thesis on discourse markers

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The Use of Discourse Markers in the Background of Thesis Proposals Written by Postgraduate Students

Discourse marker affects the logical meaning that is conveyed by an author to the readers. This article reports the analysis of discourse markers inside the background of master thesis proposals. The data presented were gained from eight students who had finished their comprehensive paper seminar in a postgraduate program. Eight backgrounds of master thesis proposals had been analyzed qualitatively. The results of this research revealed that there was a mix-used of the discourse markers. Each draft showed both appropriate and inappropriate use of three discourse maker classes. The appropriate discourse markers had no digression of the stipulated form and were found free from misuse patterns. On the contrary, the discourse markers were found as inappropriate use. The most dominant problem experienced by the students was the high density of discourse markers in a short text or connective overuse misuse pattern. The three classes of discourse markers had some common variants. There wer...

The use of discourse markers in argumentative compositions by Jordanian EFL learners

Anas Huneety 1 ,
Asim Alkhawaldeh 2 ,
Bassil Mashaqba ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-0835-0075 1 ,
Zainab Zaidan 1 &
Abdallah Alshdaifat 3

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume 10 , Article number: 41 ( 2023 ) Cite this article

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Language and linguistics

The aim of the present study is to investigate the use of discourse markers (DMs) in the argumentative compositions written by EFL learners at two academic stages (sophomores and seniors) majoring in English at the Hashemite University, Jordan. The significance of this study springs from its focus on the use of DMs in Jordanian EFL learners’ argumentative writings. Employing an integrated research method of qualitative and quantitative analysis, the findings revealed that both groups of participants used the same types of DMs with varying degree of frequency, namely, elaborative, contrastive, reason, inferential, conclusive, and exemplifier DMs, respectively. The sophomores were observed to employ a relatively higher number of DMs compared to the seniors, which may be ascribed to some redundant instances of DMs. The elaborative, contrastive, and reason types were the most widely used, while inferentials, conclusives and exemplifiers appeared infrequently in both groups. The analysis of individual DMs displayed that the DMs ‘and’, ‘because’, and ‘but’ were the predominant across the seniors and sophomores’ argumentative texts. This overuse of these DMs may be due to the influence of L1 of the participants and the popularity of these DMs among students and teachers of English. Additionally, the participants showed a low proficiency in using DMs since they overused largely a restricted variety of DMs at the expense of others that would be expected in the argumentative writing; some DMs were noticed either to be underused or absent. The results of Pearson’s r correlation test indicated that there was a weak positive but significant correlation between the writing quality and the use of DMs. This may be taken as a predictor of the writing quality in argumentative compositions by EFL. Pedagogically, the study emphasizes the significance of teaching DMs, where EFL learners should be taught how to use them appropriately to avoid any transference of their L1. Further research on DMs in argumentative writings in different levels of proficiency is recommended.

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Introduction.

Recently, there has been a thriving interest in academic research on linguistic items such as ‘but’, ‘and’, ‘therefore’, ‘because’ (widely referred to as discourse markers ) that signal the underlying relations that bind units of discourse into a larger cohesive and coherent text (e.g., Aijmer, 2002 ; Alkhawaldeh, 2018 ; Andersen, 2000 ; Beeching, 2016 ; Blakemore, 2002 ; Erman, 1987 ; Fedriani & Sansó, 2017 ; Foolen, 1996 ; Fraser, 1999 ; González, 2004 ; Heine et al. 2021 ; Huneety et al., 2017 ; Jucker, 1997 ; Lenk, 1998 ; Lewis, 2003 ; Olmen et al., 2021 ; Traugott, 1995 ). Discourse markers (DMs henceforth) count a functional category that do not typically alter the propositional content of an utterance but play largely an important role in the structuring and organization of discourse. This role that reflects an interpretive relationship between the segment hosting them and the prior utterance can be manifested by means of elaborating or commenting on the prior discourse, indicating a contrast between the foregoing and forthcoming discourse, drawing attention to what is next, reformulating an idea, or highlighting a proposition (Heine et al. 2021 ).

DMs constitute an indispensably fundamental part of language use, and their pervasiveness in speech and writing makes them a worthwhile object of study. The importance of exploring DMs lies in the fact that they aid discourse cohesion and coherence-they serve as cohesive devices that mark underlying connections between propositions (Al-Khawaldeh, 2018 ). It has been argued that the use of DMs facilitates the hearer/ reader’s task of interpreting and understanding the speaker/writer’s utterances (Müller, 2005 ; Aijmer 2015 ; Schiffrin, 1987 ; Blakemore, 2002 ; Huneety, et al., 2019 ). The adequate use of DMs is pivotal in rendering texts (especially in the context of academic writing) comprehensible and effective. Academic writing that employs DMs is perceived to be more logical, persuasive, and authoritative (Mauranen, 1993 ). It thus appears that examining DMs in learners’ writing, as the goal of the present study, is a compelling task for the applied linguistics researcher (Siepmann, 2005 ).

Many studies have highlighted that the use of DMs poses a challenge for EFL learners, especially in writing at colleges and universities. This would be ascribed to a variety of reasons: (i) overuse, underuse, and misuse of DMs are likely to affect the readability and comprehensibility of the text; (ii) the use of DMs is sensitive to text type (e.g., DMs used in argumentative writing differs from those used in expository writing); and (iii) the use of DMs, particularly for EFL learners, tends to vary across languages and cultures (see Altenberg & Tapper, 1998 ).

The present study investigates the use of DMs in argumentative texts written by two groups of learners at two different levels of proficiency (sophomores and seniors) at the Hashemite University in Jordan. The reason beyond the choice of this type of writing is that it has been characterized as the hardest type in both L1 and L2, in comparison with other types of writings such as narrative and expository (see Yang and Sun 2012 ).

To achieve the purpose of the present examination, an integrated method of research analysis was employed: quantitative and qualitative. Following Altenberg and Tapper ( 1998 ), the comparison in terms of similarities and differences between these two groups of learners was concerned mainly with the overuse and underuse of DMs. These two terms are used in our analysis as purely descriptive labels in the data under examination. Therefore, the misuse of DMs with regard to their incorrect usage (grammar, spelling, punctuation, etc.) is beyond the scope of the present study. Given that, the study seeks to explore the following research questions:

1. Which types of DMs are more or less frequent in argumentative compositions used by EFL learners?

2. Are there any significant differences between sophomores and seniors in the use of DMs in their writing?

3. Is there any correlation between the number of DMs employed in the text and the quality of writing?

The significance of this paper is generally two-fold. First, the insights obtained from the statistical and qualitative findings on how DMs are used by the respective EFL learners would be of some use by teachers and instructors at universities to improve the quality of the learners’ writing performance. Second, the expected findings may offer a better understanding of the correlation between the use of DMs and the quality of writing in Jordanian EFL argumentative composition.

Review of the literature

This literature review focuses on the general use of discourse markers and the studies conducted on the discourse of EFL learners. Numerous studies have been conducted on DMs and many researchers have investigated the use of DMs by EFL learners in particular e.g., (Martínez, 2004 ; Jalilifar, 2008 ; Chapetón Castro, 2009 ; Aidinlou and Mehr, 2012 ; Kalajahi, Abdullah, and Baki 2012 ; Povolná, 2012 ; Daif-Allah and Albesher, 2013 .

Many of these studies compared the use of DMS by EFL learners with that of English learners. These studies have emphasized the poor writing skills of EFL learners, which may be partially attributed to their poor usage of DMs. For example, Altenberg and Tapper ( 1998 ) observed that advanced Swedish learners of English underused DMs in their compositions compared to English native students. The most commonly used DMs by Swedish learners were contrastive and inferential ones, while summative DMs (e.g., in sum and short) were rarely used. In a recent study, Tapper ( 2005 ) compared the use of DMs by Swedish EFL learners of English to American university students. The findings reported that the Swedish learners of English used far more DMs in their essays than their American counterpart. This overuse of DMs by Swedish leaners of English may be a result of their native language transference which contains more DMs than English does as reported in Altenberg and Tapper ( 1998 ). Müller ( 2005 ) discussed the use of four DMS (well, you know, like and so) in the speech of German EFL learners’ and native speakers of English. Findings showed that although German speakers used the four discourse markers, some functions were mainly unknown to German speakers who also employed new functions. Fung and Carter ( 2007 ) examined the use of discourse markers by Hong Kong learners of English and English speakers. They found that Hong Kong learners widely employed referentially functional DMs (e.g., and, but, because, OK and so), yet they underused a number of DMs such as really, sort of, I see.

Various studies have examined the use and frequency of DMs and their impact of the quality of writing. Some of these studies demonstrated that the frequency of DMs was not an indicator of writing quality. For example, Alattar and Abu-Ayyash ( 2020 ) dealt with the use of conjunctions as cohesive devices in Emirati students’ argumentative essays. The study found no positive correlation between the Emirati students’ use of DMs and the quality of their argumentative writing. That is, in many essays, though many participants employed a wide range of DMs correctly, the quality of the texts was poor because it was difficult to understand these texts. Similarly, dealing with the cohesive devices, including connectives in papers written by Chinese learners, Zhang ( 2021 ) reported no link between unity of the text and writing quality.

However, some studies reported a correlation between the overuse of DMs. For example, examining the use of DMs in the expository writings by third-year and fourth-year Spanish EFL learners, Martinez ( 2016 ) found a positive significant correlation relationship between the density of DMs and the quality of writing. They also revealed that there was little variety in the use of DMs across the both groups of participants.

In the Turkish context, Uzun ( 2017 ) examined the use of DMs in argumentative essays written by Turkish EFL learners. In this study, the additive DMs were the most frequent type in the data while adversative and causal types were by far less frequently used. The findings showed a very weak positive relation between the essay scores and writing quality.

Some studies examined the use and frequency of DMs in particular types of texts, showing how each text type prefers some types of DMs. For example, Rahimi ( 2011 ) made a comparison between Iranian EFL learners’ argumentative and expository writings. He found that in both types of writing elaborative and contrastive DMs were the most frequently used. In another study, Doró ( 2016 ) conducted a study on DMs in argumentative essays written by third-year students of English in the Hungarian university. The study revealed that where the types of DMs with a high percentage of occurrence were elaborative, contrastive and inferential DMs, students tended to underuse summative markers, especially at the end of their essays. Similarly, Ghanbari et al. ( 2016 ) drew a comparison between Iranian EFL learners academic and non-academic writings. It was reported that that in academic writings, elaborative and inferential DMs were the predominate, whereas in non-academic writings only elaborative DMs were the most commonly used. In a study on DMs in argumentative and narrative texts written by native and non-native undergraduates, Alghamdi ( 2014 ) reported that DMs with a high frequency were elaborative, contrastive, and reason, and there was no significant difference in the use of DMs between both types of writing in the two groups.

An examination of the above literature shows that DMs were investigated in different contexts and in different languages. In the context of Jordan, there have been two studies addressing the use of DMs by Jordanian EFL learners: Ali and Mahadin ( 2015 ) and Asassfeh et al. ( 2013 ). Ali and Mahadin ( 2015 ) studied the use of DMs in expository writing of advanced EFL learners and intermediate EFL learners at University of Jordan. The study has found out that the proficiency level of the student affects the use of DMs. Asassfeh et al. ( 2013 ) have investigated the use of logical connectors in expository writings written by Jordanian English-major undergraduates representing the four academic years. They have concluded that students use logical connectors a lot but in an inaccurate way. This study aims to fill in a gap in the literature by examining the use of DMs in a new type of texts, i.e., argumentative compositions, by EFL students. To that end, a sample of 120 students were asked to write compositions that were then analyzed in terms of the use of DMs. What follows is a presentation of the methods employed to collect and analyze data. Results then presented and discussed. The study concludes with some concluding remarks and recommendation for future studies.

