Content area
Full Text
Abstract
Discourse markers have been approached by many linguists (Levinson, 1983, Schiffrin, 1987, Blakemore, 1987, Fraser, 1993 etc.). English like any other language presents us with a wide range of lexical items that could be interpreted as discourse markers. The latter are items whose semantic content is almost null, but whose pragmatic value is of importance in communication as they indicate and establish a relationship between the speaker and the hearer, between the addresser and the addressee. As Schiffrin writes, "the analysis of discourse markers is part of the more general analysis of discourse coherence - how speakers and hearers jointly integrate forms, meanings, and actions to make overall sense out of what is said". So discourse markers form a group of linguistic items that are inseparable from discourse and fulfil significant roles in discourse interpretation.
Keywords: discourse marker, register, genre, communication, coherence.
1. PREAMBLE
1.1. Discourse Analysis: Tentative Definitions
Discourse analysis is concerned with the study of the relationship between language and the contexts in which it is used. "It grew out of work in different disciplines in the 1960s and early 1970s, including linguistics, semiotics, psychology, anthropology and sociology. Discourse analysts study language in use: written texts of all kinds, and spoken data, from conversation to highly institutionalized forms of talk"2.
Historically, the term has meant several things: a coherent and reasoned treatment of a subject or merely an extended treatment of a subject (though not necessarily rational), and conversation. In modern linguistics, the term has come to mean any utterance larger than the sentence; in this sense it may or may not comprise the full text in a given situation. Generally, discourse refers to the full text of an oral or written situation; it does not denote necessarily a rational or logically coherent content; the discourse can be directed to any aim of language or refer to any kind or reality; it can be a poem, a conversation, a tragedy, a joke, a seminar discussion, a full-length history, a periodical article, an interview, a sermon, a TV ad.
A theory of discourse will then comprise an intelligible framework of different types of discourse with a treatment of the nature of each type, the organizational structure of this type, and the...