Metapragmatic Strategies For Illocutionary Force: A Study Of Discourse Markers In Gone With The Wind

In the book Understanding Pragmatics, Verschueren (2000b) proposed a new perspective of looking at discourse markers as one of the observable traces indicating language users' metapragmatic awareness. Though his statement was rather short and sketchy, his description of the relationship between discourse markers and language users' metapragmatic awareness has provided us with a possible new approach to discourse markers.The present thesis aims to answer the following questions: (1) How can discourse markers be categorized according to different metapragmatic awareness they reflect? (2) How do discourse markers regulate the illocutionary force of a speech act? (3) What types of discourse markers are often employed to reinforce illocutionary force? (4) What types of discourse markers are often employed to mitigate illocutionary force?Descriptive study was adopted in the process of data collection and data analysis. All the data used in this thesis were collected from the American film script Gone with the Wind. The film script was downloaded from the website http://www.kekenet.com/. A working definition of discourse markers proposed by the author was used as a criterion in data selection.Based on Verschueren's description of discourse markers as indicators of language users' metapragmatic awareness, the author views discourse markers as one of the metapragmatic strategies adopted by the speaker in communication. The major findings of the thesis can be presented as follows:First, we find that research on discourses markers conducted from the perspective of metapragmatic awareness is totally workable and worthwhile. Different from previous approaches to discourse markers, the approach adopted in this thesis has provided a new research perspective for studies concerning discourse markers.Second, the thesis proposes a tentative taxonomy of discourse markers as the speaker's metapragmatic strategies adopted in oral communication. The author categorized discourse markers into seven major types: discourse markers as metapragmatic strategy for mitigating potential face-threat, for emphasizing propositional content, for reminding the hearer's knowledge, for expressing the speaker's attitude towards the proposition, for achieving discourse coherence, for stating source of information and for modifying propositional content. In some major categories, we made further divisions.Moreover, we also find that the illocutionary force of a speech act can be regulated to some extent by employing discourse markers, which can fulfill the regulative role in two opposite ways—reinforcement and mitigation. When the illocutionary force of a speech act is not strong enough to effectively carry out the communicative intention, the speaker would employ discourse markers to reinforce it; when the illocutionary force is too strong to threat face, certain discourse markers would be employed to mitigate that force.