Theoretical Framework

This study draws mainly on Fraser’s ( 1999 ) broad characterization of DMs, particularly his taxonomy of DMs. This is because Fraser based his insights on other prominent studies on DMs (e.g., Schiffrin 1987 , Blakemore 2002 , Redeker ( 2006 )), and his description has been used for written discourse. Fraser ( 1999 ) defines DMs as lexical expressions that mostly signal a relationship between S2 and S1, where S2 is the discourse segment which hosts the DM as a part of it, and S1 is the prior discourse segment. Lenk ( 1998 ) refers to this function as the prominent textual function of DMs that indicates the kinds of relations existing between different parts of the discourse. DMs come from different grammatical classes, such as conjunctions (e.g., but, also, because,…etc.), adverbs (e.g., furthermore, however,…etc.), prepositional phrases (e.g., on the contrary, on the other hand, as a result …etc. (Fraser, 1999 ). DMs generally tend to occur in segment-initial position (to introduce an utterance). However, they may also occur medially and finally (ibid).

In this study, six categories of DMs were included for the purpose of analysis. Four of them were adopted from Fraser ( 1999 ): contrastive DMs (although, however, yet, etc.) elaborative DMs (and, moreover, in addition, etc.), inferential DMs (therefore, as a result, etc.), and reason DMs (because, since, etc.). The other two categories were suggested by Martínez ( 2004 ), namely, conclusives (in conclusion, in short, etc.) and exemplifiers (for example, for instance, etc.).

Methods and material

The participants of the present study were selected from two different levels of proficiency (sophomores and seniors) at the Hashemite University, Jordan. All of them were EFLs (their native language is Arabic), aging between 18 and 22. During the spring semester 2019–20, a total of 120 students were selected randomly from eight classes.

The students were divided into two groups: the first group consists of 60 sophomores who all passed basic grammar course and paragraph writing course , and the second group consists of 60 seniors who all passed advanced grammar course and essay writing cours e. These courses were based on to select the participants of the study, where the former two courses are required for sophomores and the latter two courses are required for seniors. Grammar courses help students gain systemic knowledge of English grammar (the basic and complex grammatical structure of sentences), meanwhile writing courses improve students’ writing ability skills (successful paragraph and essay development)

In order to ensure the homogeneity of the participants in the study and to cover all proficiency levels to get realistic results, the participants were of different gender (male and female) and GPA (ranging from good to excellent). The data of the present study is argumentative texts with a minimum word-count of 250 words on the online-learning. The following task was given to the participants:

‘Online education is rapidly increasing in popularity. Some people think that online teaching is as effective as in-person instruction, while others think online teaching is inferior. Discuss both these views and give your own opinion.’

This topic was chosen in particular because the Hashemite University students have experienced online learning over the past few years. The onset of Covid-19 pandemic has led to such a significant development in online learning. Therefore, we believed that the students are able to argue about this topic easily because they are aware of the advantages and disadvantages of the issue (For details, see also Abdalhadi, et al., 2022 ).

The researchers used a mixed approach in the present study to address the above-mentioned research questions. After a brief introduction on the importance of online education in Jordan), the students were given 40 min to write the task. All of the 120 paragraphs were examined. The process of identification of DMs in the compiled data draws mainly on Fraser’s ( 1999 , 2006 ) list of DMs, as presented in Table 1 . The reported DMs were calculated in terms of frequency. The wordsmith concordance software (wordsmith tool 4.0) was used for scanning DMs occurrences and generating concordance lists of all DMs detected in the data. For interrater reliability, the compositions were evaluated and scored out of (20 points) by two experienced raters, who are instructors of English. The essays scoring greater than 12 points were assessed as of good quality. The agreement index between the raters reached 95%, which indicates that the scoring was highly consistent among the two raters.

To obtain statistical values concerning writing quality, a Pearson’s r correlation test was applied to find out whether the frequency of the use of DMs and writing quality are correlated or not. Pearson’s r correlation is used to measure the strength of a linear correlation between two variables, where the value r = 1 means a positive linear correlation, r = −1 means a negative linear correlation, and r = 0 means no linear correlation. Finally, to compare the results of both groups of students, the means and standard deviations were measured and an independent-samples t-test was carried out to test the significance of difference between the two groups.

Results and discussion

Research question 1, which types of dms are more or less frequent in argumentative compositions used by efl learners.

The quantitative analysis of data by means of the Wordsmith concordance software showed that the entire data set had a sum of 802 occurrences of 25 different DMs in the argumentative compositions. Tables 2 and 3 show that the participants in the present study used a number of DMs with various rates. All the types of DMs adopted for the present investigation were found to be used by the participants of the present study: elaborative, contrastive, reason, inferential, conclusive, and exemplifier. Although some DMs are by nature poly-functional, particularly ‘and’, all DMs detected in the present data were observed to serve only one function.

It can be noticed that both groups used the same types of DMs with varying frequencies. The number of DMs used by both groups revealed that there was no statistical difference, where the total frequency of DMs in the seniors’ argumentative texts was 415 occurrences and 387 in their sophomores’ counterparts. The reason why seniors employed a less number of DMs than did the sophomores may be attributed to the notion that the seniors tended to avoid overusing or redundant instances of DMs observed in the sophomores ‘compositions. This finding is in line with Altenberg & Tapper ( 1998 ), who found that the advanced Swedish learners of English used a less number of DMs than non-advanced ones. Moreover, in Yang and Sun ( 2012 ) on argumentative essays by Chinese learners of English at two levels of proficiency, sophomores overused DMs more frequently than did seniors. Put it differently, the sophomores slightly outperformed the seniors in terms of the frequency of DMs, which may be due to some redundant instances of DMs, where some DMs were unnecessary and their presence contributed nothing to the text coherence as seen in the examples below. Overall, it can be discerned that both sophomores and seniors had difficulties with using DMs in their argumentative writing in terms of overusing, underusing, omitting, or redundancy. Aijmer ( 2002 ) pointed out that learners may underuse or overuse certain forms in their writing in comparison with their native counterparts.

“Online learning depends on internet and the student himself. And online learning gives us more information and we can search about anything in it, and we can watch the online course more than one time to understand what it is talking about”.

“Classroom room learning have advantage like you can ask your teacher about anything you can’t understand. and in the same minute, you can share your information and make a conversation about it, and the teacher gives you homework to improve your skill.”

As shown in Table 2 , elaborative DMs appeared to be the predominate, compared to other types of DMs, in both groups of learners (sophomores = 49.9% and seniors = 40%). Contrastive DMs ranked the second in the data (sophomores = 18.3% and seniors = 26.9%), followed by reason markers (sophomores = 16.4% and seniors = 13.2%), exemplifiers (sophomores = 6.5% and seniors = 8.8%), and conclusive markers (sophomores = 5.1% and seniors = 8%). The least frequently used type is inferential DMs (sophomores = 3.8% and seniors = 3.1%). It is evident that there was no difference in the rank order of the types of DMs used by both groups of learners.

The statistical findings revealed, as displayed in Table 2 , that the three types of DMs (namely elaborative, contrastive, and reason) had a high frequency in the argumentative texts under exploration, in contrast to other types (exemplifier, conclusive, and inferential). Elaborative DMs accounted for the largest percentage of use, followed by contrastive DMs and reason DMs. This is in line with Alghamdi’s findings ( 2014 ), which reported that these three categories were utilized at higher rates than other DMs in argumentative compositions in his comparison between NS and NNS students in their narrative and argumentative texts. Likewise, Rahimi ( 2011 ) reported in his comparison between argumentative and expository writings by Iranian EFL learners that elaborative and contrastive DMs were used at higher rates than other DMs in argumentative compositions.

This high percentage of the occurrence of elaborative, contrastive, and reason DMs can be attributed to the argumentative mode of the respective texts written by the sophomores and seniors, where they require to employ such DMs for adding new arguments, contrasting ideas, and justifying standpoints. While it was found that the most frequently used types were elaborative DMs, followed by contrastive DMs in the present study, Polish undergraduate learners of English were reported to make more use of the contrastive type than the elaborative one in their argumentative essays (Sanczyk, 2010 ).

A further analysis of the DMs in the data under examination revealed that elaborative type ranked by far the highest in terms of frequency. It made up 49.9 % of the entire occurrence of DMs in the sophomores’ text and 40% in the seniors’ text. Among this type, the most commonly used DM was, as shown in Table 3 , the marker ‘and’, while the other elaborative DMs detected in the data (‘in addition’, ‘also’, ‘besides’, and ‘furthermore’) showed a low frequency, less than 7% for each one in the sophomores and seniors’ data. Table 3 displays that the elaborative DM ‘and’ appeared 150 times with an average of 36.1% by the sophomores, and 90 times with a percentage of 23.2% by the seniors. This is a relatively high percentage that a single item appeared to be taking up almost third of the entire frequency of DMs in the sophomore’s argumentative texts and around quarter in the seniors’ texts.

The overuse of ‘and’ in both groups is not surprising for two reasons. On one hand, preceding research findings report that EFL learners (regardless of their L1) are likely to employ more ‘ands’ than native speakers of English (Taweel, 2020 ). On the other hand, native speakers of Arabic are inclined to use more ‘ands’ as a result of interference of L1, Arabic, which is characterized with a high frequency of the additive marker wa:w ‘and’.

This overreliance on ‘and’ may signal a low proficiency in the use of DMs in the students’ argumentative writing (Uzun, 2017 ). Strikingly, some elaborative DMs such as ‘moreover’, ‘as well’, ‘too’, ‘or’, ‘in other words’, and ‘further’ were never used in the data. Thus, the overuse of ‘and’ at the expense of other elaborative DMs that were either rarely used or neglected indicates that the learners have a low proficiency level in using DMs.

More elaborately, the overuse of ‘and’ can be due, to a greater extent, to the negative transfer from Arabic as the mother tongue of the leaners, where the DM ‘wa’ ‘and’, in Arabic, is poly-functional that it serves various functions such as, in addition to elaborative, contrastive, causal, and temporal (Hamed, 2014 , Arabi & Ali, 2014 ).

However, it seems that the seniors employed ‘and’ less frequently than the sophomores who largely overused it. This indicates that there was some kind of development/ improvement in the proficiency level of the seniors as they incorporated other elaborative DMs more frequently than those by the sophomores, reducing dependence on ‘and’ in favor of other DMs. Moreover, it is worth mentioning that EFL learners used largely elaborative DMs in argumentative compositions in an attempt to explain, support, and develop their point of view in details, thus, make their thesis statement more well-expressed and persuasive.

Overall measures of DMs in both groups have shown that there is a relative decrease in the occurrences of the elaborative DM ‘and’ by seniors and increase of other elaborative DMs such as ‘also’, ‘furthermore’, ‘in addition’, compared to the sophomores, who used ‘and’ more repeatedly in their texts. That is, there is a common tendency among seniors to employ more frequently diverse elaborative DMs than sophomores.

