Prgmatic Functions Of Discourse Marker Well From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

Discourse markers are so pervasively used in daily communication that a good command of employing and understanding discourse markers not only helps us to process our communication smoothly but also helps us to achieve coherence in the mutual discourse.Meanwhile,the fact that taking a discourse marker away from the host discourse segment it is attached to does not affect the sentence's grammaticality judgments or its propositional content but does affect the pragmatic appropriateness and interpersonal adaptation on the social level indicates that their employment is not syntactically or semantically oriented but pragmatically motivated.Therefore,enlightened by the previous researches on discourse markers and well as a discourse marker,this thesis attempts to study the pragmatic functions of the DM well from the perspective of Relevance Theory in the TV serial Desperate Housewives.To achieve this goal,this thesis applies the Relevance Theory established by Sperber & Wilson to build an analytical framework under which the pragmatic functions of the discourse marker well can be discussed.Careful analysis of the 534 uses of well in Desperate Housewives indicates that: the uses of well can be categorized into four major pragmatic functions,1) constrains utterance assumption and renegotiation as a contemplation marker,a turn-taking marker,and an attitudinal marker;2) reinforces discourse coherence as an indicator of topic shifting,narrative staging,and conversation trigging;3) mitigates offence in discourse as an indicator of warning opposition,due consideration in process,and resignation;4) reformulates the shared knowledge between interlocutors as an indicator of self-correcting and other-correcting.As to the significance of the study,three aspects are involved,firstly,by investigating a new,special and rarely touched spoken discourse genre,this thesis, may,to a certain extent,enrich the research material on conversational analysis in terms of spoken discourse studies.Secondly,by applying the relevance theory and classifications of four major cognitive motivations rather than traditional linguistic theories,this thesis may turn out to be a valuable and worthy academic practice in the theory application.Thirdly,by presenting pragmatic functions of well in virtue of a large quantity of examples and detailed explanation,this thesis may,to a certain extent,help people improve their use of well and promote their interaction with English speakers.