Theories of Discourse Marker
conversation. ” http:www.culingtec.uni-leipzig.de Some examples
of this marker such as like, you know, I mean. Jucker, Andreas H. and Yael Ziv, 2004:7
3. Hesitation markersfillers : markers that are used to mark a hesitation
on the part of the speaker. “It indicates that the speaker are formulating
what they want to say. “ Davis, Boyd H. and Margaret Maclagan,
2010:189 Lan-Fen Huang, in her thesis submitted to The University of Birmingham
for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in 2011 entitled “Discourse Markers In Spoken English: A Corpus Study of Native Speakers and Chinese Non-Native
Speakers”, she states there are some characteristics of DMs proposed by Schourup 1999 and Fung and Carter 2007. One of the characteristics is the flexibility of
position. The flexibility of position means DMs can appear at any point such as in
the initial position, in the middle, or even in the final position of a sentence. Fung and Carter, 2007 Examples:
“I eat a lot.” “I eat a lot, you know.”
“You know, I eat a lot.”
Erman in Jucker 1998:2 states “‟pragmatic expression‟ tends to be used
for markers that consist of more than one word such as you know, you see, I mean
.” Some words are found as discoure markers such as stated in Jucker‟s Discourse Marker: Introduction” Discourse Markers: Description and Theory:
Schiffrin 1987 : because, and, then
Schourup 1985 : aha, hey
Blakemore 1987: Ch. 4 : therefore, so, after all, moreover
Andreas H. Jucker and Sara Smith : yeah, ok, really?, like, you know, I mean
Despite of its function as discourse marker, in some cases because, so and and
are also used as conjunction. Therefore, there should be a clear explanation in what circumstances because, so and and can be categorized as discourse markers.
Based on the theory of discourse marker stated by Andreas H. Jucker and Yael Ziv, discourse marker has no particular grammatical function and it is
syntactically independent. It means that discourse marker should be analyzed on the level of a discourse rather than a sentence. Therefore, because, so and and are
categorized as discourse markers when they are used to connect one discourse with another discourse. On the other hand, when because, so and and are used to
connect one sentence with another sentence, they are categorized as conjunction. The examples below are the use of because, so and and as conjunction:
“I have stopped writing to her, because she never answers me.” “I told her I wanted to sleep, so she went home.”
“My fishing line got snagged on the boat as it was pulling out, and I
did not want to lose my fishing rod.” Sparks, 2011:34
The next examples are the use of because, so and and as discourse marker: Kristen : “I don‟t want to hurt any butterflies. I like butterflies.
Alex : “We don‟t have to hurt them. We can let them go.”
Kristen : “Then why catch them in the first place?”
Alex
: “Because it‟s fun.” Sparks, 2011:118
Katie : “It‟s not so bad. I‟m used to it by now.”
Jo
: “I hope I get used to it. So, what brought you to
Southport? ...” Sparks, 2011:12
Alex : “Are you sure you want to do that? You‟re purple.”
Kristen
: “I‟m okay. And we‟re supposed to build castles at the
beach.” Sparks, 2011:92