As for the contrastive DMs that came the second in frequency in both groups, they were frequently used in comparison with other DMs such as, inferential and conclusive categories (the sophomores 18.3% and the seniors 26.9%). By contrast, Jalilfar ( 2008 ) reported that the contrastive DMs were the least in the essays written by the intermediate and advanced EFL learners. According to the statistical results, the contrastive ‘but’ was the highest among this class, and it was almost equally used by the sophomores and seniors, ranking third in the total occurrences of the DMs in the data (9.6% and 9%, respectively). This high frequency of ‘but’ may be attributed to the fact that it is very simple in its orthographic structure and semantically unambiguous, which renders it easy for learners to use (Djigunović and Vikov, 2011 ). Unlike other types of DMs, a variety of contrastive DMs (‘but’, ‘however’, ‘although’, ‘yet’, and ‘on the other hand’) were employed by both groups of learners rather than relying on a very limited number of DMs as the case with the class of reason DMs in this study. Interestingly, the seniors made more use of the contrastive DMs than did the sophomores, which indicates that they have more proficiency and knowledge about the nature of argumentative texts. Given that the argumentation is typically marked by showing a contrast, opposition, and juxtaposition between the argument and counterargument in order to convince the reader/listener of the acceptability of the controversial standpoint at issue (Eemeren, 2021 ), it was observed that some contrastive DMs that usually appear in argumentative academic compositions such as ‘nevertheless’, ‘nonetheless’, ‘whereas’, ‘conversely’, and ‘despite’ were never used by both groups.

Ranking the third largest category in both groups, the category of reason DMs was relatively moderately used by both groups (16.4% by the sophomores, 13.2% by the seniors). Dissimilar to these findings, it was reported that reason DMs were the most widely used by Turkish learners of English in their argumentative essays (Altunay, 2009 ). Among this class, the most commonly used one is ‘because’, contrast to other used ones, (after all, and for this/that reason) which were highly underused. Across the both groups, it was the second highest DM, making up 14.2% by sophomores and 10.6% by seniors. One DM, namely, ‘after all’, was used only by the seniors (0.8%), while other DMs, such as ‘since’ was totally absent in both groups. All in all, both groups of learners tend highly to overuse ‘because’ at the expense of other reason DMs, which were largely underused or absent. This could be argued that the learners heavily relied on ‘because’ to compensate for their unfamiliarity with other reason DMs. These results most probably reflect that this type of DMs poses a difficulty for the subjects of the present study.

Less frequently used types in the data were conclusive and exemplifier DMs. The former was used 5.1% by the sophomores and 8% by the seniors whereas, the latter was used 6.5% by the sophomores and 8.8% by the seniors. Only three conclusive DMs (‘in conclusion’, ‘in short’, and ‘to sum up’) were employed by both the sophomores and seniors. Comparing the both groups, the conclusive type had a higher frequency in the seniors’ argumentative texts than the sophomores’ texts. The DM ‘in conclusion’ was the predominate one among this type, while the others were mostly underutilized, where its total frequency in the whole data in both groups was 3.4% by sophomores and 5.7 % by the seniors. Concerning exemplifiers, like the conclusive types, only three DMs (‘for example’, ‘for instance’, and ‘such as’) appeared in the data. The findings showed that the most commonly used one in this class was ‘for example’ in the sophomores’ texts and ‘such as’ in their counterparts. It seems that these two categories appeared more in the seniors’ argumentative compositions. This evidently indicates that there is a development in the seniors’ proficiency level as compared to their counterparts regarding using exemplifiers to give examples as evidence in order to support their argument and conclusives to signal that they have reached the end of the composition and will summarize what has been argued for or against.

As given in Table 2 , the least frequently used type by both groups of learners was inferential DMs, accounting for 3.8% by the sophomores and 3.1% by the seniors. This indicates that there was no significant difference between these groups of students with regard to using this type of markers. The analysis showed that the inferential DMs found in the data include ‘thus’, ‘therefore’, ‘because of’, ‘as a result’, and ‘accordingly’. In the inferential category, the DMs ‘as a result’ had the highest frequency in the sophomores’ data, but it was totally neglected in the seniors’ data. While ‘because of’ was the least frequently used by sophomores in the inferential category, it appeared the most frequent one by the seniors. Overall, the students here displayed a tendency to underuse this type of DMs that would be typical in English argumentative writing. This self-evident underuse of inferential DMs in the data under consideration indicates that the learners had insufficient knowledge as such DMs are crucial in texts with argumentative mode. That is, it may be argued that inferential DMs are the most difficult to learn by Jordanian EFL learners.

A closer analysis of the individual DMs used in the argumentative texts written by sophomores and seniors revealed that the most commonly used DMs across both groups of learners were ‘and’ (36.1%) (23.2%), ‘because’ (14.2%) (10.6%), and ‘but’ (9.6%) (9%), respectively. There were no differences in the frequency order of these three DMs between the two groups of leaners. However, they displayed some differences in the number of their occurrence in each group. As shown in Table 3 , ‘and’ as an elaborative DM was employed less frequently by the seniors (23.2%) than the sophomores (36.1%). Although this shows that both groups overused this DM at the expense of other DMs, the seniors showed less dependence on this marker in favor of other DMs, which reflects some improvement of their use of DMs, compared to their counterparts. While ‘because’ made a percentage of 14.2% in the sophomores’ writing, it had less percentage in the seniors’ writings (10.6). For the last highest DMs in the data, the contrastive ‘but’, it was equally used by both groups (9.6% by the sophomores and 9% by the seniors). Other DMs occurred by far less frequently such as ‘however’, ‘on the other hand’, and ‘furthermore’. Moreover, there are some DMs that were rarely used by both groups of learners (e.g., ‘although’, ‘yet’, ‘besides’, ‘furthermore’) or were only used by one group (‘as a result’, ‘therefore’, ‘after all’). Remarkably, it was found that an array of manifold DMs was never used neither by the sophomores nor by the seniors (e.g., ‘hence’, ‘nonetheless’, ‘nevertheless’, ‘despite’, ‘on the contrary’, ‘consequently’, ‘since’, ‘in other words’). This can be interpreted that EFL learners tend to rely more on DMs familiar to them from an early stage (Paquot, 2014 ). Such findings are in agreement with Alghamdi ( 2014 ) that in each DM category, there are explicit overuse and underuse of some DMs in EFl argumentative writings.

On the ground of these results, it is justifiable to infer that since both groups of learners in this study utilized frequently a very limited number of DMs in their argumentative texts, they had a poor proficiency level of using DMs, compared to higher proficient L1/ L2 writers (Zhang, 2021 ). The importance of such findings stems from the fact that the quality of academic writing can be evaluated based on lexical variety (Hinkel, 2004 ).

Research question 2

Are there any significant differences between sophomores and seniors in the use of dms in their writing.

To address the second question of the present study, an independent-samples t -test was undertaken in order find whether there is any statistically significant difference between the sophomores and the seniors’ use of DMs in their argumentative written texts. As displayed in Table 4 , the results of the respective test revealed no statistically significant difference between the sophomores ( M = 69.17, SD = 72.07) and seniors ( M = 64.50, SD = 54.29) in their use of DMs in argumentative papers; t (10) = 0.126, p = 0.901.

More elaborately, the total occurrences of the DMs found across argumentative compositions written by the two groups in this study was 802, as clearly illustrated in Table 5 below, where they had a frequency of 415 occurrences in the sophomores’ texts and 387 occurrences in the seniors’ texts. It can be seen that the frequency of DMs in the sophomores’ compositions was slightly higher than the seniors’. The present study conducted a lexical density test (a test used to measure the proportion of the content (lexical) words over the total words) to measure the proportion of the DMs to the total number of words (the total number of words in the sophomores and seniors’ data is 8549 and 8991, respectively) in the argumentative data under examination. The numerical results displayed that the lexical density (LD), which refers to the proportion of DMs to the total number of words, is 4.8% in the sophomores’ writings and 4.3% in the seniors’ writings. It has been reported that the density of DMs and quality of writing are positively related in EFL learners’ compositions (Martínez, 2016 ). In this regard, the current results can, to some degree, may indicate that the participants showed a low proficiency in writing their argumentative texts. A number of studies report that more proficient learners tend to use an increased amount of DMs in their written texts (see Uzun, 2017 ).

Research question 3

Is there any correlation between the number of dms employed in the text and the quality of writing.

With regard to the last question of the study concerning the relationship between the frequency of DMs and the quality of writing, a Pearson’s r correlation test was carried out to assess this relationship. As illustrated in Table 6 , the results displayed that the correlation between the frequency of DMs employed in the argumentative compositions written by the sophomores and their evaluation was weakly positively correlated, r (58) = .32, p = 0.012. Likewise, the frequency of DMs and the evaluation of the seniors’ writings were found to be weakly positively correlated, r (58) = 0.42, p < 0.001. Based on the results obtained from the present correlation test, it can be stated that a positive correlation but significant (the sophomores 0.012656 and the seniors .000764) was found between the total use of DMs and the quality writing of the argumentative texts written by the participants of the present study. It can be suggested that the highly-rated argumentative compositions tend to employ more DMs than did their poorly-rated counterparts.

Although the results of the present study revealed that there was a positive correlation between the two values at issue, the relationship between the frequency of DMs and the evaluation was weak (for the nearer the value is to zero, the weaker the relationship). However, we can infer that the frequency of DMs can be, to some extent, a potential predictor/ indicator of writing quality, that is, the higher the number of DMs, the better the quality of writing. Such findings are in line with the studies that support the existence of a positive correlation between the deployment of DMs and the quality of writing (Jin, 2001 ; Liu and Braine 2005 , Yang and Sun 2012 ). This implies that EFL learners of both groups in this study still face some difficulties in using DMs in their argumentative writing. The absence of significantly positive correlations between the quality of writing and the frequency of DMs in the respective argumentative texts reflects the students’ low-level proficiency in employing DMs.

However, it should be borne in mind that correlational tests do not always suggest causation- that when two variables in tandem do not necessarily indicate that one variable is affecting the other. (Bruce &. Harper, 2012 ).

The present study examined the use of DMs in argumentative writing by the seniors and sophomores majoring in English at the Hashemite university. These two groups of EFL learners represented two different level of proficiency. The findings revealed both groups used the same types of DMs with varying degree of frequency: elaborative, contrastive, reason, inferential, conclusive, and exemplifier. The seniors were found to employ more slightly DMs than did the sophomores, which may be a result of overusing some DMs and unnecessary instances of DMs. There was no statistically difference in the frequency of DMs by both groups.

The types of DMs that appeared commonly were elaborative, contrastive and reason. However, conclusives and exemplifiers were infrequently used. Across the both group of data, the elaborative type of DMs was the predominate. The analysis of individual DMs reported that the DMs ‘and’, ‘because’, and ‘but’ were the most widely used in both groups. It also reported that both groups over-relied on a very limited number of DMs in their argumentative writing at the expense of other DMs, which reflects a low proficiency in using DMs.

Moreover, there are some DMs that were rarely used by both groups of learners (e.g., although, yet, besides, furthermore) or were only used by one group (as a result, therefore, after all). Remarkably, it was found that an array of manifold DMs was never used neither by the sophomores nor by the seniors (e.g., hence, nonetheless, nevertheless, despite, on the contrary, consequently, since, in other words).

The findings indicated that there was a weak positive but significant correlation between the use of DMs and the quality of writing in both argumentative texts written by the sophomores and seniors.

