A Study On Metapragmatic Awareness Manifested By Discourse Markers In The Weekly Speeches By Obama

Obama was elected as the President of the United States of America in2008.Studies on his speeches are becoming popular among the scholars in China. Theyhave done researches on the speeches from different perspectives. There are manydiscourse markers in Obama’s speeches. As we all know, discourse marker is one ofthe indicators of metapragmatic awareness. In other words, discourse markers canmanifest the purpose of the language choice. In Obama’s speeches, there exist manydiscourse markers and he employs these markers to manifest his metapragmaticawareness in order to reach his purposes.Based on Jef Verschueren’s theory of metapragmatic awareness, the researchselects45Obama’s weekly speeches as raw data to analyze the metapragmaticawareness and functions of the discourse markers by employing quantitative andqualitative mathods. Major findings are shown as follows:(1) According to the database, there exist five types of discourse markers inObama’s weekly speeches including discourse connectives, temporal adverbs,markers of cause and effect, markers of information management and markers ofinformation and participation. And their proportion is47%,24%,18%,7%and4%respectively.(2) Discourse markers not only ensure the coherence and cohesion but also makethe speeches persuasive and effective so that Obama may achieve his political purposethrough making speeches.(3) Discourse markers can manifest metapragmatic awareness and they arepowerful devices to convey emotions, attitudes and opinions by Obama.The findings above indicate that speakers may embody their intentions andmetapragmatic awareness through employing discourse markers. Discourse markers, manifesting metapragmatic awareness of the language users’, can also undertake alarge amount of metapragmatic functions, which play significant roles in contextcoherence and successful communication.