Metapragmatic Awareness Indicated Via Discourse Markers In Literature

Metapragamtic awareness is a kind of reflexive awareness displayed by the communicators when making linguistic choices and linguistic adoption. The guidance and regulation role of metapragamtic awareness will finally be reflected on the pragmatic level. Due to different linguistic choices and the different degrees of salience of metapragmatic awareness, the linguistic traces they left on the pragmatic level are also different. And in linguistic choices, there are many ways to indicate metapragmatic awareness, which are expounded by Verschueren (1999:189-195) in Understangding Pragmatics. Discourse markers, as one of the most important indicators of metapragamtic awareness, shows the author’s metapragmatic awareness on pragmatic levelThis paper mainly studies the metapragamtic awareness from the perspective of discourse markers reflected in literature. It aims to discuss metapragamtic awareness of discourse markers in literature, taking Thackeray’s novel Vanity Fair as the case of study. Being the representative book of Thackeray, a pungent sarcasm to the kind of odiousness in society like selling conscience and honor, Vanity Fair, using deep psychological description and vivid detailed outlines to depict character, is a realistic masterpiece. The author used abundant discourse markers to show the characters’ metapragmatic awareness in communication to achieve communicative purposes. Through analysis, the paper discusses the speaker’s using motivation of discourse markers, i.e. to show his metapragmatic awareness. The usage of discourse marker can provide guidance and mark for the listener’s understanding of discourse.This paper includes four parts, with the first chapter as the introduction, mainly introducing the research purposes, research significance and methodology, data collection and the paper outline. Chapter two and chapter three are the thesis’s main body, and chapter two is the introduction of the literature reviw, including metapragmatic awareness, discourse marker and Vanity Fair. In chapter3, examples of discourse markers from Vanity Fair indicating the writher’s or the character’s metapragamtic awareness is discussed in in terms of relationship, topic, language flow, promoting information, acknowledge and attitude, indicating the information source and construction of discourse, with lots of cases helping to study the metapragmatic awareness indicated via discourse markers. Chapter4introduces the conclusion and shortcomings of the research.