Pragmatic Functions Of Discourse Markers In Spoken English

Discourse markers (DMs), a commonly used language phenomenon in everyday conversations, dramas, movies and literature have become a hot subject being discussed and studied and the study on DMs, especially in the past years, grew with the development of pragmatics with a large number of articles in the field of discourse markers appearing each year.The study of DMs is the study of the relationship between context and language. In linguistics, a DM is a word or phrase that is relatively syntax-independent and removing a discourse marker away from the discourse segment it is attached to does not affect the sentence grammatically but does affect the pragmatic appropriateness of the utterance on the social level. This indicates that a DM does not change the meaning of the sentence, and has a somewhat empty meaning, as Michael Swan put it in Practical English Usage"A discourse marker is something that connects a sentence to what come before or after, or indicates a speaker's attitude to what he is saying."In this article, DMs are studied in five chapters. Introduction, providing the fundamental concept, the significance and main structure of the study; Literary review, including a general history review of the literature and functions of discourse markers are analyzed, a general view of different approaches to the study of discourse markers, as most of the rich researches on DMs are carried out with them; Classifications of DMs, concerning about the classifications of DMs and, with which the theoretical background of the paper is mainly formed; Pragmatic functions of DMs, focusing on different pragmatic functions of discourse markers, and analyses of examples are made in detail; Conclusion, conclusions are made to sum up the major significance and work of the paper ,and suggestions for future research and study in the field of discourse markers.Discourse markers in spoken English function as effective strategies in the organization of discourses. Discourse markers help to develop ideas and relate them to one another or indicate how one piece of discourse is connected to another piece of discourse the functions of DMs help achieve coherence of clauses, promote better understanding of the speaker's utterances and in some way get rid of miscommunication. The study of pragmatic functions of discourse markers in spoken English provides with guidelines on how to deal with them in daily communications, guiding the speakers and hearers succeed in different situations for different needs and helps learners of English as foreign language know more about the appropriate and effective use of discourse markers while communicating with English speakers in order to reach their intended goals.