Study On Discourse Markers In American Presidents’ Inaugural Addresses Based On The Adaptation-Relevance Model

Discourse markers (abbreviated as DMs hereafter) are a group of common linguistic forms in the daily communication. In communication, DMs serve as a tool of linguistic connection; it is also an important factor in the realization of the communicative purposes in language production and interpretation. These expressions have attracted the interest of many researchers since the1970s because of their unique features. Main approaches adopted in DM studies so far have been the coherence-based approach proposed by Deborah Schiffrin, the grammatical-pragmatic approach represented by Fraser as well as the cognitive-pragmatic approach provided by Blakemore. Researches on DMs are rich and fruitful; however, there is still huge space for the studies of DMs.On the basis of Sperber&Wilson’s Relevance Theory and Verschurence’s Adaptation Theory, Yang Ping (2001) proposed his Relevance-Adaptation Model from the speaker’s point of view. This model achieves adequacy in terms of description and explanation, which Relevance Theory and Adaptation Theory fall short of. However, it is not comprehensive for a communicative model for it just focuses on the utterance production. Therefore, based on this framework, Ran Yongping (2004) made further efforts and presented a more comprehensive Adaptation-Relevance Model, which concerns both the utterance production and interpretation. According to Adaptation-Relevance Model, the process of language use is to achieve adaptation and relevance, that is, the linguistic choice and application is the process to seek optimal relevance while adapting to the relevant context.Based on the previous achievements, the author collects the data of American presidents’inaugural addresses. A combination of qualitative and quantitative approach is adopted to study DMs in the light of the Adaptation-Relevance Model in order to prove the feasibility of this model in explaining the mechanism of DMs production and interpretation. Ran Yongping’s Adaptation-Relevance Model is the integration of Adaptation Theory and Relevance Theory. So far, this model has been applied by many researchers to analyze various linguistic phenomena. But no research has been made on DMs in American presidents’ inaugural addresses in line with the Adaptation-Relevance Model. In this sense, this study will do contributions to DMs research as well as expand the application field of this model.