A Corpus-based Sociolinguistic Study Of Discourse Markers In Spoken English

Discourse markers are sequentially dependent elements which bracket units of talk.It plays a crucial role in the coherent discourse during daily communication.Based on BNC 64,a subcorpus of the British National Corpus,this study explores the variation of two types of discourse markers including presentation markers(like,you know and I mean)and reception markers(oh,well and so)affected by five sociolinguistic variables(speaker's gender,age,social class,region and occupation).Four research questions are addressed:(1)How differently,if at all,do men and women use discourse markers(DMs)in spoken English?(2)How do age and social-economic status affect the use of DMs in speech?(3)How are DMs used in distinct regions of Britain?(4)What is the role of occupation of speakers in accounting for sociolinguistic variation of DMs in English speech?Results indicate that all the five sociolinguistic variables,i.e gender,age,social class,region and occupation,affect the use of DMs in spoken English.(1)There are gender-preferential patterns in the use of DMs.Specifically,female speakers prefer to use presentation marker(PM)I mean and reception markers(RMs)oh,well while male speakers prefer to use PMs you know,like and RM so.(2)There is an increasing tendency of DMs use with speaker's age growing.For the interaction effect of age and gender,male speakers have an increasing tendency to employ PM you know and RM well with their age growing,compared to a decreasing tendency to employ PM like and RM so by females.(3)The higher the social class of the speaker is,the more DMs are used.For the interaction effect of age and social class,speakers of working class have an increasing tendency to use PMs and RMs with their age growing,while speakers from skilled working class have an increasing tendency to use RMs.(4)Speakers of Wales use DMs most frequently while speakers of Ireland employ DMs least.(5)The retired and unemployed speakers have the highest frequency in the use of DMs while speakers of housewife are the least frequent users among the six occupation types.The results of the present study are expected not only to provide new insights into discourse markers variation affected by the sociolinguistic variables,but also to enhance the idiomaticity of language production among learners of English worldwide.