Author(s)

Qiaoling Ma

Corresponding Author

Qiaoling Ma

Abstract

There are many words and phrases in English which don’t have any important meanings but they have many important functions, such as well, you know, I mean, right, however, still, in addition, uh/um, if, unless, yet and so on. Discourse markers are such a kind of common linguistic phenomenon, which contribute to the coherence of discourse in a text and contribute to the interaction in communicative activities. They also play many important roles of leading and restricting utterance interpretation. Discourse markers cannot form the semantic contents of utterances, but can provide information markers in utterance activities. Their functions are not partial but integral, which can effects the development and understanding of utterances. Discourse markers have dynamic pragmatic characters.

Keywords

Discourse markers; corpus; oral English; non-English-major postgraduates; English teaching