A Relevance-Theoretic Study On The Pragmatic Functions Of Discourse Marker Well

There are some ’small words’ in English and other languages referred to as discourse markers (DMs), including conjunctions, such as and, therefore, because, adverbs, such as actually,incidentally,interjections, like well,oh and some phrases as well as minor sentences, like as a consequence of, you know, if I’m not wrong and so on, instead of conveying propositional meaning like some content words bottle, flower, they convey procedural meaning which do not alter the truth conditional content of the utterance,but can guide or constrain the addressee to successfully understand the addresser.Although numerous researches have done in this area since 1970s, and researchers have analyzed this item according to their different interests. At present, three theoretic approaches prevail: the coherence-based approach put forward by Schiffrin; the grammatical-pragmatic approach presented by Fraser; the relevance-theoretic approach raised by Blakemore. However, few has drawn an indisputable conclusion about the pragmatic functions of an individual DM or DMs, many of them are not comprehensive enough in that the researchers approach this item from a limited point of view. Therefore,it is considered worthwhile to explore DM well----one of the most frequently used DMs deeply. Concerning the great interpretability of relevance theory first put forward by Sperber & Wilson and the rarely being researched television literature materials,this study attempts to investigate qualitatively and quantitatively the pragmatic functions of DM well in the American TV show Modern Family from a relevance-theoretic perspective in the hope that its specific meanings in different contexts can be grasped, thus facilitating the process of utterance interpretation.It is concluded that in the first season of Modern Family among a total number of 274 occurences of well, 261 accounting for the DM use of well, which serve four major functions: the ostensive-inferential function, the coherence-achieving function, the context-restricting function, and the attitudinal and emotional function. Furthermore, the study shows that DM, as a cohesive device, is an ostensive stimulus produced by the speaker to constrain the hearer contextual assumptions, thus guiding the latter to infer the former’s communicative goal. Therefore,English language learners,in order to understand others better and produce idiomatic English, should pay special attention to these small words.