A Study Of Chinese Pragmatic Markers In TV Talk Shows In Light Of Relevance Theory

The past forty years see the study of pragmatic markers become a booming andfruitful academic industry, but wide disagreement on the definition, classification,function, characteristics, etc. about this linguistic phenomenon still exists among thescholars. Until now, pragmatic markers are analyzed abroad very often with datacollected from languages other than Chinese while studies on Chinese pragmaticmarkers are not many at home. This study is mainly concerned about thecharacteristics and pragmatic functions of Chinese pragmatic markers in TV talkshows, and we try to find out answers to the following two research questions:(1)What are the characteristics of Chinese pragmatic markers in oral communication?(2)What functions do Chinese pragmatic markers perform in speaker’s meaningproduction and hearer’s meaning interpretation in television chat shows?Theoretically, a more comprehensive and in-depth understanding aboutpragmatic markers, Chinese pragmatic markers included, is very beneficial to thestudy of many significant linguistic issues, such as grammaticalization,pragmaticalization, the surface between semantics and pragmatics, human being’smetapragmatic awareness, cohesion and coherence, etc. These linguistic issues can bebetter approached and explained if the study on pragmatic markers has attained a levelof relative adequacy and thoroughness. Practically, second language teaching andlearning can also be improved in terms of aspects such as instructing languagelearners how to make their utterances more fluent and their compositions morecoherent through the use of pragmatic markers, how to identify the logicalrelationship between utterances in verbal communication or sentences in articles bypaying special attention to pragmatic markers, how to predict the utterance meaningof the speaker by focusing on the choice of pragmatic markers, etc. Considering therelative shortage of study on Chinese pragmatic markers, its complexity andmulti-facetedness, we choose two aspects of this linguistic phenomenon, namely itscharacteristics and pragmatic functions as our study focuses, and we aim at makingcontribution to the development and prosperity of study of Chinese pragmatic markersin some way by virtue of our investigation into these two aspects.We adopt relevance theory as our theoretical framework for this research becauseit provides a more convincing analytic perspective from which psychological andcognitive explanation and exploration can be conducted about this frequently usedcategory of linguistic expressions in spoken communications. We give a general andsketchy introduction about relevance theory in terms of some important concepts andprinciples and the differentiation between conceptual meaning and proceduralmeaning, attempting to ground our analysis about those pragmatic functions ofChinese pragmatic markers within a theoretical framework which has strongexplanatory power. Our linguistic data of Chinese pragmatic markers are collectedfrom three well-known television talk shows <YANG LAN ONE ON ONE>(杨澜访谈录)，<MING REN MIAN DUI MIAN>(名人面对面) and <LU YU YOU YUE>(鲁 豫有约) to form a corpus of small scale, and29episodes of interviews are gatheredwith each of them lasting for about20-40minutes, we also have got thecorresponding texts of these episodes of interviews for our research. Through ourobservation, we find that Chinese pragmatic markers emerge in large quantity in theseTV talk shows, and we choose four of them, namely dan shi (但是), suo yi (所以), name (那么), jiu shi shuo (就是说) for detailed case analysis. These four are chosen fortheir high frequency of occurrence, diversity of pragmatic functions and theirwell-acknowledged typicality as Chinese pragmatic markers. Concrete analysis ofeach pragmatic function of these four pragmatic markers is accompanied by actualexamples of usage extracted from our corpus and these examples are followed bytheir version in English. We use BFSU PowerConc1.0as corpus analysis tool. Thissoftware for linguistic analysis and retrieval is programmed by Mr Yunlong Jia, anddesigned by Dr. Jiajin Xu, Prof. Maocheng Liang and Mr Yunlong Jia, and it has beenproved very useful and convenient for the analysis of corpus in Chinese.This thesis consists of six chapters. Chapter one introduction mainly deals withresearch background, research questions and research significance of this study.Chapter two literature review gives a global review about the study of pragmaticmarkers. Their diversified definitions, classification and three main analyticapproaches: syntactic-pragmatic approach, semantic-pragmatic approach andcognitive-pragmatic approach are also discussed in this section. Chapter three isconcerned about the theoretical framework of this study, relevance theory. A sketchyintroduction of this theory is provided. The relationship between relevance andcognition as well as the relationship between relevance and communication isdiscussed in this chapter. Chapter four methodology includes two parts: datacollection and research method. Chapter five data analysis and discussion mainlydeals with two issues: the characteristics of Chinese pragmatic markers and thepragmatic functions of the four chosen Chinese pragmatic markers. Several majorfindings are made in the sixth chapter conclusion, and this chapter also includesimplications, limitations of this study and suggestions for further researches in thefuture.Through our analysis, we find that Chinese pragmatic markers do not have gottruth conditional meaning and do not influence the conceptual content of theutterances which include them. They are very often chosen by the speaker not only toindicate the logical relationship between utterances, but also to signal the connectionsexisting among assumptions in the cognitive environment of the speaker and hearer.Chinese pragmatic markers, like pragmatic markers in other languages, are ofmultifunctionality in nature. One single marker can very often be used in variouscontexts to fulfill different pragmatic functions. Case studies of dan shi (但是), suo yi(所以), na me (那么), jiu shi shuo (就是说) demonstrates this characteristic very well.Chinese pragmatic markers share the commonality with pragmatic markers in otherlanguages of carrying with themselves more procedural meaning than conceptualmeaning. They can be used by the speaker to make manifest the interconnectionsamong propositions in verbal communication and to save the hearer’s processingefforts of recognizing the intentional meaning conveyed by the speaker. When relevance of assumptions stimulated by utterances is achieved at a higher degree inthe cognitive environment of both the speaker and hearer, the success of verbalcommunication will be more ensured.