Pedagogical implications

Based on the present findings on the use of DMs in the sophomore and seniors’ argumentative writings, some pedagogical implications can be highlighted. As we have seen, the use of DMs in argumentative writings presents a challenge to EFL learners across different levels of proficiency. Moreover, the analysis reveals that EFL learners demonstrate little variety in the use of DMs.

The inappropriate use of DMs should be attended to by both instructors and learners. More focus should be placed on DMs and students should be exposed to more varied DMs. In other words, instructors of English should familiarize their students with a wide variety of DMs and encourage learners to vary in their choice of DMs in their writings rather than relying on restricted range of DMs. To increase the quality of EFL argumentative writing, learners should be given more exercises on the functions of DMs and their role in creating and maintaining the cohesion and coherence of text, especially, in academic writing (For details, see Guba et al., 2021 ). This would help in the development of the EFL learners’ writing proficiency.

Data availability

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Unpacking the function(s) of discourse markers in academic spoken English: a corpus-based study

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Published: 17 May 2022
Volume 45 , pages 49–70, ( 2022 )

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Mehrdad Vasheghani Farahani 1 &
Zahra Ghane 2

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Discourse markers can have various functions depending on the context in which they are used. Taking this into consideration, in this corpus-based research, we analyzed and unveiled quantitatively and qualitatively the functions of four discourse markers in academic spoken English. To this purpose, four discourse markers, i.e., “I mean,” “I think,” “you see,” and “you know,” were selected for the study. The British Academic Spoken English (BASE) corpus was used as the data gathering source. To detect the discourse markers, concordance lines of the corpus were carefully read and analyzed. The quantitative analysis demonstrated that from among the four discourse markers, “you know” and “you see” were the most and the least frequent ones in the corpus, respectively. In line with the quantitative analysis, the qualitative analysis of the concordance lines demonstrated that there were various functions with regard to each of the four discourse markers. The findings of this study can have implications in fields such as corpus-based studies, genre analysis, and contrastive linguistics.

Frequency and Stylistic Variability of Discourse Markers in Nigerian English

Analysing Discourse Markers in Spoken Corpora: Actually as a Case Study

“Well (er) You Know …”: Discourse Markers in Native and Non-native Spoken English

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1 Introduction

Discourse markers have been an intriguing topic of research in pragmatics. They play a pivotal role in pragmatic competence of speakers (Müller, 2005 ; Lam, 2009 ; Öztürk & Durmuşoğlu Köse, 2020 ) and will help them to make their speech more comprehensible and rich (Crozet, 2003 ) as well as more sociable (Weydt, 2006 ). In addition, discourse markers perform various functions relating to turn taking management as well as speaker-audience relationship (Crible, 2017 ) as they are defined and detected mostly by the various functions they (can) perform (Aijmer, 2013 ).

The concept of discourse markers has intrigued researchers to investigate their different forms and functions in speech and writing. Indeed, the interest in studying discourse markers stems from the fact that they are pragmatically variant or multifunctional (Schleef, 2005 ; Lee, 2017 ). This wide range of functions have resulted into the introduction of various terminologies such as sentence connectives (Fraser, 1999 ; Halliday & Hasan, 1976 ), discourse particles (Schourup, 1985 ), discourse signals (Lamiroy & Swiggers, 1991 ), discourse connectives (Unger, 1996 ), discourse particles (Aijmer, 1997 , 2002 ), speech act adverbials (Aijmer, 1997 ), discourse operators (Gaines, 2011 ), thetical features (Heine et al., 2016 ), pragmatic markers (Brinton, 2017) and metadiscourse features (Hyland, 2004 , 2019 ).

In line with these various terminologies, there is a range of homogenous definitions. To name a few, Hyland ( 2004 ) defines discourse markers as “a self-reflective linguistic expression referring to the evolving text, to the writer, and to the imagined readers of that text” (p. 133). In the same line, Vande Kopple ( 2012 ) defines these features as “elements of texts that convey meanings other than those that are primarily referential” (p.37). In another definition, Ädel (2010) defines discourse markers as “reflexive linguistic expressions referring to the evolving discourse itself or its linguistic form, including references to the writer-speaker qua writer-speaker and the (imagined or actual) audience qua audience of the current discourse” (p.75).

Discourse markers have specific characteristics, which make them distinguished from other linguistic elements. As an example, Hyland ( 2019 ), while referring to metadiscourse markers as the terminology, assigns three distinguishing roles to them: these features must be distinguished from propositional aspects of meanings because they are inherently non-propositional; they consider those aspects of discourse which are used to establish writer-reader and/or speaker-audience interaction; and they can have various functions in different contexts.

The term “discourse marker” has been the subject of a range of studies over the last decades. It can have miscellaneous functions, extending from signals, which function as hesitation filters, to clausal expressions, which are frequently used and found in spoken interactions. There are some studies focusing on the multifunctionality of discourse markers such as Mauranen ( 2001 ), Thompson ( 2003 ), Farrokhi and Ashrafi ( 2009 ), Crismore and Abdollahzadeh ( 2010 ), Letsoela ( 2014 ), Ma and Wang ( 2015 ), Ghasemali and Azizeh ( 2017 ), Akbas and Hardman ( 2018 ), Hajimia ( 2018 ), and Jalilifar ( 2008 ). These studies studied various discourse markers from different perspectives such as genre, language variations, grammaticalization, and native and non-native language.

Language as a means of communication plays a significant role in everyday life because “all people use spoken language to interact with one another” (Zarei & Mansoori, 2007 ; Povolná, 2010, p.23). Although spoken and written languages are interdependent (Townend & Walker, 2006 ), spoken language has some specifications which make it different from written language. Cook ( 2004 ) accentuates the differences between spoken and written forms of language by saying that “Many of the devices of written language have no spoken equivalent” (p. 12) which can be the result of differences in the mode or in the context of usage. In this regard, one difference is that unlike the written form, spoken language does not have the opportunity for self-revision and editing on the spot (Crawford & Csomay, 2016). Another difference is the matter of formality in speech versus written modes, meaning that in spoken mode, there are more instances of informality.

A detailed look at the literature review supported this idea that there was a lack of research in the area of discourse markers in spoken language, despite the fact that in written language, there were a plethora of studies (see, for example, Erman, 2000 ; Chapetón & Claudia, 2009 ; Kohlani, 2010 ; Ismail, 2012 ; Sharndama & Yakubu, 2013 ; Dylgjeri, 2014 ; Piurko, 2015 ; Crible et al., 2019 ). This can be due to the fact that collecting spoken data, as compared to written data, is a more overwhelming issue, which requires too much budget and time (Burnard, 2002 ).

Despite the lack of solid research in spoken discourse with the exploitation of large corpora, in one of the rare studies, Huang ( 2011 ) studied the spoken discourse markers between Chinese non-native speakers (NNSs) of English and native speakers (NSs). Using linear unit grammar analysis and text-based analysis and applying SECCL, MICASE, and ICE-GB corpora, the results of this corpus-based research showed that discourse markers such as “like,” “oh,” “well,” “you know,” “I mean,” “you see,” “I think,” and “now” are found more frequently in dialogue genres as compared to monologue genres in spite of the similarities found between NNSs and NSs. In addition, the results of this research showed that discourse markers correlate with context, type of activity, and identity of the speakers.

In another related research, Novotana ( 2016 ) studied the role of discourse markers as well as their functions in spoken English. For this purpose, he chose 19 discourse markers such as “I see,” “you know,” “I mean,” “actually,” and “really,” among others. The analysis of his corpus demonstrated that not only do discourse markers play a pivotal role in English spoken mode, but also they can have various functions, depending on the intention of the speaker(s) and the context of usage.

In addition, Kizil ( 2017 ) studied the function and frequency of discourse markers in learners’ spoken interlanguage of EFL learners. With two corpora of reference and learner, he showed that as far as audience interaction is concerned, non-native speakers used fewer discourse markers as compared to native speakers, which can be attributed to their unawareness of the significant role of discourse markers.

In the same vein, Resnik ( 2017 ) investigated the function and distribution of discourse markers (metadiscourse features) in spoken interaction as a strategy for compensating miscommunication among multilingual speakers who communicate in their L2 (English). For this objective, she conducted 27 interviews for creating a corpus of spoken English. The analysis showed that L2 speakers of English employ metadiscourse features as a means of enhancing mutual understanding and that depending on the situation, they bear different functions.

In the same vein, Jong-Mi ( 2017 ), investigated the multifunctional nature of “Okay” as a discourse marker used by Korean EFL (English as a foreign language) teachers in their naturally occurring discourses of EFL classes. The data gathered from video recordings of six Korean teachers demonstrated that discourse marker “Okay” can take three different roles as “getting attention”, “signaling approval and acceptance as a feedback device,” and “working as a transition activator.”

In a recent study, Banguis-Bantawig ( 2019 ) investigated the functions of discourse markers in speeches of selected Asian Presidents. Adapting the discourse theory of Hassan and Halliday and de Beaugrande and Dressler in analyzing 54 English speeches of Presidents in Asia, he showed that there were three pivotal roles in relation to discourse markers used by presidents including adding something to the speech, cohesion, and substitution.

A look at the above-mentioned studies indicated that they were mostly limited to small-scaled corpora, jeopardizing the generalizability of their results as well as corpus representativeness. Moreover, the review of the related literature showed that the studies in this area of research lacked the exploitation of large, balanced, and representative corpora in spoken discourse. Consequently, based on the insight gained from literature review and due to the research aims, this study was an effort to fill out this less researched gap and area of research by addressing these two questions: (1) How were the above-mentioned discourse markers used and distributed in the British Academic Spoken English (BASE) corpus and which discourse marker was the most frequent one? and (2) Which functions did these discourse markers have in the context of use in spoken discourse? The null hypothesis of this study was that there was no difference in terms of discourse marker distribution in the corpus of the study and that there was no difference in terms of the function(s) of the discourse markers in the corpus of the study.

2 Theoretical framework

The framework of the present study is Discourse Grammar (Kaltenböck et al., 2011 ) which as proposed by Heine et al. ( 2013 , 2020 ) rose out of the analysis of spoken and written linguistic discourse on the one hand and of the work conducted on thetical expressions on the other. In other words, it is based on the distinction between two organizing principles of grammar where one concerns the structure of sentences (sentence grammar) and the other the linguistic organization beyond the sentence (thetical grammar). The term theticals, including DMs, is sometimes used interchangeably with extra-clausal constituents (ECC) or parentheticals (see Dik, 1997: 379–409) and encompasses various constituents such as vocatives, imperatives, social exchange formulae, interjections, and conceptual theticals.

Discourse Grammar is a relatively new framework providing a detailed description and explanation of DMs, their functions, and evolution. Accordingly, the thetical grammar is based on the speaker’s communicative intents and the knowledge of discourse processing at a higher level, relating the text to the situation of discourse. The situation of discourse refers to the cognitive frame used by interlocutors to construct and interpret spoken or written texts; it is delimited by three components, namely, (i) text organization, (ii) attitudes of the speaker, and/or (iii) speaker-hearer interact. The last two are sometimes called interpersonal [or modal] functions and relate, respectively, to the terms “subjectivity” and “intersubjectivity” (Heine et al., 2020 ).

In this framework, a distinction is provided between two organizing principles of grammar, where one concerns the structure of sentences (sentence grammar) and the other the linguistic organization beyond the sentence (thetical grammar). Kaltenböck et al. ( 2011 ) and Heine ( 2013 ) have introduced the specification in (1) to describe a prototypical thetical.

