| Discourse markers is a special kind of pragmatic device that can be used everywherein communication. The relevant researches on discourse markers are of quite necessarytheoretical value and realistic meaning whether in speaker it can assist him/her makediscourse or utterance more coherent and concise and in hearer it can contribute him/herunderstand utterances more easily and clearly. Since1970scholars have been developingstudies about discourse markers and it began to have a rapid development after80s. Upto now, researches about meaning and functions of discourse markers mainly concentrateon three aspects: firstly, it pay much attention to syntactic function and semantic meaningfrom the syntactic-pragmatic perspective; secondly, it helps to study conceptual meaningand enhancement of utterance coherence based on the framework of discourse coherence;thirdly, it focuses to procedural meaning and the role of generation and comprehensionafter the application of discourse markers based on the Relevance Theory. In these threeaspects, the former two are belong to static research, but the third one is mainly studiesthe role of discourse markers in dynamic communication, so it is a kind of dynamicresearch. The paper is intending to provide a more suitable working definition ofdiscourse markers after analyzing the basic definition advanced by different scholars anddifferent points and research methods coming from the main genres. Then it will developa new study from the metafunctions aspect.This thesis consists of an introduction, the main body and a conclusion. Its maincontents are as follows:The first part is introduction. It mainly introduces a brief summary of the previousresearch, the role of discourse markers in communication and the innovation of the paper.The second part is the main body, which is made up of three chapters:Chapter One mainly introduces overseas and domestic research status. It may have asimple introduction to theory about discourse markers including different definitions,classifications and identification coming from different genres so as to study well in thefollowing parts. This chapter has three sub-parts. The first part starts from studies ofdiscourse markers from three different perspectives including Syntactic-Pragmaticperspective, Semantic-Pragmatic perspective, Cognitive-Pragmatic Perspective. Some research findings have been given in this part. The second part is an overview ofdiscourse markers. Due to different studying research methods and theory of scholars,different definitions and classifications would occur. So the paper supplies a workingdefinition and lists a simple classification. The third part mainly introduces the importanttheory about metafunctions which are foundation of this paper.Chapter Two is the core of this paper which aims to borrow abundant examples ofwell, proving that discourse markers also have three functions in communication such astextual coherence, contextual understanding and interpersonal interaction in theframework of metafunctions advanced by Halliday. In this part, textual organizationfunction mainly refers to how discourse markers may construct local coherence and theoverall coherence in communication; context understanding function refers to speakermanages to arrive to a maximum coherence by finding optimal context so as to lessen thehearer’ efforts; interpersonal interaction function refers to how participants begin anddevelop a communication by the application of discourse markers.This chapter can be divided into four parts. The first part in detail explains functionsof discourse markers in text organization and coherence. Exemplified by cases of well, ithas been proven that discourse markers may strengthen the coherence of discourse. Thesecond part is about how well plays a role in context understanding. The analysis processtends in cognitive aspect to be told about optimal context obtaining, inference processand choice-making. In other words, it is a general process for participants to choose anoptimal context, assure optimal relevance and gain some time to make a choice with thepurpose of understanding or adapting context. So this is a key process. The third partstudies functions of discourse markers from interpersonal interaction level. Sincediscourse markers is a part of language, this level is rather inevitable. Thecommunicational process between participants has to be mentioned including intentionsof speakers and listeners in communication, their discussion process and listener’sreference and choice-making. According to abundant cases, three functions of well havebeen examined one by one.Chapter Three is the innovation of this paper. After introducing pragmaticalization,the paper relates functions of discourse markers to pragmaticalization which can furtherstudy the inner relation and formation mechanism between the both so as to proclaim the process of pragmaticalizaion of discourse markers well. Pragmaticalizaion is a newperspective to study lexicon including discourse markers, which refers to generation ofnew meaning based on the literal meaning of one word or word group in dailycommunication. We can see that the process of pragmaticalization is a necessary step fora word to develop more communicational meanings. Examples turn it out that thediscourse marker well has also been undertaking a process of pragmaticalization so as togenerate more communicational meanings.Finally, paper is going to draw a conclusion and emphasize that discourse markersis of three functions such as textual organization, context understanding and interpersonalinteraction after numerous analysis of well. Furthermore, most of discourse markers havethe process of pragmaticalization for generating more simple and useful meanings incommunication. Last but not least, studies on discourse markers have importantsignificance. Discourse markers is a common device of human language and any kind ofcommunication is inevitably use all kinds of marks, which can promote the smoothprogress in communication. So discourse markers is an important discourse means incommunication. |
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