老友记中口语标记语的关联视角分析-an analysis of oral markers in friends from the perspective of relevance.docx

华中科技大学硕士学位论文 华 中 科 技 大 学 硕 士 学 位 论 文 PAGE 10 PAGE 10 Introduction Research background Colloquial discourse marker(abbreviated as CDM in this thesis) and phrases, occurring with high frequency in the spoken language, that help to keep our speech flowing, yet do not contribute essentially to the message itself (Hasselgren, 1998). At the very beginning, CDM was considered as a barrier in language learning since it can slow down the language fluency. In 1970s, CDM has drawn increasingly attention from language research with the development of pragmatics, like well, yeah, oh, right, I think, something etc. They frequently occur in oral communication but can not be analyzed in terms of traditional grammar since they are used not to express truth condition of context but to indicate the underlying structure of discourse or the underlying functions of individual utterance (Stubbs 1983: 178.Aijmer 1996:200), and they are syntactically detachable from a sentence (Schiffrin 1987:328). Although most researchers agree that they play fundamental role in understanding daily conversation, there is no agreement on how they are to be defined or how they function. No matter in abroad or at home, its studies have been switched from semantic syntactic pragmatic perspective to cognitive-pragmatic perspective. However, after comparing merits among these three approaches, the current author finds that the relevance-theoretical approach is more suitable and more powerful to analyze the functions of CDMs than the other two approaches. Meanwhile, the author finds that few researchers touch on the studies of CDMs in spoken language from the perspective of relevance theory. Thus, the author intends to take CDM you know in the famous sitcom Friends as an example to discuss its pragmatic functions within relevance theory. The present study intends to demonstrate that language learners should pay more attention to the context in which CDMs occur and the appropriate uses of CDMs in communicatio