Pragmatic Functions Of Discourse Markers In Trump’s Speeches From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

Discourse markers are a common language phenomenon.Since 1970,many linguists have tried to explain discourse markers from the perspectives of semantics,pragmatics and cognition.Sperber and Wilson put forward the Relevance Theory from the perspective of cognition.They believe that language communication is a cognitive process that relies on reasoning.This new pragmatic concept helps to explore the relationship between language form and pragmatic understanding.From this perspective,Blakemore analyzed discourse markers and holds that discourse markers have many pragmatic functions.It is generally believed that the pragmatic function of discourse markers is an important means for readers to understand literary works or discourse.In recent years,many scholars at home and abroad have conducted in-depth research on discourse markers.As the former president of the United States,Donald Trump delivered important speeches on important occasions and festivals.It covers political,cultural,medical,economic and other fields.There are a lot of discourse markers in Trump’s speeches,so his speeches are of great research value.In order to enrich the research in this field,this study takes Relevance Theory as the research framework,and takes Trump’s 50 speeches as the corpus to analyze the pragmatic functions of the most commonly used discourse markers and and so in Trump’s speeches.In addition,this study also uses WPS and Antconc to conduct quantitative and qualitative research to obtain the frequency and position of each discourse marker.Then it analyzes the distribution of discourse markers in Trump’s speeches and the pragmatic functions of the most common discourse markers and and so from the perspective of Relevance Theory.This study attempts to answer the following three questions:1.In Donald Trump’s speeches,what are the unique characteristics of the frequency and position of the DMs and and so?2.How does relevance theory embody in Donald Trump’s speeches?3.From the perspective of Relevance Theory,what are the pragmatic functions of DMs and and so? Why does Trump tend to use these two discourse markers to achieve his language goals?Through the research,the following conclusions are drawn:1.There are a lot of discourse markers in Trump’s speech,but the frequency is not the same.DMs and,but and so are the most frequent.The pragmatic functions of DMs and and so are more obvious,especially with the pragmatic functions of contextual introduction and emphasis.In terms of position,according to the three categories of at the beginning,in the middle and in other positions including at the end of a sentence,Trump tends to use discourse markers at the beginning and in the middle,because the frequency of these two categories is higher than that of in other positions.2.Based on the framework of Relevance Theory and the study of frequency and location preference of discourse markers in the corpus,the pragmatic functions of DMs and and so can be summarized into three main aspects,ostensibility and reasoning,contextual effects and coherence-achieving.3.From the perspective of Relevance Theory,the most prominent pragmatic functions of DMs and and so in Trump’s speeches are contextual introduction,supplying explanation,topic rotation and continuation,emotional sublimation and relationship representation.It is hoped that this study can not only provide reference for the future research of discourse markers in speeches,but also promote people to better understand and use discourse markers in their daily life.