Author(s)

Jiahuang Chen

Corresponding Author

Jiahuang Chen

ABSTRACT

Recent research on discourse markers is marvelously progressing, but consensus on discourse markers’ function has not yet been reached. Generally speaking, two representative groups of scholars, namely coherence theorists represented by Schiffrin, and Fraser, etc., and relevance theorists represented by Blakemore, Sperber, and Wilson, etc., explore discourse markers’ main function in different scopes. The former claims that discourse markers’ crucial function is to contribute to discourse coherence locally or globally; on the contrary, the latter proposes discourse markers conduce to relevance rather than coherence, which is deemed as derivative and secondary notion. After generalizing these two different views, it is advocated in the paper that discourse markers should be explored in a micro and macro-level of discourse in a wider sense of context so that the core function of discourse markers can be uncovered, i.e., their context clues in the discourse.

KEYWORDS

Discourse markers, coherence, relevance, context clues