Discourse Marker Pragmatic Features Of Analysis

Discourse markers have revealed one of the common linguistic phenomena, which are so pervasively applied in daily communications that a good command of employing and understanding discourse markers not only helps us to achieve coherence in the discourse, to process our communication smoothly, decently and univocally, but also assists us in comprehending the utterances more intensively. So the research on the discourse markers is of great theoretical and practical significance.Based on the existing investigation in the discourse markers, the present research having adopted Schiffrin's model of discourse coherence and Verschueren's meta-pragmatic awareness theory as the conceptual framework, by a great number of data-analysis, aims to probe into the pragmatic features of discourse markers in the verbal communication, and into their roles in fulfilling successful communications from two distinctive perspectives: discourse coherence and meta-pragmatics. Discourse markers can not only connect utterances to show different connectivity and construct a well-organized discourse, but also display mental states of the language users and ideational mode, i.e. meta-pragmatic awareness in the process of communication. The thesis works towards the goal of strengthening interpreting powers in terms of discourse markers on the actual verbal communication, instructing and guiding the production and interpretation of utterances more comprehensively, and figuring out some findings which can shed light on further researches pursuing a systemic and thorough account of discourse markers.