Theticals are (a) invariable expressions which are (b) syntactically independent from their environment, (c) typically set off prosodically from the rest of the utterance (which can be marked by comma in writing), and (d) their function is to relate an utterance to the situation of discourse, that is, to the organization of texts, speaker-hearer interaction, and/or the attitudes of the speaker (Heine, 2013 , p. 1211).

3 Procedure and detection of the discourse markers

This study privileged both quantitative and qualitative phases. In the quantitative study, the frequency of the detected discourse makers was calculated through the statistical procedures and in line with the criteria mentioned above. In the qualitative phase, the extracted concordance lines were scrutinized to unveil the function(s) of the detected discourse markers. Accordingly, an array of steps was taken for the issue of feasibility. First, we scrutinized the whole corpus of the study, through the concordance lines and CQL (Corpus Query Language) technique in Sketch Engine Corpus Software to detect the tokens of discourse markers. In order to distinguish discourse markers from other types of non-prepositional elements, we exploited the criteria set by Kaltenböck et al. ( 2011 ) as come in (1).

Following the conditions, four discourse markers were selected in this study including “I mean,” “you know,” “you see,” and “I think.” These were selected due to their higher frequency and dispersion in the corpus and due to their similarity that is all can be followed by the complementizer “that” in the level of sentence grammar. In other words, they were among the most frequent discourse markers in the corpus, and they can receive a subordinate clause when used as an intendent clause. Table 1 shows the frequency of discourse markers of the study. It is worth mentioning that in order to be able to unpack the function(s) of these discourse markers, we analyzed the linguistic context surrounding the discourse marker as well as the topic of the discussion. It should be noted that it is problematic to intuitively interpret the functions of discourse markers, as most previous studies have done, because a researcher cannot read a speaker’s mind; in most cases, the uses of DMs are not even easily available to introspection by the speaker. As a result, this study used the immediate context and the co-occurrence phenomena to categorize the uses of discourse markers and to clarify the logic of the identification of their functions. However, occasionally more than one type of co-occurrence is found in the same instance. In cases of this kind, the classification has to be confirmed by the use of other discourse markers in the context.

Table 1 shows the type and frequency of the discourse markers of the study. As can be seen, from among 4 types of discourse markers, “I mean” had 1888 frequency. Then, was “I think” discourse marker with 2940 tokens, followed by “you know” with 3569 tokens and “you see” with 506 tokens. On aggregation, there were 8903 tokens of the 4 discourse markers in the corpus.

4 Corpus of the study

Rather than the rudimentary and time-consuming process of detecting the existing similarities and differences out of the immediate context, researchers resort corpora to explore the differences and similarities of a language(s) in the immediate context of use (Zanettin et al., 2003 ; Anderman & Rogers, 2008 ; Candel-Mora & Vargas-Sierra, 2013 , Milagrosa Pantaleon, 2018 ). As a matter of fact, comparing to extract and analyze language features manually which is not only time-consuming but also subject to error (Anthony, 2009 ), one plausible way is to apply corpora defined as “an electronically stored, searchable collection of texts” (Jones & Waller, 2015 , p.6). Corpora are useful in that they can give the researcher(s) a quick access to the word/phrase as well as to the context in which it is used (Anderman & Rogers, 2008 ). As a result, having access to a representative and balanced corpus that could meet the requirements of the study was an integral part of this research (Heng & Tan, 2010 ).

As creating a Do It Yourself (DIY) corpus was inherently an arduous task and was beyond the scope of the current research, we decided to employ already compiled and available corpora. There are a number of various academic spoken corpora such as the Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English (Nesi & Thompson, 2006 ) and Hong Kong Corpus of Spoken English (Cheng & Warren, 1999 ); however, from among these spoken corpora, the one, which was exploited in this study, was “The British Academic Spoken English (BASE) corpus.” The reason why this corpus was used was due to its availability in Sketch engine corpus software and its fitness to this study. This corpus was compiled at the Universities of Warwick and Reading out of 160 lectures and 39 seminars video recorded from 2000 to 2005. The male and female speakers were both native and non-native speakers of English (Thompson & Nesi, 2001 ). As its name implies, it is narrowed down to academic genre and contains such fields of studies as arts and humanities, life and medical sciences, physical sciences, and social studies and sciences. The corpus contains 1,756,545 words and 1,477,281 sentences. This specialized, representative, and balanced corpus, which was tagged at part of speech (POS), was used in this research to be in line with the research boundary of the study in hand.

5 Quantitative analysis

This study was done in two phases of quantitative and qualitative analysis. As for the quantitative analysis, the frequency of each of the discourse markers was calculated separately through the whole corpus. The results are presented in the following tables. The data analysis was done through SPSS version 26.

Table 2 demonstrates the frequency of discourse markers in the corpus. As can be seen, there were 8037 tokens of discourse markers from among which “you know” was the most frequent one with 3188 tokens followed by “I think” and “I mean” with 2578 and 1786 tokens. The least frequent type of discourse marker was “you see” with only 485 tokens.

Figure 1 shows the functions of the “you know” discourse marker. As can be seen from among seven functions, hesitation markers and asking for acceptance were the two most frequent functions with 25% and 20%, respectively, followed by clarification function and repairs as the third used discourse markers (14%). Next were contrastive function and elaboration function with 10% followed by exemplification as the least frequent function (4%).

Functions of “you know” discourse marker

Figure 2 indicates the functions of “you see” discourse marker. As can be seen, from among these functions, indication of objects and explanations were the most frequent discourse markers (20%) followed by checking comprehension as the second most frequent function (19%). With 10%, introducing new topic, hesitation markers, and exemplification were the third most frequent functions. Emphatics function with only 9% was the least frequent function.

Functions of “you see” discourse marker

Figure 3 indicates the functions of “I mean” discourse marker with their frequency. As can be inferred, clarification and explanation were the most frequent function with 24% followed by elaboration and emphatic lexis with 19%. In the third rank was exemplification with 15%. The least used functions were hesitation and contrasting ones with 10%.

The functions of “I mean” discourse marker in the corpus

Figure 4 represents the functions of “I think” with four ones. As can be inferred from the figure, personal opinion with 44% was the most frequent function followed by concluding remarks and hesitation remarks as the second most frequent functions (20%). The least used function was factual information with 15%.

The functions of “I think” discourse marker

6 Qualitative analysis

Once the quantitative analysis was done, the qualitative analysis was conducted through close reading of the concordance lines. It is worth mentioning that 30% of the concordance lines were randomly selected through shuffling technique of the corpus software to unpack the functions of discourse markers.

7 Functions of “you know” discourse marker

The first discourse marker that was studied in this research was “you know.” The close reading of the concordance lines showed that there were 7 various functions in relation to “you know” discourse marker. The functions were as the following:

Hesitation markers, pauses, and restarts

The first function in relation to “you know” discourse marker is hesitation, pause, and restates. It is worth mentioning that this function is one that usually overlaps the other functions such marker has in its discourse situation. As can be seen in the excerpt, the speaker is searching for a reason, and it seems probable that “you know” is used with a repetition of the initial word of the reason statement, i.e., “we,” to stall for time, find a suitable way to express a negative point.

Example 1 1

you have so in actual fact we did not learn anything so what did you learn how to do it better next time I reckon if we did it again though we’d just do the same because we you know we did not have an idea of we just did not think about.

The second function with regard to “you know” discourse marker is to repair a speech. In Example 1, “you know” prefaces “and this” to repair the previous pronoun “they” in “and they.” In this case, “you know” is also used as a hesitation marker which is reinforced by repetition of pronoun “they.”

I think Motorola have been in the business for a good many years so and they and they you know and this is the latest generation of many generations of processors so do you think they’ll if we have a lot of multiplications to perform.

“You know” in Example 2 also seems to mark a self-repair. It suggests a correction formulated for “a sort of static” which is followed by the corrected expression “an essentially static sort of framework.”

They’re more likely to build models which are based on a sort of static you know an essentially static sort of framework which…

Clarification and explanation

The third function in relation to “you know” discourse marker is to clarify and explain something. In Example 1, “you know” is followed by a clarification of what the speaker means by “a nice model to use,” and in Example 2, it prefaces a further explanation for “an individual leaf.”

so if somebody comes along and gives you a model or tell say your supervisor or whatever comes along eventually and says here’s a nice model to use you know it’s a good one we use it round here everybody likes it round here the things to know are what are the approximations that went into your model and a lot of people are not very good.

I am talking about individual leaf you know an individual leaf exposed to different levels of carbon dioxide

Elaboration

The next function associated with the function of “you know” is elaboration. It occurs in situations where the speaker intends to elaborate on a proposition. In Examples 1 and 2, “you know” prefaces elaborations and can serve as a cue for the listeners of the coming details.

So if you yeah i do not know unless of course unless of course you know you just have the somebody held the long rope and tied it on one of these sides yeah if you go on that side.

you know when i say write in a write in a limerick write me a sonnet write me twenty lines of this write me five lines of this I’m asking you to do that in order to practise rather than to produce great works of art.

Exemplification

Another function in relation to “you know” discourse marker is to make exemplification. In Examples 1 and 2, “you know” is followed by two examples, i.e., “one decimal point” and “a million,” by which the number differs; Africa, Burma, and Cambodia are also some examples of those countries which enjoy international communication.

They will go for that combination of goods rather than one to which we have allocated a lower number how much the number differs is irrelevant it could differ by you know one decimal point or it could differ by a million.

That is part of the globalisation as well i mean globalisation of international communication and technology you know even the people in in Africa or you know in in Burma or in Cambodia they have access to the internet now

Contrasting and showing negative points

“You know” is also found to be followed by some contrastive and negative points, as in Example 1 where the speaker is intending to cushion the impact of the comment.

It seems that the first half has to be the kind of thing you’d present to like somebody who does not really have any you know deep technical knowledge of it i do not think you would necessarily interpret it like that but suppose it.

Asking for acceptance

A number of instances of “you know” may be used to claim consensus. This function is reinforced by the repetition of “yeah” in Example 1 and by the adverb “certainly” in Example 2.

you know yeah if you are all doing your separate thing follow somebody’s idea yeah even if it’s the wrong idea to a certain extent you need to give them a chance.

please do not be shy you know i almost certainly anything you say will not be used and if it’s outstandingly good then it will be used and you’ll be beautifully happy okay if you sort of you slip on something do not bother it.

8 Functions of “you see” discourse marker

The second discourse marker, which was studied, was “you see” discourse marker. The close reading of the concordance lines showed that there were seven various functions with regard to this discourse marker. These include (1) hesitation markers, pauses, and restarts; (2) emphatic lexis; (3) exemplifications; (4) explanations, justifications, and conclusions; (5) indications of objects and places; (6) shared knowledge presumed by the speaker; and (7) for checking comprehension. Some of these functions are shared with “you know” and have previously been discussed and exemplified. The relevant examples are provided in this section, too.

so I can order this week what did you say four-thousand safety stock no if you want to have it is four-thousand you see this week this week we are predicting six-thousand-five-hundred in demand okay two thousand-five-hundred not six-thousand-five-hundred.

