A Corpus-based Study Of The Pragmatic Functions Of The Discourse Marker Oh In Chinese EFL Learners’ Spoken English

Discourse marker is frequently used in social interactions. The functions of discourse marker could be considered as expressing emotion, turn-taking and topic shift in the conversation. Discourse marker oh is one of the most frequently used ones in the daily life of native speakers. Many researchers have studied discourse markers from its definition, classification, translation, error analysis and other aspects. As for the research on the discourse markers of Chinese EFL learners, most studies concentrate on the macro aspect, i.e. comparing the different usage between native speakers and Chinese EFL learners.This is a corpus-based research which deals with the pragmatic functions of discourse marker oh through qualitative and quantitative analyses. The purpose is to explore the different usage of oh by native speakers and Chinese EFL learners and to find the reason behind the difference from input materials, language proficiency and other aspects.This research retrieved the third part of Spoken English Corpus of Chinese Learners 2.0(SECCL 2.0) and the face to face conversation part of The London-Lund Corpus of Spoken English(LLC)as data. The qualitative and quantitative analyses of the data showed that firstly, the pragmatic functions of discourse marker oh in the conversation of Chinese EFL learners are responding to the addresser, turn-taking, conversation repair, topic shift, qualified response, indicator of a change of state and emotion filler; Secondly, the frequency of discourse marker oh of Chinese EFL learners is lower than the native speakers and the types and pragmatic functions of discourse marker oh of Chinese EFL learners are fewer than the native speakers; Thirdly, among the six main pragmatic functions of discourse marker oh, the underuse ones are conversation repair and qualified response; the overuse ones are indicator of topic shift and prefacing a speaker’s response.There are four possible reasons. First is that the testing context along with the situation anxiety it brings by would influence the frequency of discourse marker oh in the conversation. Second is the lack of authentic linguistic input related with the common conversation which leads to the lower richness on the collocations and pragmatic functions in the conversation. Third is that the low level language proficiency leads to the over-use of pragmatic function of topic shift and prefacing a speaker’s response. Fourth is that the lack of metapragmatic awareness in the Chinese EFL learners leads to under-use of pragmatic function of conversation repair and qualified response in their conversations.This research is both instructive for oral English textbook design and English language teaching and learning. It helps the teachers and students better realize the importance of discourse markers in the conversation and pay more attention to the teaching and practice of discourse markers.