A Comparative Analysis of Discourse Markers in English Conversational Registers

Abstract

Using corpora of spoken American English conversations, the present study examines the use of discourse markers in different spoken registers. Three conversational corpora were selected for analysis: 12 family conversations, 11 professor-student conversations during office hours, and 10 server-customer conversations. Twelve discourse markers were identified based on previous literature, and their occurrences in context were analyzed using the Monoconc concordancing program. Quantitative and qualitative analyses show that there are considerable differences in the frequency distributions of discourse markers. These distribution patterns are interpreted in light of the functions of each discourse marker interacting with the typical characteristics of different conversational registers. The routine use of discourse markers in conversation is no doubt a major characteristic of spontaneous and interactional spoken language. Discourse markers have attracted wide research interest and have been analyzed from a variety of perspectives (see, e.g.