If we just try to describe it is like a diary i mean you describe something but i mean you see other people can see little point in them so normative theories and descriptions must come together

Whereas the other person might say but you see just think of how she must be feeling right now which is quite different logic somehow we reach an understanding.

not surprisingly you see particularly for East Asia and the Pacific there was just under ten per cent trade was in goods was just under ten per cent of G-D-P in nineteen-eighty-seven it was just under fifteen per cent in nineteen-ninety-seven.

Explanations, justifications, and clarification

AIDS is an acronym yeah you see the difference in some languages they turn all their initialisms into acronyms.

how can we make this sort of inference you see what I am stating maybe just the ob obvious but by stating the rather obvious maybe i hope that we begin to see something.

“You see” is rather different from the discourse marker “you know” in that it is used as a device to move the hearer’s attention to the intended objects and places. Furthermore, it co-occurs with emphatic lexis like “only” and “quite,” as in Example 1 and or with some new information in Example 2.

Indications of objects and places

that’s you see the interesting thing ‘cause seeing that you think it’s going to unwind so the bobbin’s going to have to go to the left in fact that’s impossible it always goes to the right if you pull on anything in one direction it will go.

we were trying to pass the list as a parameter which did not really work ah yeah now you see that’s where we had problems with the quick sort algorithm and and we made a scratch list as well.

Emphatic lexis

we are at a low level so that there’s no idea for a start and the buildup is gonna be less if you see only for this period because after this peak we alw we are gonna be changed with something like that.

and i think even at at the back of the room you should be able to read that just but you see there’s quite a difference so this is the largest late eighteenth century display.

Introducing a new topic or information

now you see that’s where we had problems with the quick sort algorithm and and we made a a scratch list as well did not we the conventional algorithms.

maybe there’s a synthesis coming maybe you see in buildings like B-A hes headquarter building the synthesis if you like of user value exchange value some notion of business value

Checking comprehension of the audience

A speaker can use “you see” to check the hearer’s comprehension and to find what to say later. In Example 1, the speaker repeats “so I mean” after checking the hearer’s comprehension by using “you see.” Such discourse marker can be interpreted as a short form of “do you see?” based upon the contextual information.

so i mean i learned quite a lot first comes the teacher action and well philosophers are rather notorious for saying something obvious philosophers just say if P then Q P therefore Q ah God i mean how how how can we make this sort of inference you see so i mean what I am stating

it has not got an A on it at the end you see oh i thought i changed it okay let us say change yeah is it is it alright now i say okay the answer’s no.

9 Functions of “I mean” discourse marker

“I mean” is found to function as (1) hesitation markers, pauses, and restarts; (2) repairs; (3) clarifications and explanations; (4) elaborations; (5) exemplifications; and (6) contrasting and negative points. These functions are shared with “you know” which have previously been discussed. Thus, due to the limited space, each of the overlapping types of co-occurrence is only illustrated with two examples in this section.

so the workings of the exhibition of the gallery become the artwork so he’s taking like the gallery as an artwork well yeah i mean very literally revealing what makes the behind the the gallery function.

this is a very important relationship i mean in some sense in in the theory of radiative transfer this was the first really quantitative law that was discovered.

so that’s more appropriate then for them to look at a sort of i mean it does say detailing any business plan.

you have to be careful not to i mean it’s it’s kind of difficult but you have not to give too much not to make up meaning for it so we we have sort of tried to make a criticism on his work.

if you just follow it blindly yeah i mean it would be worse if we were all like having different ideas and all arguing about it.

he had to buy get loans and sell his own things so in a way he is the kind of stuff he sells and he sells his own i mean it’s often a drawing and then a map next to it and then the model.

and radar does anyone know what it is i mean you might not you might think that radars measure rainfall.

you must do one question from either section A or section B and the section A questions are related to the seminar topics i mean there will be essentially one on each seminar topic.

Exemplifications

and the implications as to why you went down a certain route you know is not it i mean why it sort of mentions if someone says well.

he does seem really to invite these sort of complete projections of everything onto the work i mean he has even been categorised as the kind of central artist of his era.

Contrasting and negative points

you know adopting the political strategies of you know almost any public project which needs to come off the ground well i mean I am not sure if i’d put it yeah well he said like when we were talking about the money.

but i mean that’s that that is that is a very neo-realist sound in a way that some of the other things you have heard are much less obviously so i’ll come back to that question.

10 Functions of “I think” discourse marker

It can be argued that “I think” can co-occur with hesitation markers and pauses to give the speaker the time to search for content information or appropriate lexical expressions. This type of co-occurrence seems to suggest that the speakers are using “I think” as a filler while formulating what to say next. In the second example below, the speaker stalls for more time after “I think” by adding “mm” or “okay.”

yeah people cause people give i think they you are provided you need aren’t you they they have done this before they would have seen if it was possible.

i think mm okay that’s your lot mine aren’t terribly neat but and i got one wrong while i was writing it.

Personal opinions and evaluation

“I think” is frequently used to express personal opinions and evaluation. In Example 1, there are two types of co-occurrence, the first with positive evaluation and the other with personal opinion about the relevant topic. The instance of “I think” in Example 2 co-occurs with a personal opinion, too. Here, “I think” seems to be multifunctional, of course, and is used as a hesitater before launching the sentence, as well.

Do you four want to make some some comments on on that

Well I think its good too I think it could still be slimmed down a little bit.

So he’s taking like the gallery as an artwork well yeah I mean very literally revealing what makes the behind the the gallery function as a gallery pause I think that’s the easiest gesture.

Factual information

Another function of “I think” is to co-occur with factual information. This is in line with Coates ( 2003 ) who claims that expressions like “I think” which are conveying some kind of uncertainty do not necessarily reflect actual uncertainty but are applied as a sign to avoid sounding too assertive. In Example 1, “I think” seems to either mark genuine uncertainty about the fact, today’s session is going to be the last of the lecture sessions for the course , or simulate uncertainty in order not to sound too assertive. In case of Example 2, it is difficult to argue for the (un)certainty of the speaker about the fact, and the use of discourse marker helps reduce the commitment. Based upon the encyclopedic knowledge, the speaker, as well as the hearer, does know Motorola have been in the business for a good many years , and “I think” can be possibly used to downplay the authority.

I wanted to say to you this morning is that I think w today’s session is going to be the last of the lecture sessions for the course or if it is not there’ll only be about ten.

I think Motorola have been in the business for a a good many years so and they and they you know and this is the latest generation of many generations of processors

Concluding remarks

“I think” is also found to co-occur with some personal conclusion when collocating with such concluding connectors as “so” or “therefore.” In Example 1, the first “I think” is used to express a personal opinion; however, the one after “so” is prefacing a concluding remark, although it is still a personal one. “I think,” in Example 2 encapsulates the ideas in the previous context, which are not shown here to the interest of space and are available in BASE corpus, to reduce the effect of imposing that personal conclusion on the hearer(s).

i think you’d do it easier with link lists as well actually so i think i think you are right

they might not wish their discussions with their lawyer to be disclosed the effect of Condron and Condron therefore i think is to create some considerable dilemmas

11 Discussion

Discourse markers can have various functions when they are used in different contexts. Apart from the context, the mode of communication can exert an effect on the usage and function of discourse markers (Li, 2004 ; Al Rousan et al., 2020 ). As for speaking, for example, “discourse markers are used constantly by speakers and play a significant role in speech, in particular in spontaneous speech” (Huang, 2011 , p. 7), which necessitates their study from a pragmatic point of view (Aijmer, 2002 ). For this purpose, this research was an effort to unveil the distributional frequency and the function(s) of four different types of discourse markers in the British Academic Spoken English (BASE) corpus as the data gathering source.

With regard to the first research question, the analysis of the quantitative data (Table 1 ) showed that “you know” was the most frequent discourse marker of the spoken English, whereas “you see” was the least frequent one. The functions associated with the four discourse markers were identified on the basis of the context they occurred in. It was also revealed that the discourse markers had their own particular functions in the spoken discourse.

These functions are summarized in Table 3 .

The functions listed in the table can be split into two broad categories. The first eight items are primarily for textual organization, which help the process of text comprehension. For example, the use of discourse markers to exemplify, clarify, and explain gives the listeners a hint about the previous statement(s) to ease the comprehension. From the ninth item to the last, the items primarily contribute to the interpersonal aspect of interaction. All four discourse markers had their own textual function, and “you know” and “I mean” had their own roles with respect to the first six functions. The similarity in the functions “I mean” and “you know” has in the corpus is influenced by a variety of reasons. Among many, there are certain functions that make these DMs important in academic discourses. These DMs are considered markers that indicate some sort of information between interlocutors as an indication to acknowledge the understanding of the other party. Last but not least, in line with what Schiffrin ( 1987 ) Maynard ( 2013 ) claim, the semantic meaning of the two DMs “I mean” and “you know” would influence their discourse function. The first singular pronoun “I” in the DM “I mean” orients toward the speaker’s own talk where the DM you know orients toward the addressee’s knowledge (Schiffrin, 1987 ), and this would help the DM “you know” to occur more in academic contexts with an extra function “asking for acceptance.” This use of DM would be helpful in such discourses where the aim is to claim the acceptance of the audience. To put it differently, the reason why “you know” was the most frequent type of discourse marker could be due to the fact that (a) it carries an expectancy of meaning comprehension on the behalf of the audience and (b) the expectancy of understanding requires the audience to act accordingly and accept what the speaker intends. This expectation of understanding is in line with the inherent meaning of “you know.” Apart from this, this discourse marker may act as a signal for the audience so that he can pay attention to the message delivered from the speaker.

“I think” and “you see” also have their own function, but this is only “you see” that has interpersonal function of attracting the listeners’ attention by mentioning a place, for example. The distribution and function of the DM “I think” with a cognitive-verb based constructions have a more determinate semantic meaning, viz. I think encodes the speaker’s own thought, and this DM, as compared to the other three DMs, implies a more particular cognitive disposition of the speaker referring to his/her recontextualized opinion. This may lead to more frequent “I think” with interpersonal functions than textual ones, and still the reason for the most frequent function, i.e., announcing personal opinions and evaluation. Another explanation besides the indexical references to the speaker and its interactional role would be the fact that, in spoken discourse, the speaker exploits self-references as a means of showing his presence and proving claims, propositions, findings, and ideas. The application of the self-mentions through the DM “I think” can add support to the idea that the authors were representing scholarly identity through the interaction with their audience and projected not only themselves but also their claims about propositions. The presence of “I” as part of the DM “I think, like “I mean,” shows the presence of the author in such a way that authors shape, establish, and promote personal competence and identity in their speech.

With regard to the “you see” discourse marker, it has similarity, to some extent at least, to “you know” discourse marker in that both have the pronoun “you” which is a signal of mutual understanding and cooperation. Like “you know” discourse marker, there is a clandestine expectancy of understanding on the behalf of the audience. In other words, the speaker uses this discourse marker as an indication that he wants the audience to accept/understand something and act accordingly.

The results of this study resonate with those of Erman ( 2000 ), Chapetón and Claudia ( 2009 ), Ismail ( 2012 ), Piurko ( 2015 ), Kizil ( 2017 ), Crible et al. ( 2019 ), and Banguis-Bantawig ( 2019 ). They showed that discourse markers could receive various functions when they are used in different contexts in spoken or written modes.

