The Pragmatic Functions of Discourse Marker Hǎo in Parliamentary Discourse

• Main Authors: Ting-Yi Chen, 陳亭伊
• Other Authors: Michael Tanangkingsing
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2017
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/e9kbbu

碩士 === 國立臺北科技大學 === 應用英文系碩士班 === 105 === Discourse markers, linguistic expressions, can be observed in spontaneous speech. Speakers use discourse markers as cohesive devices for giving fluent speech. Other than maintaining cohesion (Schiffrin, 1987), discourse markers enable speakers to figure out how to express ideas that fit the speakers’ intention in communicative interaction. With regard to the desire to avoid conflicts and the wish to maintain social relationship, the pragmatic functions deserve more attention in the field. Studies of discourse markers within pragmatics grow rapidly. Discourse markers that function on the interpersonal level are emphasized. A pragmatic approach is taken to shed light on how people interpret particular utterance and how the marker operates in actual usage to maintain social relationships. Researchers have carried out research studies to explore the discourse-pragmatic functions of discourse markers in casual conversation, adolescent talk, peer interaction and TV/radio interview. However, little attention has been paid to pragmatic functions of a particular individual marker within a specific context regarding power differential in previous studies. Therefore, the purpose of the study is to delve into pragmatic functions of Chinese discourse marker hǎo in parliamentary discourse. Drawing on the analytic framework of politeness, how discourse marker hǎo operates in the context in relation to power differential was further interpreted. The data included 1011 tokens of hǎo in total collected from parliamentary discourses, which consists of exchanges by parliamentarians and government officials and have been orthographically transcribed. The discourses were selected from the official documentary records, which are the unsolicited transcription archives, of a session which was held from March 27 to June 4 in 2014. The results show that the discourse marker hǎo in parliamentary discourse signaled fourteen pragmatic functions, including to agree, to express understanding, to express an opinion, to bring up an issue, to elaborate, to request, to attract attention, backchannels, to hold the floor, to query, to express disagreement, to vie for a turn, to make a promise, and to complete negotiation. Moreover, in terms of the perspectives of politeness maxims as well as politeness strategies, based on the dichotomy of participants, parliamentarians and government officials, the present data showed that speakers in parliamentary interaction used tact, agreement and approbation maxims (Leech, 1983) while negotiating issues. Other than politeness maxims, the parliamentarians enacted both positive and negative face saving acts (Brown & Levinson, 1987) to meet the fact want and to mitigate threats to the negative face of others, while the government officials adopted only positive politeness strategy in the communication.