| This thesis mainly discusses the researches of discourse markers that have attracted many scholars'attention both at home and abroad in recent years. Discourse markers are widely used in daily communication and a good command of them can help achieve coherence in the discourse. At first, it is generally believed that the discourse markers only convey procedural meaning without the conceptual meaning of the communication. The present study has been led to explore the pragmatic functions and the contextual influences. Therefore, the research on them is of great theoretical value and practical significance.The present study aims to explore the pragmatic functions of so. It has high frequency of occurrence in spoken English as well as in written English. There will be a detailed description and analysis of so in the thesis. From the American TV series Modern Family, examples are collected to show the different pragmatic functions of discourse marker so. Modern family is an American television comedy which debuted on ABC on September 23, 2009. The series premiered to critical acclaim and was watched by 12.61 million viewers. The TV series have a great many short words with discourse functions. The discourse marker so occurred frequently in the TV series. Thus it is suitable for the analysis of the discourse markers and the thesis'goal is to classify the functions of so. In the TV series, the discourse marker so is used 277 times from different characters in the daily conversations. Based on the coherence-theory, we can draw the conclusion that so can convey both textual and emotional effects in communication.The thesis is useful for deeper and further researches. It can push forward the development of the practice of the discourse marker so. The research can inspire more people's interests in the study of discourse markers and more analytical research could be done for further refinement. |
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