ENGLISH DISCOURSE MARKERS IN ESTONIAN-ENGLISH BILINGUAL BLOGS AND VLOGS

Abstract

The paper explores English discourse markers (DMs) in bilingual Estonian-English blogs and vlogs. The research questions are: (1) What are the functions of English DMs that appear in Estonian bilingual speech of vloggers and bloggers? (2) Is there any difference between vlogs and blogs as far as English DMs are concerned? 45 blogs and 8 vlogs were analysed (365,973 and 73,858 tokens respec-tively). The results show that the prevalent type of DMs were evaluatives, while the share of interactional performatives and markers of discourse structure and force was similar. The attractiveness of expressive meaning explains the preference for evaluative. The tendencies in blogs and vlogs are similar but the number of DMs in vlogs is higher because it is an oral genre.