A Study Of Discourse Markers In TED Talks Based On Relevance-Adaptation Model

Discourse markers are words or structures that perform pragmatic functions in conveying procedural meaning(Ran 2000).Practical use of markers helps speakers to guide the listeners’ interpretation of the discourse contents and can enhance the coherence of the discourse.Since the 1970 s,many aspects of discourse markers used in various written and speaking texts have been studied from different research perspectives.However,most studies have been conducted by following a single theory,which were handicapped in producing a comprehensive explanation to the role of discourse markers in discourse production and interpretation.Further,the application of discourse markers in specific genres such as public speech needs to be quantitatively studied.Therefore,this study takes 60 cultural TED talks as data to explore the use of discourse markers in the talks.Through careful coding,all the 87 discourse markers which appeared repeatedly in the data are collected with the help of Ant Conc3.4.3 for statistic analysis.To more comprehensively research into the features and functions of discourse markers,the relevance-adaptation model which well combines relevance theory and adaptation theory is adopted as the theoretical framework to support the present study.Specifically,this study answers three research questions:(1)What are the distribution and positional features of discourse markers used in the TED talks?(2)What pragmatic functions do discourse marker serve in the TED talks?(3)How are the syntactic positions of discourse markers related to their pragmatic functions?Using both quantitative and qualitative methods,the following findings are found.(1)In the TED talks,averagely,one out of every 19 words is a discourse marker.And the most common and semantically more generalized monosyllabic markers like and,but and so are used more often.Elaborative markers is used most frequently,followed by contrastive markers,emphasis markers inferential markers,temporal markers,filler markers and other markers in decreasing order.The distribution of markers is highly elastic,occurring at the beginning,middle and end of sentences,with more at the middle position,for example,the emphasis markers.Grammatical rules and usage habits are key factors influencing the positional features of markers.(2)Discourse markers primarily realize discourse organization functions and interpersonal functions,especially more interpersonal functions.Among them,the sub-functions of highlighting propositions and enhancing coherence account for a total percentage of over 60 percent.Apart from that,markers rarely express pragmatic mitigation.(3)Discourse markers at the beginning of a sentence are mainly adopted to construct discourse structure,sort out semantic logic and mitigate the relationship.Markers in the middle position are primarily applied to express attitudes and emphasis,and enhance coherence and completeness of content.Markers at the end of sentences mainly perform the functions of information emphasis and interpersonal interaction.This study contributes to deepen our understanding of the features and functions of discourse markers in the genre of public speeches based on relevance-adaptation model.The findings of this study can shed light to future studies with discourse markers used in other genres so as to reveal the complexities and the universality of this important linguistic element.