Pragmatic Functions of Discourse Markers: A Review of Related Literature

Recently, studies on spoken language in real-life contexts increased dramatically. As a result, some of the features previously considered „empty‟, „superfluous‟ and redundantsuch as sort of, y‟know and well (Goddard and Meanpatterson, 2000, p. 98) now are considered as crucial aspects of interpersonal communication. These expressions called „discourse markers‟ (Schiffrin, 1987) or „pragmatic expressions‟ (Fraser, 1999) have been of “substantial interest to researchers studying situated language use because of their role in demarcating discourse connections as well as their potential for indexing social relationships” (Bolden, 2008, p. 102). The present study opts for reviewing the theoretical approaches towards discourse markers (hereafter DM) that ushered in the past three decades. It deals with the most prominent studies carried out on DMs and their functions in spoken discourse. The present account of DMs provides the reader with the knowledge about how DMs operate at textual and interpersonal levels of discourse. The implementation of the current study might be for those who are interested in DMs and their functions in making conversation smooth.