A Study On The Pragmatic Functions Of Discourse Marker Well

Discourse markers often exist in daily communication, and they can not only existby themselves in grammar, but have no any effect on the propositional content. At thebeginning, discourse markers are ignored and were taken as decoration. However, inrecent decade years, with the development of pragmatics, more and more researchersabroad and at home realize the importance of discourse markers and they make greatcontributions to them.Well, as a discourse marker, has a higher frequency in spoken English, so it receivesmore attention among researchers. They study well from the different viewpoints, such ascoherence theory, grammatical-pragmatic theory and relevance theory. Until now,relevance theory has been taken as the most powerful one to interpret discourse markers.The theory thinks the aim of human communication is to search for the optimal relevance.Through constraining the interpretation and production of the utterance, discourse markers can help the hearer reconstruct the related contextual assumptions and infer theutterance meaning by the speaker.The thesis takes examples from natural corpus—Corpus of Contemporary AmericanEnglish as research materials, based on relevance theory as theory foundation, studiespragmatic functions of DM well in the spoken English. It is the largest balanced Englishcorpus and is a good window for learners observing the use and change of AmericanEnglish. In the chosen500examples, there are124well used as content words, the other376are used pragmatically. These376pragmatic appearances of well altogether cover sixtypes of pragmatic functions: as a contemplation marker, a mitigation marker, acoherence-achieving marker, a turn-taking marker, an insufficiency marker and acorrecting marker. By categorizing and analyzing the pragmatic functions of DM well inthe spoken English, the thesis aims to prove that relevance theory can better interpretwell. This study helps English learners strengthen the knowing of discourse markers,especially improve the use of well. Meanwhile, it helps know the social culture of theUnited States and then have a better communication with English speakers.