On Discourse Markers From The Perspective Of Textual Understanding

Communication demands discourse markers. Discourse marker (Henceforth: discourse marker is shortened to DM.) is important to discourse analysis.In recent years, DM attracts more attention. This thesis will analyze DMs from the perspective of textual understanding. In contradiction to the traditional syntactic analysis, this thesis understands DM from the whole text angle, and proposes that DM does not equal functional words. DM does not only have formal meanings, but also has textual meanings. Based on Hills Like White Elephants by Hemingway, this thesis analyzes the functions of DMs on the textual level one by one and does a research of how they connect the ideas of the text to realize text coherence.This thesis proposes that DMs have textual meanings, and all of them can connect the ideas in the text to realize text coherence. In order to illustrate this proposition, the first part of this study focuses on sorting out to the previous studies and listing the definition of DM on the textual level. DMs are similar to the functional words in the traditional grammar, but they are not the same. A text can be recognized as a labyrinth, which consists of notions and ideas. What guides us in going into and out of the labyrinth are elements that connect these notions and ideas. People have to rely on these connections to understand a text. The second part is analyzing the functions of DMs on the textual level one by one and doing a research of their contributions to the coherence of the text. According to Yael, this thesis divides DMs in HLWE into four categories: interpersonal, referential, structural and cognitive marker. Then this thesis mainly analyzes these markers from three perspectives:the elicitational perspective, the narrational perspective and footing shifts between description and conversation.By study, this thesis proves that the proposition is correct. DM not only has formal functions, but also has textual meanings. DMs in a text have different functions, all of which can realize text coherence. Although this thesis does not make a conclusion of all DMs in English, it makes a theoretical and practical foundation for future studies. The research of the contribution of DMs to text coherence is useful to the text comprehension.The creativity is distinguishing DMs from the functional words and giving the "labyrinth" proposition to illustrate that DMs have textual meanings. The first limitation of this thesis is that qualitative research relies too much on the researcher’s unsystematic view about what is significant and important. Although this thesis analyzes DMs objectively, it is unavoidable to do research with subjective view. The second one is that the analysis focuses on HLWE, which is not enough for the researcher to make an inductive conclusion of their functions at the textual level.