Yongping make a great contribution to the study of Chinese DMs.Based on their research results, DMs are classified into twelve types, and their pragmatic functions in English and Chinese contexts are analyzed in details. The aim of the thesis is to present similarities and differences between English and Chinese DMs concerning their pragmatic functions. Within the framework of Relevance Theory, the thesis is conducted in a qualitative way.Findings indicate: (1) Both English and Chinese DMs impose pragmatic constraints on utterance production and utterance interpretation. By using DMs, the speaker can explicitly express his intention in utterance production so that the hearer can reach the intended assumption with less processing effort in utterance interpretation and consequently achieve successful communication. (2) Both English and Chinese DMs are multifunctional, that is, one DM can perform different pragmatic functions in different contexts. So they are employed by the speaker to satisfy a variety of communicative needs. (3) English and Chinese DMs have differences. They are not one-one equivalents. One English DM may have different Chinese equivalents in different contexts, and vice versa. (4) Chinese DMs (especially in daily communication) are not so frequently used as English DMs.The study is of significance for the success of communication, language learning and language teaching. It also gives us some enlightenment about translation and interpretation.