A Contrastive Study Of English And Chinese Discourse Markers

Discourse marker is a common linguistic phenomenon in different languages. They are widely used in daily communication. Scholars at home and abroad study discourse markers from various perspectives. So far, there is not such a unified definition of it. Scholars abroad who work in this field can be divided into two schools:the school of coherence and the school of relevance. Schiffrin is a great representative of the coherence-based group. And Blackmore represent the relevance-based group. Researches on Chinese discourse markers lag far behind compared with research overseas. What’s worse, they are lack of systematic theoretical basis. He Ziran and Ran Yongping are all famous linguists. They contribute a lot to the study of Chinese discourse markers.Now, contrastive researches of discourse markers develop quickly.This thesis makes a contrastive analysis of English and Chinese discourse markers. Similarities and differences are all involved in. Meanwhile, factors causing those differences are discussed. The contrastive analysis aims at avoiding the negative-transfer from mother language in second language acquisition. The thesis is conducted in a qualitative way under the framework of Relevance Theory.Findings of the thesis:(1)English and Chinese discourse markers have pragmatic functions. They impose pragmatic constraints on utterance interpretation. Besides, they have textual and interpersonal functions. They are classified on the basis of those functions. Discourse markers are multi-functional. They perform different pragmatic functions in different contexts.(2)Differences of English and Chinese discourse markers are the structure of language, communicative effects, modesty maxim and less use of Chinese discourse markers.(3)Different ways of thinking, different cultural background and feature of language result in differences.(4)It is helpful for both second language teaching and acquisition.The thesis is divided into five chapters. The first chapter is the introduction part. In this chapter, background knowledge of discourse marker, purposes and significance of the study are introduced. Chapter two is a literature review, covering researches overseas and domestic. Chapter three presents the theoretical foundation of this study. The fourth chapter discusses similarities and differences of English and Chinese discourse markers. Factors causing the differences are also disscussed in this chapter. The last chapter is the conclusion of the study. Some suggestions which relate to the teaching of discourse markers in English writing are given. At the same time, limitations of this study are discussed, which will be of great help for a further study.