| A discourse marker means a word or an expression which is structurally independent of thesentence and semantically without specific meaning. Although they are not the key words ofexpressing certain meaning, they play the roles of continuing the discourse, showing thediscourse structure, and expressing the speaker’s implication.Among the large ocean of DMs, well has the most use frequency and functions. Research onwell as there may be, the use frequency and the multi-faceted functions of the DM still surprisethe author. Nearly the line in all the video clips the author has been using contains the word well,along with great density in spoken English. In the London-Lund Corpus, together with you knowand I mean, well is the most frequently used word in native speakers’ speech. Furthermore, inspoken English well is much greater used than in written English.This study will focus on the pragmatic properties of discourse marker well, as well as thesemantic functions. Furthermore, both a core function and a core meaning will be pointed out forwell. The core meaning is expected to be applicable to most of its pragmatic functions, and alsobe compatible with its lexical meaning as an adverb. Finally, against the background ofTraugott’s hypothesis of grammaticalization and growing (inter)subjectivity, the study proposes aunidirectional path which well may have taken to evolve from a lexical adverb to a discourseparticle. To be more specific, this study will address the following research questions:1) As a discourse marker, what pragmatic functions does well play in discourse? Is there acore function?2) What semantic meaning does the discourse marker well encode in context? Is there a coremeaning?The discourse marker well has been studied in many different aspects. Some researcherswere looking for a unified meaning for well, while others aimed to identify the differentfunctions that well performs in certain discourse contexts. There are very few comprehensivestudies which cover both the semantic and the pragmatic properties of well. Thus, this study aimsto analyze comprehensively the pragmatic functions of well and the conversational meanings itencodes in different context, as well as the relationship between them. Previous studies have proposed several core functions for well, including (1) a response marker for achievingcoherence;(2) an evincive marking consultation in the private world;(3) a face-threat mitigator;(4) a qualifier of incomplete or indirect responses;(5) a signal that background knowledge needsto be re-constructed. These functions share a common feature of being oriented towards theaddressee.A major part of this study is the use of a large corpus of naturally-occurring spokenlanguage for investigating the broad functions and complex conversational meanings welldisplays. As a research method, the corpus helps the study in the following three aspects:1) ithelps to find proper video scripts. In the paper, the over100scripts are mostly searched from thecorpus;2) the concordances give a direct overview of the DM well in order to observe itsfunctions;3) through the corpus, the frequency of the DM well can be observed, the difference ofits use in different contexts can have a contrast. The corpus of the study is taken from theTV-play Desperate Housewives (Seasons1-2) and Friends (All10seasons).As is shown in this study, the discourse marker well serves a wide range of functions. Abouttwenty functions have been discussed and its function as a face-threat mitigator appears to be themost prevalent. It is pointed out that the core function of well is a marker of relevance, whichmeans, in every case, the presence of discourse marker well intends to contribute to theachievement of coherence in discourse, and the core meaning it encodes is that of positiveappraisal or positive value judgment, which comes from the lexical source of an adverb. |
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