A Pragmatic Study Of "Well" In Friends From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

This thesis is a pragmatic study of “well” from the perspective of adaptationtheory based on the American sitcom Friends. The discourse marker “well”, as acrucial linguistic strategy of achieving successful communicative goals, is often usedin daily verbal communication. For one thing, the employment of “well” could helpspeakers construct discourse and perform different functions to realize differentcommunicative goals; for another, the use of discourse markers could help hearersinterpret discourse and infer the meanings of speakers’ utterances. However, most ofthe studies concerning discourse markers are conducted from discourse–coherence-based perspective, grammatical-pragmatic perspective, and cognitive-pragmaticperspective, and few research approaches discourse markers from the perspective ofadaptation theory, while adaptation theory is a more comprehensive theory and canmake up for the demerits of other perspectives. According to Donghong Han (2011),“adaptation theory argues language use involves social, cultural and cognitiveconstraints and requires constant adaptation to different contexts and purposes oflanguage use”(2011:2778); so this research chooses it as the theoretical framework.The language of the sitcom Friends is nearly natural and is apt for oral Englishlearning, and “well” which occurs very frequently in it plays a really crucial role inconducting successful communication and the present research chooses it as the data.In order to achieve the objective, the author focuses mainly on qualitative analysis.The pragmatic functions of the discourse marker “well” are embodied in the eventscollected from Friends.The results show that: firstly, owing to the variability, negotiability, adaptabilityof language, language users could make linguistic choices, and any process of usinglanguage is a process of constantly making linguistic choices, this thesis proves thatthe process of using “well” is also the case. Secondly, linguistic adaptation should bestudied from the four interrelated angles: context, structure, dynamics and salience;this thesis argues that “well” is also a result of linguistic adaptation. Thirdly, besidesthe linguistic contexts, language users should adapt themselves to physical world,social world and mental world when producing and interpreting utterances. Throughillustration, this thesis comes to the conclusion that the use of “well” is also the samecase. Finally, through detailed analysis, the present study finds that “well” functions ascoherence marker, delay and hesitation marker, insufficiency marker, face-threatmitigator, repair marker, and emotion marker.The research about the simple yet complicated discourse marker “well”, which isfrequently used in Friends, will shed light on the functions of all discourse markersand even in the process of English teaching. However, the present research is mainly aqualitative one, and the illustration of the examples seems to be more subjective;accordingly a more empirical research needs to be conducted in the future in order tomake the results more convincing.