A Comparative Study Of Discourse Markers In English And Chinese TV Talk Shows

Discourse markers, defined as a device of "propos[ing] the contextual coordinates within which an utterance is produced and designed to be interpreted" by Schiffrin (1987:13), are very common used in daily speech to facilitate listeners'comprehension and to keep spontaneous interactions going smoothly between speakers, e.g. you know in English and jiushi in Chinese.This thesis conducts a comparative study of discourse markers in English TV talk shows and Chinese TV talk shows. And the research questions which have been addressed include 1) what are the general distributional patterns of discourse markers' functions in English and Chinese talk shows? 2) How do distributional patterns of discourse markers' functions compare across gender? 3) How do distributional patterns of discourse markers' functions compare across language? And the answers to these questions show that there're differences between the distributional patterns of functions that discourse markers perform and between males and females in terms of discourse markers' functions. And it also finds that certain conversational activities choose for specific functions not others.The data for the present study are collected from two talk shows, the English one, Oprah Winfrey Show and the Chinese one, A Tale with Luyu. The reasons for this choice is that there are lots of similarities between these two programs and both the institutional similarities of these two TV programs and the approachable styles of the hosts are taken into considerations when deciding what talk shows should be chosen as the sources of data. Ten male interviewees and ten female interviewees, with forty in total number, have been picked respectively as the English and Chinese sources of data. To limit the influences of the variables, including the identity of the interviewees and the topics of the interview, the selection of the interviewees is trying to be corresponding with each other, like singers Toni Braxton and Liu Ruoying respectively.Each recorded interviews selected lasts between 20 and 120 min, with an average of 38 minutes. Totally about 1520 minutes is chosen from each program and then conversations of 1200 minutes are transcribed. Altogether 1319 discourse markers have been collected, with 522 ones from English talk shows and another 797 ones from Chinese talk shows. According to their primary functions, they are classified and the list of tables shows the details of the distributional patterns of collected discourse markers' functions. And Schiffrin's five planes of talk (1987) are adopted as the model for the classifications of discourse markers'functions, including:exchange structure (ES for short), action structure (AS), ideational structure (ID), participation framework (PF) and information states (IM).The results show that there are gender differences in discourse marker usage in both English and Chinese. This study also suggests that the conversational activities that people engage select for certain discourse marker functions and not others. In this paper, since TV talk shows are chosen as the sources of data, the main conversation activities are narration of personal experience. This selection can account for the gender differences observed in discourse marker use and the distributional patterns of discourse markers' functions.This comparative study of English discourse markers and Chinese discourse markers not only have theoretical values of enriching our understanding of the phenomenon about discourse markers by making a tentative extension of this study field from English to Chinese, but also has practical implications for improving foreign language teaching and learning and promoting the studies of natural conversation.