A Study On DM So Toward Multilateral Communication In TV Talk Shows

Discourse markers are a very common discourse phenomenon in verbal communicationand they play an indispensable role in the process of verbal communication. They seem to beunimportant and dispensable for the propositional meaning, but in actual verbalcommunication they are like lubricants that facilitate the completion of a smoothcommunication. The use of discourse markers is one of the important conversationalstrategies in oral conversation. Only when participants pay enough attention to theirs’functions, they can further promote the smooth progress of communication. So far there havebeen many researchers to study them. While there are few researchers to specifically study adiscourse marker in details. Therefore, we still need to continue to explore this area.In daily communication most people know that so has the result function indicating causalconnection between utterances. However, this is not its only function. Actually it has a varietyof pragmatic functions. This dissertation attempts to analyze various functions of DM so fromthe theoretical framework of cognitive context, dynamic cooperation and optimal relevance.Since the analysis of functions of DM so depends on certain context，the author chooses20episodes from the TV Talk Show－Crossover as the corpus to analyze the various pragmaticfunctions of DM so.With the combination of qualitative and quantitative methods，the dissertation focuses onstudying the functions of DM so in Crossover. Qualitatively, many functional types aredistinguished according to the vast majority of examples of so in the corpus. Quantitatively,the frequency rates of so in differently identified functions are compared. It further showshow many proportions of different pragmatic functions of DM so in the overall corpus.The research shows that the DM so has different functions in the different situations anddifferent utterances. This dissertation reveals that the DM so has eight pragmatic functionsand their frequencies respectively. In addition, the DM so occupies a larger proportionregarding the function of turn-taking, which shows the turn-taking is the basic factor forsmooth continuing of conversation.The results of this study have certain enlightenments for English teaching, especiallyspoken English learning. In the teaching, English teachers should have enough consciousnessto cultivate students’ ability of the proper using of discourse markers to construct theirutterances so that students can better improve their spoken communicative competence.