CONTRASTIVE VIEW ON DISCOURSE MARKERS

Abstract

Discourse markers are one class of pragmatic markers. Unlike other classes of pragmatic markers (Basic, Commentary, and Parallel Markers), Discourse markers have only procedural, not representational meaning, i.e. they ensure the correct interpretation of the discourse. Their function is to connect the main message with the immediate discourse. Depending on the nature of the connection provided by a discourse marker, four types of markers are distinguished: contrastive, topic change, inferential, and elaborative markers.

Although discourse markers have been paid much attention in contemporary research, this issue has not been fully explored for a number of reasons, including the scope of the issue and the variety of its functions and meanings.

The paper discusses the above-mentioned four types of discourse markers and presents the findings of a contrastive analysis of their functions in English and Georgian political interviews. The analysis was conducted on a corpus consisting of English and Georgian language segments that had been specially created for the research.

The present interdisciplinary study of the functionality of discourse pragmatic markers has been carried out in a contrastive way. The contrastive analysis gives the opportunity to identify some specific features of a language that would be hard to identify through an intralinguistic study.

The choice of political media discourse, an interview in particular, as a research material was determined by the growing interest in the mechanisms and means of political communication, which, in turn, is a complex phenomenon, and that is why, it often becomes the subject of interdisciplinary research.

Therefore, it was considered interesting to conduct a comparative pragmatic analysis of the functionality of discourse markers in political interviews in two languages - English and Georgian. The research revealed interesting findings, which are generalized in the conclusion.

Keywords: Discourse Markers; Pragmatic Markers; contrastive analysis; political interview.