Discourse Marker Conform To Theoretical Interpretation

Discourse markers includes some conjunctions, adverbs, interjections and some phrases and structures, they do not contribute to proposition content of the utterances to which they are attached, but they do affect the pragmatic appropriateness and interpersonal adaptation on the social level. Their employment is not syntactically or semantically oriented but pragmatically motivated.The research on discourse markers has become a growth industry in linguistics. Some of the studies are static, but most of the studies are dynamic. However, there is no certain agreement on discourse markers. According to recent researches, more and more researchers consider it as a pragmatic phenomenon in verbal communication, whose function is pragmatic and dynamic. However, researches on discourse markers, though rich and fruitful, are far from being homogeneous and complete. Different views on terms, classification, characteristic, and function are found in various studies.Based on the Adaptation Theory, this dissertation gives explanation of discourse markers, expecting some contributions to the study of discourse markers.This dissertation consists of five parts:Part one serves as a general introduction, which briefly introduces the aims and significance of this paper. The organization of the paper is also introduced in this part.Part two reviews the early definitions of discourse markers by different scholars and sets forth a working definition of discourse markers; then reviews the previous studies of discourse markers, pointing out the virtues and problems of each perspective, setting forth the adaptation theory as the framework for the present study.Part three, introduces the adaptation theory framework.Part four, within the adaptation theory framework, offers a comprehensive and thorough description of discourse markers, gives pragmatics functions of discourse markers in utterance production and interpretation. Part five is the conclusion, where the major findings are summarized. The theoretical and practical implications and the limitations of the present research and the suggestions are also talked about in this part.