A Comparative Study Of Pragmatic Markers In Chinese And American College Students’ Public Speaking Based On Relevance-adaptation Model

Pragmatic markers(PMs),also known as discourse markers or discourse particles,are used to mark discourse coherence and convey the interactive information.As a common linguistic phenomenon,PMs play an important role in guiding and restricting listeners to understand the content of discourse.Although PMs have been extensively studied in daily conversational corpora,few scholars have conducted analysis on syntactic and pragmatic aspects of PMs in speech discourse.In this study,the self-built corpora of Chinese college students’ speeches and American college students’ speeches are used to quantitatively analyze the overall frequency and syntactic position of PMs with the help of corpus retrieval software and data analysis software,and qualitative description of pragmatic functions of PMs is carried out based on relevance-adaptation model.The main findings of this study are:Firstly,the overall frequency of PMs in Chinese college students’ speeches is significantly higher than that of American college students,and Chinese college students employ significant higher numbers of inferential markers,temporal markers,deference markers and emphasis markers than that of American college students.There are great differences in the choice of PMs between Chinese and American college students,but they all rely on the use of and,but,when,so,and because.In addition,the combination of PMs occurs in both corpora,and both Chinese and American college students tend to use and,but,and so to combine with other markers.Although there is no significant difference in the frequency of co-occurring PMs between the two corpora,American college students show more varied co-occurring patterns of PMs.Secondly,Chinese and American college students have a strong similarity in the use of position of PMs,namely,both Chinese and American college students tend to use PMs in clause-medial,followed by clause-initial and clause-final.The statistical results also show that PMs in clause-initial and clause-medial position are employed significantly more often by Chinese college students while PMs in clause-final show no significant difference in both corpora.In addition,American college students tend to combine PMs with other markers in clause-medial,while Chinese college students tend to combine PMs with other markers in clause-initial.Thirdly,in speech discourse,PMs mainly play the pragmatic functions of complementing discourse information,suggesting contrastive ideas,showing time events,indicating conclusions,expressing personal opinions,serving as politeness strategies,managing discourse information and emphasizing discourse information,etc.And PMs play an important role in utterance production and utterance interpretation based on relevance-adaptation model.As for speakers,PMs are linguistic choices that used to express discourse information and adapt to the development of context.As for hearers,PMs are language cues provided by the speaker to reduce cognitive processing efforts and obtain optimal relevance of utterances.Fourthly,based on the observation and analysis of the corpora,it is found that Chinese and American college students exhibit some differences in realizing the pragmatic functions of PMs.For instance,American college students are more likely to use also to add additional information while Chinese college students show the distinctive usage of in particular and above all.American college students use yet more often to reveal comparative ideas,and tend to combine and with yet,while Chinese college students tend to use however.American college students tend to use thus to elicit inferential information while Chinese college students tend to use so,and combine it with other markers to introduce topics and attract listeners’ attention.Besides,Chinese college students tend to overuse and misuse of contrastive markers and inferential markers when compared to American college students.Finally,this study attempts to analyze the possible reasons for differences in terms of thinking patterns,language acquisition,and public speaking education.This study makes a comprehensive analysis of the overall frequencies,syntactic positions and pragmatic functions of PMs in speech discourse.To a certain extent,this study can enhance English learners’ awareness of using PMs,and provide some implications for English speech teaching.