A Relevance-Theoretic Study Of Well As A Discourse Marker

The employment of discourse markers in verbal communication is a pervasive language phenomenon existing in different languages. Discourse markers are some words and expressions such as now, well, so, oh, you see, and then, which show a sequential relationship between the current basic message and the previous discourse. They do not add to the true value of the discourse, and only have procedural meanings. A substantial body of research work has been done by researchers at home and abroad dealing with semantic and pragmatic aspects of discourse markers with different approaches: the coherence approach, the grammar approach, the relevance approach and the sociolinguistics approach. And well is among those discourse markers which have much appeal for researchers. However, there is still a lack of consensus regarding how the meaning and function of this marker should be formulated.Relevance Theory, proposed by Sperber and Wilson in their book Relevance: Communication & Cognition first published in 1986, is adopted as the framework to study the pragmatic functions of well as a discourse marker in this dissertation. According to Relevance Theory, human communication is relevance-oriented, which is a process of searching for optimal relevance. Discourse markers can help the hearer reorient a context of assumptions to obtain the intended information by the speaker during verbal communication. Therefore, discourse markers act as signposts to constrain the utterance production and interpretation.After the relevance-theoretic analysis of the collected data in the novel Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, it is found that well can act respectively as a marker of insufficiency, a face-threat mitigator, a frame, a delay device, a repair marker or a marker indicating emotions. This is the multi-functionality of discourse marker well. Furthermore, this dissertation also proves that Relevance Theory has powerful interpretability in the existence and functions of discourse markers. In the end, some implications of discourse markers for English language teaching and learning are unraveled.