A Relevance-theoretical Approach To The Discourse Marker You Know In Alice's Adventures In Wonderland

Discourse markers such as after all, oh, well, I mean, you know, frequently appear in daily communication. Since Halliday & Hasan's Cohesion in English (1976/2000) and Schiffrin's Discourse Markers (1987) were published, a lot of researchers have contributed a lot to the study of discourse markers from different perspectives. Generally speaking, their studies can roughly be divided into three approaches: the coherence-based approach, the grammatical-pragmatic approach and the relevance-theoretical approach. After analyzing and summarizing the good points and the weak points of these three approaches to discourse markers, this thesis finds that relevance theory is the most suitable for the study of discourse markers among these three approaches. However, there are still some flaws on the relevance-theoretical approach to discourse markers. For instance, Blakemore's relevance-theoretical analytical framework for discourse markers is too broad and she only studies the discourse marker well in detail. Few researchers touch on and analyze the functions of the discourse markers in literary works from the relevance-theoretical perspective. These points encourage the author to make the present study in this thesis.In order to fill the gap in relevance-theoretical analytical framework and to illustrate the powerful interpretability of relevance theory for the discourse markers in literary works, the present study takes the discourse marker you know in the famous story Alice's Adventures in Wonderland as an example and analyzes its functions from the relevance-theoretical perspective. Generally speaking, the present study intends to apply Sperber and Wilson's relevance theory to analyzing the discourse marker you know and discusses its functions in this story. Based on relevance theory and the present study, this thesis aims to illustrate: almost all discourse markers encode the procedural meaning not the conceptual meaning; discourse markers, as a kind of linguistic devices, constrain utterance interpretation and the relevance-theoretical account of discourse markers is suitable and powerful. In particular, this thesis attempts to make a detailed analysis of the discourse marker you know in a literary work from the relevance-theoretical perspective, discusses its functions in a specific situation, and draws researchers'attention to the study of discourse markers in literary works in the following steps.First of all, the present study reviews the previous studies of discourse markers. After concluding the good points and the weak points of the three approaches to discourse markers, this thesis points out the theory used in the present study and furthermore shows the appropriateness of relevance theory for the study of discourse markers.Then, this thesis uses a whole chapter serving as a comprehensive review on the study of discourse markers within the relevance-theoretical framework to further demonstrate the point proposed previously. With a lot of examples, Chapter Three shows some common issues and some important findings: discourse markers, as a kind of linguistic devices, usually are used to spare the hearer's processing effort; almost all discourse markers encode the procedural meaning not the conceptual meaning; discourse markers constrain the utterance interpretation, etc..At last, based on the above analyses and demonstrations, this thesis tentatively discusses the functions of the discourse marker you know in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland from the relevance-theoretical perspective to illustrate the appropriateness of relevance theory for the study of discourse markers in literary works and to add a detailed analytical example into the broad relevance-theoretical framework.The present study on the discourse marker you know in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland may help to attract researchers'attention to the study of the discourse markers in literary works, since few researchers enter and touch on this field. Meanwhile, the present study not only pushes forward the development of linguistic study of discourse markers, but also is helpful to the Chinese of English learners in mastering the use of these"little words".