A Pragmatic Analysis Of Discourse Markers In TED Talks From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

Discourse markers are markers at the level of discourse that serve as pauses,transitions,emphasis and so on.It helps to form coherence in discourse and serves as certain indications and cues.It is widely used in all kinds of languages and is an important factor for successful communication.Specifically,it marks the relationship between an utterance and its adjacent utterance,and appears in the form of words and phrases such as so,but,and,accordingly,therefore,you know,as a result,what is more,on the other hand,etc.The use of discourse markers is inseparable from the pragmatic awareness of the communicative parties.And they can show different pragmatic functions under different contexts.With the advent of discourse analysis,pragmatics,cognitive pragmatics,and other related fields,discourse markers have increasingly gained prominence since the 1970s.In linguistics,the study of discourse markers has likewise become one of the hottest issues.And the study of discourse markers has emerged as a brand-new field and an essential component in recent years.TED(which stands for Technology,Entertainment,and Design)is a private,non-profit organization in America,whose mission is to "spread all ideas worth spreading".TED was founded in 1984 as a platform for leaders in science,design,literature,music,and other industries to communicate their thoughts on technology,society,and humanity.Subsequently,TED has developed from the original three fields of technology,entertainment and design to a wide range of fields.Nowadays,TED is popular around the world,with a single episode receiving up to 10 million views.Based on its popularity,scholars at home and abroad are eager to investigate it from the perspectives of discourse cohesion and interpersonal function,etc.And some scholars have analyzed these talks from Relevance Theory.Relevance Theory was proposed by Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson as a cognitive and pragmatic theory.The notion and principle of relevance serve as the basis for the analysis of the discourse theory in verbal communication.This thesis selects 60 TED talks which have been popular with audience since 2022,with topics in the fields of art,music,entertainment,technology,and health and so on.It aims to study the usage of discourse markers in TED talks from both quantitative and qualitative methods,and then analyze their pragmatic functions from Relevance Theory.This thesis will investigate discourse markers in TED talks,based on the theoretical framework of Relevance Theory proposed by Sperber and Wilson.And it will study and analyze the collected corpus by the tools of Microsoft Word and AntConc.This thesis will attempt to solve the following two questions:Firstly,what are the characteristics of discourse markers in terms of their distribution and syntactic positions in TED talks?Secondly,what are the pragmatic functions of discourse markers from the perspective of Relevance Theory?The findings show that but appears 690 times as a discourse marker,still appears 68 times as a discourse marker,and though appears 31 times as a discourse marker.Through the careful analysis,it is found that the discourse marker but often appears at the beginning of a sentence,accounting for about 60%of the frequency.But it never appears at the end of a sentence.The discourse marker still appears most frequently in the middle of a sentence,accounting for about 93%of the frequency.And it rarely appears at the beginning or at the end of a sentence.The discourse marker though appears frequently in the middle of a sentence,accounting for about 70%of the frequency.And it is not seen at the end of a sentence.As for their pragmatic functions,the discourse marker but can introduce relations such as denial,comparison,emphasis,amendment and supplement.The discourse marker still can be considered as a contrastive marker,a continuous marker and an emotional marker.The discourse marker though,which has three kinds of pragmatic functions can be considered as a contrastive marker,a concessive marker and an emphatic marker.The purpose of studying discourse markers is to ensure that both parties of the conversation can understand each other’s intentions.For the speaker,the application of discourse markers can explain the context to the hearer,and it can also preserve his or her face by adjusting the context in time when the conversation is not going well.It also enhances the tone of voice and expresses one’s feelings and attitudes to the hearer.For the hearer,learning discourse markers enables him or her to discern the current context and understand the speaker’s intentions in time in order to avoid conflicts in the discourse.And in this way,it can ensure that the conversation can proceed smoothly and successfully.For the second language learners,paying attention to the roles of discourse markers can make their language coherent and improve their speaking ability to a certain extent.Therefore,this thesis is a worthy topic to study.