12 Concluding remarks

From the analysis of the corpus, it can be seen that all the four discourse markers were multifunctional based on their context of usage in spoken English. This characteristic of multifunctionality makes them different from the parallel form(s) as an independent clause. Indeed, the results of this research showed that in spoken discourse, discourse markers are used to serve various functions depending on the context of usage and the intention(s) of the speaker(s). This means that the use of discourse markers is context-sensitive, not context-free, and can range from hesitation markers, clarifications to exemplification, and indication of objects.

The results obtained from this study can bear useful implications for researchers in the domain of linguistics, rhetoric, and discourse analysis. They can read the findings of this study to understand how discourse markers can have different functions in different contexts in spoken mode. In addition, the findings of this study can have practical implications for researchers in corpus-based language studies as the data gathering section of this paper can be useful for them.

This study can be an incentive for further research. As an example, it is an interesting idea to study the function(s) of discourse markers in various genre of spoken language (for example formal vs. informal or academic vs. non-academic) to see how they are used and which functions they have in speech. Moreover, it can be an intriguing area of research to unveil the function(s) of discourse markers in spoken and written language to see how they are used in two different modes of communication. Gender can be another interesting area of research. It deserves attention to see how discourse markers are used by female and males in written and spoken discourse. Translating discourse markers can also attract the attention of further research. It is an intriguing area of research to investigate the way discourse markers are translated through parallel corpora. Discourse markers can bear functions in various genres. As a result, the last but not the least suggestion can be analyzing the function(s) of discourse markers in various genres with the aim of analyzing and comparing various genres.

Despite the positive and constructive results, this study had some limitations, which require the attention of future researchers. First and foremost, this study was limited to one corpus only. An integral part of corpus study is corpus balance, which means utilization of various corpora (Mikhailov & Cooper, 2016 ). There are some other spoken corpora for tackling this problem such as TED talks transcripts, BNC 2014 spoken corpus, EUROPARL7, and English and Open American National Corpus (Spoken). All of these corpora are available free at Sketch engine Corpus Software. Apart from that, this study was limited to four discourse markers. These two limitations call for further research.

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Farahani, M.V., Ghane, Z. Unpacking the function(s) of discourse markers in academic spoken English: a corpus-based study. AJLL 45 , 49–70 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s44020-022-00005-3

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17 An introduction to discourse markers

From the book new directions in second language pragmatics.

Bruce Fraser

Discourse markers are words or phrases, such as well, but, and frankly, which usually occur at the beginning of an utterance and serve as conceptual glue which binds together the material from the preceding utterance to that of the following sentence. Though they are homophonous with lexical items, they are separate linguistic entities, with distinct meanings, and are essential for making a conversation sound natural and unstilted. While the second language learner will acquire these elements late in the acquisition process, they will encounter them early on and should become familiar with them. The goal of this chapter is to provide an overview of discourse markers and to briefly discuss teaching discourse markers in a second language.

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New Directions in Second Language Pragmatics

Chapters in this book (25)

Discourse Markers

Discourse markers (words like 'however', 'although' and 'Nevertheless') are referred to more commonly as 'linking words' and 'linking phrases', or 'sentence connectors'. They may be described as the 'glue' that binds together a piece of writing, making the different parts of the text 'stick together'. They are used less frequently in speech, unless the speech is very formal.

Without sufficient discourse markers in a piece of writing, a text would not seem logically constructed and the connections between the different sentences and paragraphs would not be obvious.

Care must also be taken, however, to avoid over-use of discourse markers. Using too many of them, or using them unnecessarily, can make a piece of writing sound too heavy and 'artificial'. They are important, but must only be used when necessary.

Key advice

1. What are the different discourse markers that can be used?

2. How can sentence connectors be replaced in order to increase variety in writing?

3. How are paragraphs linked together?

4. Discourse markers in a sample passage of academic English

What are the different discourse markers that can be used?

There are many discourse markers that express different relationships between ideas. The most common types of relationship between ideas, and the sentence connectors that are most often used to express these relationships, are given in the table below. The discourse markers in the table are generally used at the start of a phrase or clause . (a clause is a minimal grammatical structure that has meaning in its own right, and consists of a subject and verb, and often an object too). Sentence connectors do not always begin a completely new sentence; they may be separated from the previous idea with a semi-colon.

Note that there are two particular features of the sentence connectors indicated below:

Sentence connectors can be used to begin a new sentence or a new clause that follows a semi-colon;
Some sentence connectors can be placed in different positions within the sentence: initial position (e.g. Because he is ill, he needs to rest.) and 'mid-way position' at the start of another clause (e.g. He must rest, because he is ill).

How can sentence connectors be replaced in order to increase variety in writing?

In your writing, you will want to spend some time ensuring that your work has a sense of variety. In order to do this, you might think of the following:

Use conjunctions as well as/instead of sentence connectors . A conjunction is a word like 'and', 'but', etc, which is used to join two ideas together into a complex sentence. Unlike sentence connectors such as 'However', etc, a conjunction cannot be used at the beginning of a sentence and must come at a mid-point, at the end of one clause and the beginning of another. It is usually possible to rephrase a pair of sentences that use a sentence connector by using a conjunction instead. For example, instead of saying 'He studied French; however, his wife studied Physics', it might actually be more natural to say 'He studied English but his wife studied Physics'. Similarly, instead of saying 'English is hard; therefore, one must spend a lot of time practising it', we can say: 'English is hard so one must spend a lot of time practising it.' These are simple examples, but the principle of paraphrase can be extended to other, more complex sentences.
Use conjunctions at least some of the time . Words like and and but may seem boring, but they help to lighten the style of your writing. This in turn helps the writing to sound less pompous and formal. And in any case, in writing, it is often helpful to use a variety of structures rather than just saying things in one way.
It can also be helpful to omit discourse markers if they do not serve any useful purpose. Knowing when to omit the discourse marker is a subtle aspect of language use and comes with more practice and wider reading.
Try joining two clauses together by making one subordinat e to the other. If we go back to the sentence 'He studied English but his wife studied Physics', we can rephrase this as follows: 'He studied English whereas his wife studied Physics', or 'He studied English while his wife studied Physics.' The clause beginning with while/whereas is subordinate. this means that it is used to qualify/add extra information to the sentence, but cannot stand on its own.
Remember, it can be tedious to read a piece of writing which has too many discourse markers. The writing can seem pedantic, heavy and over-pompous. You are ideally seeking a light, flowing style, not a heavy or forced one.

back ^

How are paragraphs linked together?

In much the same way that ideas within a paragraph are linked, a new paragraph must be linked in some way with the previous one. This, too, necessitates the use of discourse markers.

In the table below are some different ways in which the opening of a paragraph can link back to what has happened before. The three basic types of paragraph-paragraph relationship are : reinforcement of idea; contrast of ideas; and concession. Indicating these relationships builds a 'bridge' between paragraphs and makes reading the text easier.

In your own writing, it is useful to consider the following points:

Do my paragraphs serve a definite purpose?
What is the exact link between the paragraph I have written and the previous paragraph? Is that link clear?
Are my paragraphs laid out strategically , in order to help me to organise my materials to best effect?
Do my paragraphs help me to build up my ideas in a logical and gradual fashion?

Discourse Markers List with Examples, Types and Uses

Discourse markers are ‘word (or phrase) tags’ that are used at the beginning of sentences (few times they can even be used in the middle) to help them seem clearer and more understandable. They help join ideas and act as a connection or link between sentences and paragraphs.

Discourse markers are effective in both speeches as well as in writing. They help give a conversation or a piece of text a proper shape and assist in making it appear more fluent and logical. They allow the writer or speaker to use them as ‘fillers’.

Since they are ‘word tags’ and act only as a link between two thoughts, they are separated from the main sentence by a comma. Therefore, a sentence still retains its structure even if the discourse marker is removed from the beginning of the sentence.

Different discourse markers are used in different situations. It is very important to use them in the right situation or they will seem completely out of place. Given below are a few common discourse markers used in everyday English. It is important to learn their correct usage.

Table of Contents

Discourse Markers List

1. Addition

Furthermore
In addition
Additionally
Not only… but also

2. Contrast

On the other hand
Nevertheless
Even though
Nonetheless

3. Cause and Effect

Consequently
As a result

4. Emphasis

Particularly
Undoubtedly
Importantly

5. Clarification

In other words
To put it another way

6. Illustration

For example
For instance
Specifically

7. Sequence

Subsequently
Simultaneously

8. Conclusion

In conclusion
To conclude
In my opinion
It seems to me
From my perspective
As far as I’m concerned
By the time

