An Analysis Of Discourse Coherence Of Discourse Marker So In Light Of Explicit And Implicit Cohesion

Discourse markers (hereafter DMs) are a common linguistic phenomenon withdiverse contextual connectivity. They are essential elements facilitating discoursecoherence and successful communication. At present, there are three main perspectives ofDMs researching: coherence-based perspective; grammatical-pragmatic perspective;cognitive-pragmatic perspective. The first two are only confined to the static researches onsemantic coherence of DMs in co-text, which completely neglects the effects ofsocial-cultural context and cognitive factors of the utterers; though cognitive-pragmaticperspective researches the restrictive functions of DMs in dynamic context from thecognitive angle, it overemphasizes language understanding and ignores their functions inlanguage generation. According to the literature, there have already been the researches oncoherent functions of DMs in linguistic context from explicit cohesion, but there is noanalysis of their coherent functions in nonlinguistic context from implicit cohesion, whichis the innovation and difficulty of this paper. Zhang Delu’s theory of explicit and implicitcohesion (2003) not only includes inner cohesive devices and external social and culturalfactors, but also refers to the influences mental process and communicative intentionshave on discourse coherence. Therefore, the thesis holds that this theory is more scientificand comprehensive for researching coherent functions of discourse marker so (hereafterDM so). Coherence is a multi-level notion. It is achieved not only on the textual levelthrough explicit cohesive devices and propositional development, but also on theinterpersonal level through implicit cohesive device or implicatures of discourse in verbalcommunication on certain occasions. On the basis of Zhang Delu’s theory of explicit andimplicit cohesion, the thesis explores how DM so achieves coherent functions on thetextual and interpersonal levels.The thesis chooses the hot American TV series Gossip Girl (season1) as the corpussources. DMs are pervasively used in spoken language. American TV series Gossip Girl isa model of real life describing high students’ daily lives, where there are a large number of daily conversations with many colloquial features. From this angle, the data ensure thereliability and validity of this research. Through the analysis of331examples about DMso, the conclusion is reached that DM so can perform seven coherent functions: inferencemarker, insufficiency filler, topic marker, emotion marker, attitude marker, intentionmarker and face-threat mitigator. On the textual level, DM so performs explicit cohesivefunctions to indicate inferential relation, fill insufficiency and mark topic relations, toachieve local coherence between successive sentences of a discourse and global coherencebetween the topics of a whole discourse. On the interpersonal level, DM so realizesimplicit cohesive functions to indicate implicatures, that is, to arouse the followingfunctions such as expressing emotion, indicating attitudes, implying intention, savingfaces and so on. Moreover, each coherent function includes several subfunctions: topicmarker consists of topic initiator, topic shifter, topic maintenance and topic conclusion;emotion marker includes anger, surprise, irony, excitement, dissatisfaction and sadness;attitude marker includes impatience and indifference; intention marker is composed ofattracting hearer’s attention, indicating an explanation and guiding new information.Different DMs have universality in coherent functions. In specific contexts, some DMscan achieve the same coherent functions, while different DMs have their exclusivefeatures. On the basis of the statistical results, DM so has particular coherent functions asindicating inferential relation and guiding new information. As to the other functions,other DMs can also realize them more or less in given contexts. Owing to the limitationsof the data, the other functions of DM so are waiting to be further explored. However, theresearch can, to a certain degree, benefit the researches of DMs and foreign languageteaching a lot.