A Relevance-theoretic Study Of The Constraining Functions Of Discourse Markers In TV Interview

The present study intends to conduct a relevance-theoretic study of discourse markers (DMs) employed in TV interviews. The thesis makes an investigation into how DMs serve to achieve contextual effects as well as constraining the interpretation of utterances in TV interviews. In particular, this paper has discussed how different classes of DMs as negotiators work alone or do group work to realize their constraining functions on the derivation of contextual assumption and on the comprehension of utterances in TV interviews.The paper aims to establish an association where the constraining functions of DMs in utterances could be identical with how contextual effects result in three ways. In order to figure out whether it is possible to approach the functions of discourse markers as relevance constraints in this way, our top priority is the working conceptual framework with relevance theory and features of DMs involved.With reference to the previous research, DMs are found to be a variety of linguistic expressions syntactically optional and semantically detachable from the host utterance, that is, the absence of DMs causes no loss of the syntactic properties and basic semantic meaning to the host utterance. These features occur to be pragmatically motivated and demonstrate the pragmatic connectivity conveyed by these markers for interpretation of the speaker's communicative purposes in utterances. Additionally, TV interviews are termed as semi-institutionalized discourse and hence endow the linguistic elements like DMs with the dual features of both daily conversations and institutional discourses. The two points mentioned above accordingly make the study of DMs pragmatically and realistically significant.Relevance is defined in terms of contextual effects and processing effort. People always try to balance processing effort and cognitive effects in search for relevance in the interpretation of an utterance. So how they interpret the utterance depends on the degree to which its linguistic forms are employed to constrain the understanding of the hearer in interpretation. DMs are one of these types of devices that can be used to serve the constraining functions in interactional discourse. That is to say, DMs play the constraining functions on the hearer's selection of optimally relevant cognitive contexts and eventually help the hearer achieve contextual effects at less processing cost. Thus the cognitive motivations of the employment of DMs result.The study goes a step further to offer the tentative delimitation of discourse markers from the collected data on the basis of the classification by冉永平and the consideration of their features. More importantly, we analyzed the constraining functions of DMs in TV under the label of cognitive effects which are derived from how newly conveyed information interacts with a context of existing information with DMs as "negotiators' in three ways. According to the delimitation, tag questions, evidential markers, and reformulation markers can serve as constraints to strengthen existing assumptions; contrastive markers work to introduce inconsistency with existing assumptions; while inferential markers function as constraints by combining with existing assumptions to yield new contextual implication.Then this paper makes a statistical analysis of the use frequency of different classes of DMs in terms of each of the three constraining functions in TV interviews and comes to the following findings: 1) inferential markers in TV interviews are employed with highest frequency aiming to help the guest conclude or infer something from the existing assumption and the newly presented utterance, steering the guest to yield new information; 2) contrastive markers are also frequently employed to constrain the hearer to give up the existing assumption and derive the optimal relevant contextual implication; 3) reformulation markers, tag questions and evidential markers, regardless of lowest frequency, are employed to make slight modification or confirmation of an existing assumption so as to call for more information from the guest.The present study sheds light on how the application of these linguistic markers turns the process of interviewing on TV into a comprehensible and strategic interaction. Besides, despite the limitations, the study is expected to supply some implications, such as for courtroom discourse, language learning.