A Systemic Functional Analysis on Discourse Marker—“Honest Phrases”

Abstract

Discourse marker is one of the most important research topics in recent years. Many researchers from home and abroad have explored it from various perspectives, including the perspective of discourse coherence; the perspective of syntax-pragmatics; the perspective of cognitive pragmatics and the perspective of metapragmatics. At the same time researchers at home mainly make specific analysis on certain discourse markers in terms of their pragmatic function. Besides, Systemic Functional Linguistics is a branch of Functional Linguistics, being further divided into systemic grammar and functional grammar. Systemic grammar regards language as a system network or meaning potential to explain; while functional grammar intends to prove language is a social interaction manner, emphasizing the function of language. However, at present a few researchers have combined the two fields to study together. Based on the fact and the above theoretical foundation, the paper introduces discourse marker to a broader category and studies it in a new perspective. The paper selects “Honest Phrases” in two different communication interaction—daily conversation and police interrogation to analyze discourse marker-“Honest Phrases” using three metafunctions in Systemic Functional Linguistics, aiming to explore its multifunctional mechanism in discourse from perspectives of ideational metafunction, interpersonal metafunction and textual metafunction so as to make up the shortage of the former study perspectives of “Honest Phrases” and to help people understand it deeply.