A Pragmatic Analysis Of Discourse Marker "I Mean" Based On The Relevance-Adaptation Model

As a kind of linguistic means, discourse marker is regarded as parenthesis employed by addresser to clarify the contextual relations in verbal communications. It doesn't have or has lost the substantial meaning, but it represents addresser's intentions. Ever since the 1970s, with the development and establishment of pragmatics and discourse analysis, numerous linguists began to make useful explorations in the field of discourse markers from different research perspectives.Through literature review, it is found that the researches regarding discourse markers have been approached from discourse-coherence perspective, grammatical-pragmatic perspective, relevance-based perspective and adaptation-based perspective. However, none of the four aforementioned perspectives are able to offer a comprehensive description and explanation of this linguistic phenomenon. Consequently, combing the Relevance Theory and Adaptation Theory, the present study proposes a Relevance-Adaptation Model based on previous studies with an aim to elucidate verbal communication from the perspectives both utterance production and utterance interpretation.Within the framework of Relevance-Adaptation Model, this research collects 3 series (60 lectures) of world-famous university open classes as data for analysis, in order to study the uses and pragmatic functions of discourse marker "I mean". The present study tries to solve the following three questions:how can Relevance-Adaptation Model be applied to account for the use of discourse marker "I mean"; why and under what circumstance do lecturers use discourse marker "I mean" to convey information appropriately to achieve successful communication; what pragmatic functions does the discourse marker "I mean" perform. First of all, based on the Relevance-Adaptation Model, the analysis leads to the following findings:1) "I mean" serves as a means of ostensive stimulus, which guide students to search for optimal relevance; 2) "I mean" can be seen as a result of linguistic choice made by lecturers in order to attain communicative goals; 3) "I mean" indicates a dynamic process of inter-adaptation between contextual correlates and linguistic choices; 4) "I mean" represents lecturers' different choices of communicative strategies. Furthermore, in diverse contexts, with the help of different pragmatic functions of "I mean", lecturers organize coherent classroom discourse, attract students' attention and guide their interpretation of lecturers' utterances. Finally, the present study especially focuses on the pragmatic functions of the discourse marker "I mean" and the analysis shows that it at least has the following functions in university open classes:reminding & emphasizing, explaining & supplementing, repairing, transforming and interacting. In university open classes, the appropriate use of discourse markers can enhance the organization and logic of teacher instruction, promote the interaction between teachers and students and improve students' understanding, which are very conducive to classroom teaching and learning.