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DISCOURSE VS. PRAGMATIC MARKERS: A CONTRASTIVE TERMINOLOGICAL STUDY

Natalia Bogdanova-Beglarian, Y. Filyasova

Abstract

The term “pragmatic marker” (PM) is suggested in the article for a certain category of discourse markers (DMs), typically occurring in spoken language, – those which almost completely lack their lexical meaning and do not influence the semantic content of their context; meanwhile, they verbalize the mental process of speech production. Nowadays, there is no unanimity in differentiating categories of DMs in special linguistic literature, so DMs embrace a wide range of heterogeneous subgroups of markers with different functions and meanings. The scientific value of this paper resides in the fact that it specifies a particular category of DMs which is only characterized by their function, which they fulfill in speech, and, broadly speaking, in discourse. This terminological divergence is partly accounted for linguistic realities, for example, in the English language, there are only a few linguistic units that can be referred to the PM category (oh, well, like, you know). Nevertheless, their multi-functionality and zero effect on the semantic content of the discourse highlight the necessity of distinguishing a particular category of linguistic units – pragmatic markers. The results of the Russian corpus analysis show that PMs are quite numerous in the Russian language (jeto samoe, kak ego, kak ih, kak jeto, tipa/tipa togo chto, to-sjo, ja ne znaju). Therefore, this paper contains the explanation and typology of PMs. There is no doubt that linguistic analysis today cannot be only limited to description. Evidence shows that there are practical application areas, such as automatic speech recognition and linguistic expertise, which require clear unambiguous terminological systems for solving practical problems. The PMs’ frequency occurrence in speech exceeds manifold that of meaningful units, including DMs. In addition, drawing a distinction between DMs and PMs contributes to separating text and discourse analysis, and identifying different degrees of speech spontaneity.

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DOI resolver: doi.org/10.5593/sgemsocial2018H/31/S10.016

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