A Comparative Study Of DM I Mean Between Native English Speakers And Chinese EFL Learners

Discourse markers are a class of function words or phrases, which are equipped with pragmatic meaning on a parenthetically linguistic level of discourse and syntacticaly detachable from the discourse, have no conceptual meaning but procedural meaning, and whose functions indicate metapragmatic awareness of the participants in communication. As we know, discourse markers are widely used in daily communication and proper use of discourse markers can make the communication run more smoothly and the speaker's intention conveyed more vividly. Therefore, discourse markers play an important role in communication.Since the 1970s, discourse markers have been one of the hot topics in pragmatics arousing many scholars'interest in foreign countries. Up to now, studies of discourse markers are mainly conducted from the syntactic-pragmatic approach, the semantic-pragmatic approach and the cognitive-pragmatic approach. However, the study of discourse markers in China is not as extensive as that in foreign countries. Besides, many of these studies are done on the general use of discourse markers. The study on individual discourse markers is scarcely touched upon. Among the few studies, no cross-cultural study of individual discourse markers in spoken English has been found. To fill in the gap, the present study intends to make a comparative study of the use of the individual discourse marker I mean in spoken English between native speakers and Chinese EFL learners from the cognitive-pragmatic perspective.The present study attempts to answer the following questions:What are similarities and differences in the use of discourse marker I mean between native speakers and Chinese EFL learners in regard to metapragmatic functions, collocates and syntactic positions? To what degree can Chinese EFL learners understand and apply the metapragmatic functions of discourse marker I mean used by native speakers?The study is undertaken within the theoretical framework of relevance theory and linguisitc adaptation. According to relevance theory, discourse markers are used to constrain the possible assumptions of an utterance and provide the interpretation with the optimal relevance. At the same time, according to linguistic adaptation, the use of discourse markers can reveal the metapragmatic awareness hidden in the speaker's mind. That is to say, the use of discourse marker I mean can help facilitate the understanding of utterances with the optimal relevance and show the metapragmatic awareness of I mean employed by the speaker.The present study is corpus-driven plus questionnaire. The data for the study is collected from two sources. One is from the two corpora BNC and SECCL and the other is from the questionnaire. As for the comparison of the two corpora, we first employ AntConc for concordancing the frequencies we need in each corpus. The research procedures involve several steps:retrieve top six frequently used discourse markers, analyze the metapragmatic functions of discourse marker I mean according to the classification discussed in the literature review, sort out the top six collocates of I mean with other discourse markers and list out the occurences of I mean in different syntactic positions and calculate the frequencies of them in each corpus. Then Crosstabs in SPSS is employed to analyze the data information collected from the corpora. As for the questionnaire, data information is collected from the questionnaires done by thirty junior English majors of the School of Foreign Studies of Anhui University. The result shows how the Chinese EFL learners understand and apply the metapragmatic functions of discourse marker I mean used by native speakers.Through the descriptive and qualitative analysis of the data colleted, some major findings have been discovered. First, there are some similarities of the use of discourse marker I mean between native speakers and Chinese EFL learners. Chinese EFL learners can make as good use of discourse markers you know, Okay as native speakers. Chinese EFL learners can employ supplementing & explaining marker and contemplation marker as well as native speakers. Chinese EFL learners, like native speakers, often use I mean together with erm to show his/her contemplation process. In addition, Chinese EFL learners often place I mean in the initial position like native speakers. Second, there are some differences between native speakers and Chinese EFL learners in terms of metapragmatic funtions, collocates and syntactic positions of discourse marker I mean. As for metapragmatic functions of I mean, Crosstabs shows there are significant differences between Chinese EFL learners and native speakers in regard to the use of reminding marker and editing marker. As for the collocates of I mean with other discourse markers, the statistic result shows that Chinese EFL learners tend to use much fewer collocates than native speakers. Besides, the use of I mean in the middle position of an utterance differs significantly between Chinese EFL learners and native speakers. In brief, Chinese EFL learners tend to underuse dicourse marker I mean in every aspect discussed above. According to the results of the questionnaire, we find that Chinese EFL learners can understand the metapragmatic functions of I mean quite well while they cannot apply them properly in communication, which is consistent with the findings from the corpora. All in all, the use of discourse marker I mean by Chinese EFL learners is far from proficient, compared to that of native speakers.Therefore, at the end of the study, we come up with the suggestions that enough input of discourse markers should be exposed to Chinese EFL learners and formal instructions on discourse markers should be introduced into EFL oral class so as to increase the profociency of discourse markers acquisition by Chinese EFL learners.