11. Condition

Provided that
On condition that

12. Agreement

By all means

13. Disagreement

On the contrary
In contrast

14. Limitation

15. Possibility

Potentially

Discourse Markers Used in Sentences

And : I love playing the guitar, and I also enjoy the piano.
Also : She’s a talented artist; also , she writes beautifully.
Plus : I’ve finished my homework; plus , I’ve even done some extra reading.
Furthermore : He’s a great team player; furthermore , he always takes the initiative.
Moreover : She’s an excellent leader; moreover , she has a vision for the future.
In addition : I like reading fiction; in addition , I have a keen interest in poetry.
Additionally : I enjoy hiking; additionally , I’ve started bird watching recently.
Not only… but also : He’s not only a skilled painter but also a sculptor.
Besides : I can play the guitar; besides , I’m learning the violin.
But : I wanted to go for a walk, but it started raining.
Yet : I was tired, yet I finished the assignment.
However : I love chocolate; however , I must limit my intake for health reasons.
On the other hand : I enjoy reading fiction; on the other hand , my brother loves non-fiction.
Conversely : Some people love the city life; conversely , others prefer the countryside.
Nevertheless : It was raining; nevertheless , we went for a hike.
Although : Although I’m scared of heights, I tried zip-lining.
Even though : Even though he’s younger, he’s quite mature for his age.
While : While I love coffee , my sister prefers tea.
Whereas : I enjoy action movies, whereas my friend loves romantic films.
So : I was hungry, so I made a sandwich.
Because : I went to bed early because I was tired.
Since : Since it’s raining, we should stay indoors.
Therefore : He didn’t study; therefore , he failed the exam.
Consequently : She forgot her umbrella; consequently , she got wet in the rain .
As a result : The road was slippery; as a result , driving was dangerous.
Hence : He was late, hence he missed the beginning of the movie.
Thus : She practiced daily; thus , she became a great pianist.
Due to : The match was canceled due to heavy rain.
Owing to : The flight was delayed owing to technical issues.
Indeed : The artwork is beautiful; indeed , it’s one of the best I’ve seen.
In fact : He’s not just a good player; in fact , he’s the team captain.
Especially : I love all fruits, especially mangoes.
Particularly : The concert was good, particularly the last performance.
Clearly : Clearly , there’s been a misunderstanding.
Obviously : Obviously , we need to reconsider our strategy.
Undoubtedly : Undoubtedly , this is a significant achievement.
Importantly : Importantly , always remember to be kind.
I mean : I love aquatic animals, I mean , creatures that live in water.
In other words : The weather is inclement; in other words , it’s unpredictable and severe.
That is : I prefer a sedentary lifestyle, that is , I like staying in one place.
Namely : I have two favorite fruits, namely , apples and bananas.
To put it another way : He’s frugal; to put it another way , he’s careful with money.
To clarify : To clarify , I was referring to the meeting next week, not tomorrow.
For example : There are many yoga poses; for example , the downward dog and the cobra.
For instance : I love reading classics; for instance , works by Dickens and Austen.
Such as : I enjoy various sports, such as basketball, tennis, and swimming.
Like : I have hobbies like painting and gardening.
Namely : I have three pets, namely , a cat, a dog, and a parrot.
Specifically : I’m interested in ancient civilizations, specifically the Egyptians and the Mayans.
First : First , preheat the oven to 350°F.
Next : Next , mix the dry ingredients in a bowl.
Then : Then , add the wet ingredients and stir.
Lastly : Lastly , pour the batter into a pan and bake.
Finally : Finally , let the cake cool before serving.
After that : I’ll go to the gym; after that , I’ll pick up some groceries.
Subsequently : He completed his degree; subsequently , he secured a job in a reputed company.
Meanwhile : I’ll prepare the sauce; meanwhile , can you boil the pasta?
Simultaneously : The orchestra played simultaneously with the choir.
Thereafter : He graduated and thereafter pursued higher studies.
In conclusion : In conclusion , a balanced diet and regular exercise are key to good health.
To sum up : To sum up , the event was a huge success.
In summary : In summary , the research supports the hypothesis.
All in all : All in all , it was a memorable trip.
Overall : Overall , the feedback was positive.
To conclude : To conclude , further studies are needed to confirm these findings.
In short : In short , practice makes perfect.
In my opinion : In my opinion , the book is worth reading.
I believe : I believe everyone should have access to education.
I think : I think it’s going to rain today.
Personally : Personally , I prefer tea over coffee.
It seems to me : It seems to me that he’s not interested in
Now : Now , let’s move on to the next topic.
Today : Today , we’ll be discussing environmental issues.
Recently : Recently , there has been a surge in online shopping.
Previously : Previously , this building was a school.
Soon : The movie will start soon .
Later : We can discuss this later .
Until : Wait here until I return.
Whenever : Call me whenever you need help.
As long as : You can stay as long as you like.
By the time : By the time we arrived, the show had already started.
If : If it rains, the match will be canceled.
Unless : I won’t go unless you come with me.
Provided that : You can join the club provided that you pay the membership fee.
In case : Take an umbrella in case it rains.
As long as : As long as you’re happy, that’s what matters.
Supposing : Supposing we miss the train, what’s our backup plan?
On condition that : You can borrow my book on condition that you return it next week.
Of course : Would you like some tea? – Of course !
Definitely : Are you coming to the party? – Definitely !
Surely : This is, surely , the best cake I’ve ever tasted.
Indeed : The concert was fantastic, indeed .
Naturally : Naturally , parents are concerned about their children’s safety.
By all means : Can I use your phone? – By all means .
However : I like the design; however , I’m not sure about the color.
On the contrary : It’s not expensive; on the contrary , it’s quite affordable.
In contrast : Summer is hot and sunny; in contrast , winter is cold and snowy.
Nonetheless : It was raining; nonetheless , we decided to go out.
But : I wanted to buy the dress, but it was too expensive.
Yet : I tried my best, yet I couldn’t complete the task.
Although : Although she was tired, she continued working.
Even though : Even though he had little experience, he managed to do a great job.
However : I love the concept; however , the execution could be better.
Maybe : Maybe I’ll join you later.
Perhaps : Perhaps we can find a solution together.
Possibly : It’s possibly the best option we have.
Potentially : This is a potentially groundbreaking discovery.
Could : We could go to the movies tonight.
Might : She might come to the party if she’s free.

Here is an example of how a few discourse markers can be used in writing:

Once upon a time, there was a boy called Tom. He lived on a hill and picked berries for a living. He would save some berries for himself and his family and sell the rest to a fruit seller in a nearby town. The fruit seller was very happy with Tom because he would bring him a wide variety of berries. For instance, he would bring him strawberries, cherries, raspberries, blackberries, blueberries and mulberries. Furthermore, he would throw away the rotten ones and wash and clean the good ones before giving them to the fruit seller. Therefore, as a reward the fruit seller would give Tom one dozen bananas and mangoes each month for free.

As Tom grew older he grew tired of picking berries. He wanted to become a woodcutter like his father. However, his father insisted that Tom continued to do his old work for some time. Tom had two elder brothers, Jack and Mark. Jack was a cobbler in the town, whereas Mark made bread in a bakery there. Similarly, Tom’s mother also worked as a seamstress at the tailoring shop in the town.

Days went by as Tom’s urge to pick up an axe grew stronger. One morning Tom hid behind his house and waited for his father, mother and brothers to leave for work. When everyone left, he went inside, got his father’s spare axe and walked into the woods. He came upon a small tree which he thought would be easy to cut, but just as he swung the axe, it flew from his hands and hit a bird that was perched on the lower branch of the tree. The bird was badly injured and started to bleed. Tom froze in shock at what had happened. Meanwhile, his father, who had forgotten his lunch at home and was walking back to get it, saw him standing like a statue in the nearby woods. He approached the scene and quickly assessed what had happened. He took out his handkerchief, wrapped the bird in it and rushed it to the stable, where the town veterinarian worked.

When Tom’s father returned home that evening, he was quiet but upset. He couldn’t believe his son had disobeyed him like this. Nonetheless , he called Tom before going to bed and explained why he had not allowed him to cut wood. He told him that he was neither strong enough nor ready for such a responsibility at that age. He promised that if Tom was patient for just a few more years, he would teach him to cut wood himself.

In the end, Tom reflected on his actions as he went to sleep that night and decided that he would rather wait for a while and be his father’s woodcutting partner than be hasty and hurt his father, as well as the animals in the woods.

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What are discourse markers and how do you use them correctly in English?

‘Discourse marker’ is a fairly formal term for a type of English vocabulary that we use all the time. These words and phrases help us to organize our ideas and clearly express our thoughts.

Discourse markers can be informal words like ‘So…’ and ‘Well…’, used mainly when speaking. They can also be more formal phrases like ‘In my opinion…’ or ‘In contrast…’, often used in essays and more formal written communication.

Here we will explain what a discourse marker is and the main types of discourse marker you are likely to need – especially if you are learning English as a second language . You may browse our pages on this topic to find lists of discourse markers for different situations, along with examples.

What are discourse markers?

Discourse markers are words and phrases which we use in written and spoken English to organize and link what we are saying. You may also hear them called ‘ transition words ‘, ‘signal words’, ‘linking words’, or even ‘fillers’.

Do discourse markers change the meaning of a sentence?

Discourse markers generally do not change the intrinsic meaning of a sentence, although sometimes they are important for clarity and logical linking of ideas.

For example, you could say:

“John has broken his leg. He attends his team’s football matches every week.”

These sentences are grammatically and factually correct, but they don’t really convey the full message. Instead, you could say:

“ Despite the fact that John has broken his leg, he still attends his team’s football matches every week.”

By adding these discourse markers, you are emphasizing John’s dedication to supporting his team despite his misfortune – without having to directly state this.

This is just one example of how discourse markers and linking phrases can add depth and clarity to your English.

Formal vs informal discourse markers in speaking vs writing

The types of discourse marker used in speaking are often quite different to those used in writing. Spoken discourse markers tend to be less formal and can include the following:

Interjections: Oh! Wow! Ah; Ouch!
Hesitators: Ummm; Erm; Er; Hmmm; Well
Expletives: Damn! My God! Goodness me! Oh no! [and insert your own expletives here]
Vocatives: Hey! Wait! Dude; Mate; Oi!

These examples of discourse markers are usually only spoken or used in informal written messages.

Of course, any linking phrases used in writing may also be spoken, but the more formal the expression, the less likely it is to be used in normal conversation.

When it comes to discourse markers in essays and formal publications, they must be carefully chosen and purposefully placed in order to guide the reader through the author’s thought process. Used well, they can also convey a more authoritative tone. However, see the warning below about overusing or misusing linking words.

Types of discourse marker

Above we gave some examples of informal discourse markers used in speech, but now let’s consider the categories of discourse marker used in writing.

Below you’ll find a short list of discourse markers for each purpose, but we have published more detailed articles on each of these topics too. If you would like to see more examples and learn how to use them properly, click through to the page indicated.

Comparing and contrasting

When you want to talk about how two things are different, or look at alternatives, you might use these words and phrases:

On the contrary
Nevertheless
Even though

Read our full article about discourse markers to compare and contrast for full example sentences and a lot more useful vocabulary.

Similarities

To talk about two things that are almost the same, and highlight similarities, transition words such as these will help:

Analagous to
In a similar fashion
In the same way

Often, comparison and similarity signal words come hand-in-hand when you are relating one thing to another.

These expressions are used when you need to add to what you have already said:

As well (as)
Additionally
Furthermore
What’s more
On top of this

Read all about discourse markers for addition .

Giving examples

If you need to illustrate a point or give an example of what you mean, these phrases can help:

For example
For instance
As we can see from
As shown by
In particular

Our article about discourse markers for giving examples has much more information.

Cause and effect / reason

When talking about one thing that caused or impacted another thing, you’ll need some of these:

As a result of
This has the effect of
Consequently
In that case

Discover more examples of discourse markers of reason and how to use them correctly. You might also want to read about affect vs effect , since these words are often confused in English.

Indicating time order

These words and phrases are helpful for giving time order or structure to a sequence of events or points:

To begin with
First of all
Last of all

This is just a short list; there are more than 100 time order transition words for you to explore.

Clarification

If you need to explain something in a different way or clarify a point, you can use phrases like this:

What I mean is
Look at it this way
In other words
If I’m not mistaken
To be clear
This is to say that
For the avoidance of doubt

Sometimes you need to emphasize a particular point when speaking or writing. In these cases, the following emphasis discourse markers are useful:

As a matter of fact
I must admit
To be honest
To tell you the truth
To say the least

And finally, it can be helpful to use these words and phrases to indicate the conclusion of what we are saying:

In conclusion
This brings us to the conclusion that
What this all means is
I’ll end by saying that

For more details, you can check our full list of conclusion transition words and how to use them.

Knowing when to use or omit discourse markers

Just because all of these discourse markers exist in English, it does not mean you should use them whenever you see the opportunity.

Overuse of discourse markers can sound unnatural or overly formal, so it’s important to be able to discern when to use or omit them.

When reviewing a piece of writing, whether it’s an essay, a business case or a thought leadership piece, here are some questions you can ask yourself to check that you have used discourse markers appropriately:

Have you used a variety of simple conjunctions (and, but, so, or…) and discourse markers?
Have you varied the placement of these words and phrases, i.e. not always using them to begin a sentence?
Does each paragraph serve a clear purpose?
Have you used discourse markers to indicate the purpose without repeating them unnecessarily?
Is there a clear link from each paragraph to the next?
Have you used linking words and phrases to logically build up your ideas or case?

By keeping all of this in mind, you should have a good foundation for using discourse markers well.

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thesis on discourse markers

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17 An introduction to discourse markers

Supplementary Materials

Chapters in this book (25)

Discourse Markers

Key advice

What are the different discourse markers that can be used?

How can sentence connectors be replaced in order to increase variety in writing?

How are paragraphs linked together?

Discourse Markers List with Examples, Types and Uses

Discourse Markers List

Discourse Markers Used in Sentences

Determiners in English with Types & Examples

Pronouns Words, Definition Kinds with Examples

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What are discourse markers and how do you use them correctly in English?

What are discourse markers?

Do discourse markers change the meaning of a sentence?

Formal vs informal discourse markers in speaking vs writing

Types of discourse marker

Comparing and contrasting

Similarities

Giving examples

Cause and effect / reason

Indicating time order

Clarification

Knowing when to use or omit discourse markers

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