Relevance Theory-Based Analysis Of Discourse Marker In American Presidential Political Speeches

As one of the branches of English speech, the political speech is a sort of social cultural product with a long history. For many years, researchers conducted studies on the words, vague language and mode of discourse of political speeches. On the basis of related research findings, this paper aims to analyze the pragmatic function of discourse markers of high frequency in political speeches.Sperber & Wilson raised the Relevance Theory which is a new way to study communication. Under this theory, this paper, choosing English political speeches as typical materials, discusses the pragmatic value and motivation in light of the relation between discourse markers and textual coherence.Viewing the research findings both at home and abroad, we find much research has been done on discourse markers from the point of view of semantics and pragmatics. However, most of the research on account of pragmatics mainly studied discourse markers in political speeches, neither expounding the motivation when people used certain discourse markers, nor combining the motivation and its function on understanding utterances. Therefore, this paper, guided by the Relevance Theory, selects the typical discourse marker but from American Presidents'political speeches to find out how to achieve coherence by using discourse markers, how to understand the discourse marker's influence, and which factors affect the usage of discourse markers. This paper finds that American Presidents establish a new context for the hearer by interfering and changing the hearer's initial context. When using discourse markers, the speakers have strong subjectivity, and their special statuses influence the choice-making. The study of discourse markers on American Presidents'political speeches will help us to understand the psychological cognition and learn how to use different discourse markers in speeches so as to enhance the efficiency and profundity of expression.