An Adaptation-relevance Study Of Pragmatic Markers In Desperate Housewives

In conversations, there are many small words, such as well, you know, I mean，that are calledpragmatic markers. In fact, it is very common that pragmatic markers exist in many languages.Pragmatic markers are a kind of linguistic expressions, including many conjunctions, adverbials,prepositional phrases and the like, such as oh, well, you know, but, so. Since Discourse Markerswritten by Schiffrin was published, this linguistic phenomenon has drawn many scholars’attention and the achievements have been accomplished. Through reviewing the relevantresearches of this field, it is found that there are three main approaches to study these linguisticexpressions, such as the coherence perspective, the grammatical-pragmatic perspective, and therelevance perspective. In this thesis, the author respectively analyses the three approaches andfinds the advantages and disadvantages of the three approaches.However, by reviewing this field, we find that there is no complete research on this field.Many scholars hold that the relevance perspective can fully explain this phenomenon, and thereis no denying that the relevance perspective has its advantages but it has its problems too. Forinstance, Blakemore, the representative of the relevance, applies relevance theory to studypragmatic markers, but her framework is too wide. In addition, she only pays attention to somespecific markers, e.g. well to analyze, not focusing on other markers. On the other hand, it isVerschueren who holds that Adaptation Theory can give us a new tendency to study pragmaticmarkers. Under the adaptation theory, pragmatic markers considered as the results of adapting tothe context, are analyzed from the cognition and the cultural perspective. Some scholars holdthat this theory can fully explain the functions of pragmatic markers and the reason why thecommunicators often use these linguistic expressions to achieve their intentions. However, thistheory has its demerits. Therefore，based on the advantages of relevance theory and adaptationtheory, Yang Ping and Yan Yongping respectively summarized relevance-adaptation model andadaptation-relevance model to analyze the relevant problems of pragmatic markers. Under themodel, pragmatic markers are the results of choices-making, which can be explained in thespecific context from the angle of speakers and from the angle of listeners. First, as for thespeakers, the use of pragmatic markers can deliver some signals. The use of pragmatic markers is the result of adapting to the context, which plays different functions role in the communicationand helps the speakers achieve the communicative purpose. For the listeners, pragmatic markerscan give clues to interpret the utterance. Meanwhile, pragmatic markers make them lessen theefforts in the process of optimal relevance. In the course of verbal communication, the speakerscan not only choose the linguistic form, but also the communicative strategies. It is the usage ofpragmatic markers that is used to achieve the communicative intention. That is to say, differentpragmatic markers can achieve different functions in a specific context.As to the content, this thesis deals with the framework of adaptation-relevance model toanalyze the specific material adapted from Desperate Housewives that is a popular series play inthe U.S.A.. The thesis is to study some pragmatic markers and make research how pragmaticmarkers serve as their pragmatic functions in a specific context. In the communication, theselinguistic expressions are used to function as illustrating a statement or explaining a message.Among the functions of pragmatic markers that are found in this study, some markers in verbalcommunication are used to indicate a contrastive relationship between the two differentmessages in communication.In conclusion, it is expected that this study makes some contributions to the further studiesin this field.