Discourse Markers in Interaction
Discourse markers are small words and phrases such as 'well', 'oh', 'you know', and 'so' that organize talk, manage turns, and signal speakers' stance toward what is said.
Definition
Discourse markers in interaction is the topic concerned with the linguistic items that bracket and relate units of talk and signal how utterances connect, organizing discourse and conveying interactional and stance meaning rather than propositional content.
Scope
This topic covers the definition and functions of discourse markers, their role in bracketing and connecting units of talk, in managing turn-taking and participation, and in marking speaker stance and the relation between utterances. It includes Schiffrin's model of how markers operate across planes of discourse and their social-interactional uses. The broader inferential frame of interaction is treated under contextualization cues.
Core questions
- What are discourse markers, and how are they identified?
- What functions do they serve in organizing talk?
- How do they manage turns and signal speaker stance?
- How do markers operate across different planes of discourse?
Key concepts
- Discourse markers
- Bracketing units of talk
- Turn and participation management
- Stance and connectivity
- Planes of discourse
Key theories
- Markers across planes of discourse
- Schiffrin analyzed discourse markers as operating across several planes of talk at once, including exchange structure, information state, and participation, integrating the utterance into its discourse context.
- Markers as contextualization devices
- In the interactional tradition, discourse markers function alongside other contextualization cues to signal how stretches of talk relate and how they should be interpreted.
History
The systematic study of discourse markers was established by Schiffrin's 1987 monograph analyzing English markers in conversation, and situated within the broader field in her 1994 survey of approaches to discourse.
Debates
- Defining the category of discourse markers
- Scholars disagree on how to delimit discourse markers as a class and how to distinguish their pragmatic functions from related categories such as connectives and pragmatic particles.
Key figures
- Deborah Schiffrin
- John Gumperz
Related topics
Seminal works
- schiffrin1987
- schiffrin1994
Frequently asked questions
- Are discourse markers just filler words?
- No. Although words like 'well', 'oh', and 'you know' carry little propositional content, they do systematic work organizing talk, managing turns, and signaling how utterances relate, which is why sociolinguists study them closely.