A Corpus-Based Study On The Use Of Discourse Markers By Chinese Non-English Majors

Discourse markers (hereafter, abbreviated as DM in this thesis) are widely used in most languages and have been a focus of discourse analysis and pragmatic research. They are certain words and short lexicalized phrases with pragmatic functions, including some conjunctions, adverbs, and prepositional phrases. Although many researchers have studied discourse markers from different perspectives, which has caused unavoidable disagreements regarding such fundamental issues as their definition, classification and functions, it is generally accepted that such expressions do not contribute to the truth conditions of the utterance but play facilitating and constraining roles in utterance interpretation. They encode procedural meaning rather than conceptual.Generally speaking, studies on how DMs work in language have fallen into two major branches since the 1980's: semantic-pragmatic studies and cognitive-pragmatic studies. This thesis, based on coherence theory and relevance theory, will explore the functions of DMs at textual level from both perspectives. Within a coherence-based framework, discourse markers link the utterances they introduce with previous discourse units as cohesive devices and so contribute to discourse coherence. Within a relevance-theoretical approach, discourse markers link the utterances with a context as constraints on the interpretation process and thus guide the interpretation process by specifying certain properties of context and contextual effects.DMs not only exist in oral language but also in written language. Gradually, more and more scholars at home and abroad began to study DMs in written discourse. This thesis, focusing on DMs usage in the writing of university students in China and in Great Britain, presents research findings from the analysis of corpus linguistic data generated by LOCNESS ( the Louvain Corpus of Native Corpus Essay Writing ) of the International Corpus of Learner English and non-English majors components (ST3 & ST4) of the Chinese Learner English Corpus. It aims at finding out the relationship between DMs and the quality of argumentative writing, the relationship between DMs and learners' language proficiency, and generalizing the overall usage patterns of the two groups of learners -Chinese non-English majors and native speakers. After an analysis of the 178 samples selected from these two corpora, the thesis draws the following conclusions:1) The frequency of DMs is not decisive to the quality of writing; frequent use of DMs is not a guarantee of good writing;2) The accuracy and diversification of using DMs are in direct proportion with learners' language proficiency.3) Chinese non-English majors and native speakers show different tendencies in their choices of individual DM; Chinese non-English majors tend to overuse and underuse certain DMs. These different tendencies and choices mirror some semantic and stylistic mistakes Chinese non-English majors are inclined to make in argumentative writing, and also reveal different patterns of thinking and methods of organizing and developing argumentations between the two groups of learners.Finally, the author of the thesis reveals the pedagogical implications of the research, points out some limitations in the research and also raises issues for future studies.