A Study Of Discourse Markers From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

Discourse markers are frequently used in daily linguistic communication and their proper use and suitable interpretation consist of a considerable part of people's pragmatic or communicative competence. It is a fact that taking a discourse marker away from the host discourse segment it is attached to does not affect the grammaticality of the sentence or its propositional content. However, without its employment, the pragmatic appropriateness of a remark and the relevant interpersonal adaptation on the social level will surely be affected. This indicates that their function is not syntactically or semantically oriented but pragmatically motivated. Therefore, the study of this linguistic phenomenon bears both theoretical and practical significance.The present study focuses on how speakers use different discourse markers to adapt to different context in verbal communication. This is a qualitative pragmatic analysis based on the data collected from literary works, TV program and daily conversation. The theoretical framework of the study is based on Jef Verschueren's Theory of Linguistic Adaptation (1999). The present study is concerned with the variability, adaptability and negotiability of linguistic choices as adaptation to different contextual correlates for the achievement of a successful communication.The Linguistic Adaptation Theory is considered as a comprehensive framework for thecommunication study from a pragmatic perspective. The Adaptation Theory has been proposed to interpret human language use because communication is rather a dynamic process during which all the choices are made automatically or responsively according to highly flexible principles. Within this theoretical framework, discourse markers can be defined as a kind of linguistic choice and a communicative means that can be utilized to fulfill specific communicative purposes. Meanwhile, discourse markers also adapt into the preferred social conventions and specific psychological intentions or consciousness. The functions of discourse markers in linguistic communication are achieved through the process of adaptation.