An Analysis Of The Use Of Discourse Markers In Informal Talks

Discourse marker is a very common phenomenon that occurs in People’s Daily oral communication.Its existence only provides information marking and guidance for discourse understanding.It has neither propositional meaning nor a necessary component of syntactic structure in sentences.Discourse markers exist in almost any language.In order to ensure the coherence and fluency of both sides of the conversation,they often appear in natural language flow and have rich pragmatic functions.The core research of this paper mainly involves the following three aspects.Firstly,in the introduction part,this paper introduces the necessity of mastering discourse markers and the contemporary value of The Informal Talks,expounds the origin and significance of the research,and discusses the research status,research methods and research theories.Then this paper introduces discourse markers from four aspects: definition,characteristic,classification and function.As a kind of functional word with procedural meaning but no conceptual meaning,discourse markers are characterized by various forms,flexible positions and syntactic independence.From the perspective of form,discourse markers can be divided into two types: "lexical form" and "non-lexical form".In terms of pragmatic function,discourse markers mainly play "discourse function" and "interpersonal interaction function".Secondly,based on the transcribed corpus of ten episodes from the seventh season of The Informal Talks,this paper selects seven typical discourse markers,namely "then" "actually" "that" "I think" "I tell you" "You know what" and uses quantitative analysis to study the frequency and proportion of discourse markers used by high-level Chinese learners.At the same time,case study is used to analyze the evolution process of these seven discourse markers and their pragmatic functions in specific contexts.Finally,based on the collected corpus,this paper uses the bias analysis method to study two kinds of bias phenomena,"superfluity" and "misuse",which are prone to appear in the process of using discourse markers by foreign representatives in the program,and analyzes the reasons for the common occurrence of these two kinds of bias.This paper proposes some suggestions on the teaching of discourse markers in international Chinese education from the aspects of "textbook compilation" and "teacher teaching",in order to promote the authentic and effective use of Chinese discourse markers by Chinese learners in communication.