Pragmatic Markers: Toward Bidirectional Optimalization In Communication

The present study aims to explore the properties and multiple functions of pragmatic markers in interactive discourse, and provides a conceptual framework for a consistent and systematic description of why pragmatic markers are predominant in oral interaction and how they serve to achieve bi-directional optimalization in interpersonal communication. Based on theoretical ideas, research methodologies and findings of game theory, pragmatics and discourse analysis, we propose a conceptual framework with respect to the multi-dimensions of interpersonal communication: dynamic collaboration, interactive coherence and bilateral optimalization. We assume the conceptual framework to be an underlying mechanism to account for the multifunctionality of pragmatic markers in interactive discourse.The theoretical emphasis is on the multi-facets of interpersonal communication and on the contributions of pragmatic markers as linguistic and contextual clues to meaning production and interpretation in interaction. In the dynamic process of communication, interlocutors usually make collaborative efforts to attain a balance between conflicts of interest on the multi-dimensions of interpersonal communication. And interlocutors often employ various pragmatic markers strategically or stylistically to attain the maximization of the final outcome. Owing to the uncertainty of verbal interaction, interlocutors often need to negotiate with each other so as to accurately decode the communicative messages intended by the other. As a result, pragmatic markers are often used to achieve interactive coherence in the online discourse which is composed of all the utterances of both the speaker and the hearer.Assuming that pragmatics is to do with language use, we focus on the multifunctionality of pragmatic markers, which are elusive in meaning and ready for new senses or functions in interactive discourse. Noticing that not all aspects of the information conveyed by an utterance are equally accessible and not all aspects of language use involve computations of equal complexity, we assume that pragmatic markers contribute to the overall meaning conveyed by the utterances in which they occur. Specifically, pragmatic markers function as clues to explicatures and implicatures conveyed by utterances, and have both conceptual meaning and procedural meaning. As people rarely encode exactly in a univocal linguistic form the messages they intend to communicate, it is crucial for interlocutors to decode and infer both the explicit and implicit information conveyed in...