Elahe Jamshidipoor - Shahid Chamran Univerity of Ahwaz

Discourse markers have been the focus of many studies, gaining great importance in the last thirty decades. They have been investigated in many studies and the amount of attention discourse markers are attracting is increasing dramatically, besides some of these studies have shown patterns for the frequency and use of discourse markers (Lee, 1999; Fuller, 2003; Muller, 2004; Shirato, 2007). Discourse markers are as pervasive in language as they are difficult to define. There is even little consensus as to how to name this term among different researchers. However, To give a broad definition we may conclude that discourse markers are words or phrases that serve either semantic function of creating coherence in the linguistic system (and, because, but, so, or, now), or pragmatic functions to comment on the state of understanding of information about to be expressed (y’ know, I mean), to express a change of state (oh; Heritage 1984), or as stated by Jucker(1993) to comment on what seem to be the most relevant context is not appropriate ( well; Hellerman, 2007). Some studies suggest in general that language learners underutilize interactional (pragmatic) markers (Lee, 1999; Fuller, 2003; Muller, 2004& Specker 2008). This study investigated the amount and functions of discourse markers by intermediate and advanced Iranian language learners. To do this, a 17817 token speech corpus of about 160 minutes has been compiled from thirty two upper-intermediate and advanced English learners (sixteen male ,and sixteen female) using an MP3 recorder, and a cell phone. The transcription system implemented in this study is adopted from Shokouhi and Kamyab (2004). This corpus has been analyzed for the frequency and percentage of eleven discourse markers (oh, well, and, but, or, so, because, now, then, y’ know, I mean) as labeled by Schiffrin (1987) and the frequency and percentage of different functions of interactional markers (oh, you know, well, I mean). The percentage of discourse markers has been first calculated to the total number of tokens, but then the percentage of different functions of each interactional marker have been calculated to the total frequency of that interactional marker itself. Discourse markers were divided in two groups of textual markers and interactional markers. And was the most frequently used textual marker and you know was the most frequently used interactional marker. The findings on the whole show that discourse markers were mostly used to function as part of their compensation strategies if rarely used. It is recommended to teach discourse markers explicitly or implicitly through exposure increase.

discourse markers, spoken corpus