A Study Of The Functions Of You Know In Gossip Girl As A Discourse Marker

In verbal communication, discourse markers are pervasively employed in differentlanguages. Discourse markers show a sequential relationship between the current basic messageand the previous discourse, such as well, oh, so, you know and then, which also contribute tomanage and maintain the on-going interaction without adding any true value to the discourse, andonly have procedural meanings (Ran. 2002: 10). Both domestic and foreign scholars have greatinterest in discourse markers and have conducted numerous researches. As more and morescholars conduct researches on the discourse markers, different approaches appear: the coherenceapproach, the grammar approach, the relevance approach, the meta-cognition approach and thesociolinguistics approach. After studying those different approaches of discourse markers, theauthor adopts relevance theory and meta-cognition theory to analyze a special discourse marker,you know. Though scholars have conducted many researches on the meaning and functions of thediscourse marker you know, there is still not a consensus regarding. Besides, meanings andfunctions of language develop as time goes, but many new functions of the discourse marker youknow have not been summed up. Therefore, the author conducts the research by making theAmerican popular sitcoms“Gossip Girl”as language corpus, aiming to find out and sum up thesenew functions.In this thesis, the author uses quantitative and qualitative methods to conduct a tentativeresearch on the discourse marker you know. By conducting researches on the discourse markeryou know, the thesis systematically analyses former researches on the discourse marker you knowand find its new functions. The thesis enriches the research material on pragmatic analysis interms of discourse marker. On the other hand, analyzing you know in detail on its specialpragmatic functions and meanings will certainly help people use the marker efficiently andauthentically.The thesis includes six chapters. The first chapter is a brief introduction. The second chapterbasically introduces three commonly used discourse markers research method and relatedcomments. The third chapter is the theoretical basis and mainly introduces the relevance theoryand meta-cognition theory and the application of them. The fourth chapter is the research design.Chapter five is the most important chapter, in which the author applies relevance theory andmeta-cognition theory to conduct the research on the distinct functions of the discourse markeryou know in Gossip Girl, and makes the conclusion that there are new functions added to the discourse marker you know as time is going. Chapter six is the conclusion of the whole text,including the main findings and the significance of the study and existence deficiency.