| With the development of pragmatics in1970s, discourse markers (henceforth DMS)entered into scholars’ research field and became a hot topic of discourse analysis andpragmatics. Though scholars do not agree with each other on the terminology, classificationand functions of DMS because of different research perspectives, more and more scholars areinclined to hold that the functions of DMS in discourse is pragmatic and dynamic, which canconstrain the structure and understanding of discourse and is helpful for hearers to interpretspeakers’ intentions.Based on cognitive principle and communicative principle of relevance theory, thisthesis explains the pragmatic function of DMS in writing. That is, how the writers guidereaders to achieve adequate contextual effects through adopting DMS, helping readers tosearch for the optimal relevance and reduce the processing effort during the process ofinterpreting writers’ intentions.According to Chen Xinren’s classification, this study adopts quantitative andqualitative analysis, for the purpose of investigating the situation of English majors’ usingDMS in argumentative writing. There are altogether70participants who are asked to finish anargumentative writing with a given topic in a restricted time. From the collected writingsamples, the author finds that both groups have the awareness of using DMS to strengthen thecoherence of text; there are differences and similarities between two groups in categorydistributions; the most frequently used DMS are “and”,“so” and “but”; meanwhile, thereexist some problems of using DMS between two groups, which are misuse, overuse, absenceand mechanical use of DMS. Based on the results of questionnaire, the author tries to exploresome possible factors resulting in these problems. Besides, the author offers some suggestionsfor students and teachers on the basis of her findings, in the hope that students and teacherswill better understand DMS. |
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