| American presidential debates,which are held every four year,always have been the focus of scholars all over the world,for their extraordinary political,social and cultural importance.Because of the high debate talents of candidates,their debates turn to be the best study material for English learners.However,based on relevance theory,the study on discourse markers of the American presidential debate from the cognitive-pragmatic perspective is rare so far.So based on relevance theory,the thesis focuses on the cognitive-pragmatic functions of discourse markers in the 2015 American republican presidential debate.Blakemore proposes that the main function of discourse markers is to “constrain interpretations of utterances” to minimize efforts,that is,under the guidance of relevance theory,the procedural meaning of discourse markers is the most important one.Discourse markers,functioning as road markers,help speakers express their information intentions and communicative intentions to the largest extent with the least efforts.For hearers,by constraining contextual assumptions they help hearers quickly understand what speakers mean to achieve the optimal relevance for successful communication.Therefore,based on relevance theory and borrowing classifications by Blakemore,this thesis takes quantitative and qualitative approaches to study discourse markers of the third American republican debate,aiming at answering the following questions: 1.what is the percentage of discourse markers in the debate? How many types of discourse markers are there in the debate? What is the percentage of each type of discourse marker? What are the typical discourse markers?2.How do these typical discourse markers function in the 2015 American republican presidential debate? In virtue of corpus software,this thesis firstly works out the total frequency of all types of discourse markers to acquire the general quantitative information of the debate,finds out the typical discourse markers of each type,and then analyzes how discourse markers guide candidates and communicators to achieve the successful communication.In conclusion,discourse markers strengthening assumptions rank the first place,among which the typical discourse markers are and,I think;then discourse markers implying assumptions rank the second place,among which the typical discourse markers are so,you know,because,well;at last,the discourse markers contradicting assumptions rank the last place,among which thetypical discourse markers are but,or.In a word,the discourse markers of the same logical meaning may show different cognitive functions,and the discourse markers of different logical meaning may express a same cognitive function.The thesis not only promotes the further understanding of relevance theory and cognitive-pragmatic functions of discourse markers,but also the deeper understanding of the presidential debate,which is good for discourse markers study and teaching. |
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