Discourse Functions Of Discourse Marker "So" In The Big Bang Theory

Discourse markers are ubiquitous in communication and very many studies have emerged. Yet despite their pervasiveness, the profound research of a special discourse marker hasn't been claimed completely. There is still much room to exploit further. The discourse marker so is most commonly considered as indicating consequential connection. However, recordings of everyday talk indexing consequential relation is not its only function. Native speakers are found to use it for a wider variety of discourse functions. This thesis is designed to provide a unified description of the marker so, in which its polyfunctionality is accounted for within three-level analysis, textual, interactional and emotional.Since the function of discourse markers is context-dependant, the present thesis draws on a specific text type for studying. Data from the present study come from the American sitcom The Big Bang Theory (from Season One to Three), successively displaying daily conversations (totaling 1260 minutes), which fullfil the request that "the corpus used to describe pragmatic markers is necessarily large and representative of many different interactive situations" (韩戈玲,2008:8). Combining qualitative and quantitative methods, the thesis concentrates on the functions and frequency of so as a discourse marker in The Big Bang Theory. Qualitatively, the bottom-up corpus-linguistic approach could arrive at a functional taxonomy which accounts for the vast majority of instances of so in the corpus. Quantitatively, the frequency rates of so in differently identified functions are compared to determine which function is the most prevalent under the conversational domain.The findings drawn from the analysis show that so is multifunctional, operating on several linguistic levels simultaneously. Eight major discourse functions are identified and the occurrences of so differ in their preferences for these discourse functions. Moreover, the function of transition is dominated across the overall data. This highlights the fact that the organization of taking turns to talk is fundamental to conversation.