Discourse Markers Functions in Social Interviews

Abstract

Face to face interviews are considered as a type of genre in spoken discourse and they include various linguistic strategies that worth investigating. Within these interviews, there is context sensitivity, since the interaction is active and direct between participants. Thus, there should be a use of certain expressions to perform a number of functions such as: topic shift, introducing a new topic, producing personal comment by participants, expressing politeness, etc. Those expressions are called discourse markers (henceforth DMs); they are of different categories and they convey textual functions (expressing coherence and cohesion) and pragmatic functions (expressing the speaker's attitude and other communicative purposes). DMs act as connectors ( connect clauses, sentences, and paragraphs) , indicators (indicate relations in discourse), and instructors (direct participants to the accurate interpretation of an utterance). This study is a discourse study that concerns with the functions of different types of DMs in spoken interaction (social interviews).
 This study aims at:(i) presenting a general theoretical survey of discourse markers and their relation to other types of markers in an attempt to get a unified framework to analyse the data of this study, (ii) investigating the effect and role of context, specifically social context in determining the meanings and functions of DMs, (iii) explaining the various functions that different types of DMs convey in spoken interaction particularly social interviews.
 To achieve these aims , the study hypothesizes that: (i) It is hypothesized that context is the major factor that affects the choice of meanings and functions of DM , (ii)Certain types of DMs are used frequently in active spoken interaction, and (iii) DMs convey particular types of functions in social interviews.
 The model adopted in this study is: Fraser's classification of Pragmatic Markers 1996. It is applied to 2 selected TV interviews within one context , involving both genders, and from one program. The interviews are analyzed according to the adopted model. 
 The main conclusions of the current study are: (i) Context is represented as a main independent factor, that determines the choice of DMs types and the type of functions DMs convey, rather than working with other factors such as gender and social distance, (ii) Considering the variation of DMs, there are different types of DMs in the analyzed data, such as: SDMs and parallel markers, and (iii) DMs mainly convey textual and interpersonal functions in social interviews .