An Investigation Of Discourse Markers Across Gender In Non-English Majors' Argumentative Writings In English

The present study aims to examine the usage of discourse markers by male and female non-English majors in their argumentative writings. Five types of discourse markers which include contrastive markers, additional markers, inferential markers, emphatic markers and self-assessment markers are investigated in their argumentative writings. Specifically, this study investigates whether there are significant differences in the overall use of five types of discourse markers between male and female students, whether there are significant differences in the use of each type of discourse marker between male and female students, whether there are significant differences in the word choice of each type of discourse marker between male and female students. The present paper analyzes how male and female students differ in using discourse markers, meanwhile, the study attempts to explore the possible reasons of the gender differences in the use of discourse markers in the argumentative writings.The participants are the non-English majors of second year in Xinjiang Normal University. Quantitative and qualitative methods of analysis are adopted in this thesis to analyze the use of discourse markers between male and female students in their argumentative writings. The gender theories are used to help to explain the possible reasons of the gender differences in the use of discourse markers.The results showed that both male and female students lack the variety when using discourse markers. There is no significant difference for the overall frequency of discourse markers by male and female students in argumentative writings, but some significant differences are found in the use of inferential and emphatic markers. Female students used more emphatic markers, while male students tend to use more inferential markers. Moreover, the findings revealed that there are significant differences for male and female students in the choice of a particular word when they use the additional markers and emphatic markers. When using the additional markers, female students prefer to choose more formal and standard word. When using the emphatic markers, female students like to choose the word with stronger tone, whereas male students prefer to use the word with relatively weaker tone.