A Study of Discourse Markers Employed in College English Writing by Non-English Majors

Abstract

Discourse marker is a common language phenomenon in verbal communication including parts of conjunctions, adverbs, interjections, some phrases and small words. From the perspective of grammar, these modifiers do not have many a semantic meanings and they are less related to the sentences. However, from the perspective of pragmatics and discourse, discourse marker plays the role of organizing the discourse, attracting the hearer’s attention, and expressing the emotion and attitude of the speaker. In the process of utterance generation and understanding, discourse marker works as a signal or makes the information clear so that the hearer can obtain the communicative intention of the speaker easily, thus producing the contextual effect. Based on the framework of Relevance Theory by Sperber and Wilson, this essay adopts Fraser’s classification of discourse markers, analyzing the use of discourse markers by non-English majors in Guangxi region. The result of this research shows that discourse markers indeed play a crucial role in the process of utterance generation and understanding, and the correct use of discourse markers contributes to the cohesion of discourse or text and the improvement of the student’s writing ability.