A Corpus-based Comparative Study Of Discourse Marker Well Used By Native English Speakers And Chinese EFL Learners

As a common language phenomenon in verbal communication,discourse markers function as a linguistic unit by the speaker to guide and constrain the proper interpretation for the hearer,such as I mean,I think,well and you know etc.In the past three decades,discourse markers have attracted broad attention abroad and at home with the emergence and development of pragmatics and have been researched from various perspectives.Well has probably received most of the attention from scholars among all the discourse markers.This thesis is conducted with text analysis of corpus linguistics under the theoretical framework of Relevance Theory,combining quantitative analysis with qualitative analysis.It aims to analyze the similarities and differences of the application of pragmatic functions and syntactic positions of discourse marker well by native English speakers and Chinese EFL learners.Meanwhile,it also discusses the reasons that cause the differences and attempts to put forward some effective implications for Chinese oral English teaching.The data is collected from The Santa Barbara Corpus of Spoken American English and The Spoken English Corpus of Chinese Learners.With the help of WordSmith Tools,almost all the applications of discourse marker well are listed and they are tagged,classified and rearranged according to their various pragmatic functions and syntactic positions.Conclusions are drawn through qualitative analysis.Results show that:(1)As for pragmatic functions of discourse marker well,Chinese EFL learners employ them not as frequently and flexibly as native English speakers do.(2)As for syntactic positions of discourse marker well,Chinese EFL learners use discourse marker well initially in the majority of cases,like native English speakers do.However,they are still not fully aware of pragmatic functions implied by syntactic positions of discourse marker well.This thesis attempts to probe into the results from various angles,such as insufficient second language input and output,negative transfer of first language and pragmatic fossilization.This thesis also provides implications for Chinese EFL teaching.How to avoid the phenomena aboveand to guide Chinese EFL learners to acquire and use discourse marker well effectively and properly in verbal communication are what Chinese EFL educators should pay great attention to.The thesis ends with corresponding suggestions,limitations of the present study and suggestions for future study.