미국 영어 대면 대화에 나타난 담화표지어 well 연구

Abstract

Choi, Inji (2016). A Study on the Discourse Marker well in American English Face-to-Face Conversation. The Linguistic Association of Korea Journal, 24(4), 343-374. This study examines the use of the discourse marker well in a corpus of American English conversation to determine its role in marking structural and interactional functions. In relevance theory, the discourse marker well is seen as a signal that reorients the hearer to a context of assumptions yielding the speaker’s intended interpretation (Blakemore, 2002). Adopting this perspective of relevance theory, this paper shows that the functions that well may serve can be inferred from its encoded procedural meaning together with the assumption that the utterance is the most relevant one compatible with the speaker’s abilities and preferences. Excerpts from the data illustrate how well initiates the speaker’s turn and holds the floor, how it indicates a shift of topic, resumption, and addition of information, how it introduces direct reported speech, and how it signals insufficiency, agreement, and disagreement. Of the ten functions used in the corpus, the most frequently occurred one involves turn management. The discourse marker well in turn-initial positions is also frequently used to express the speaker’s feelings and reactions as a marker of interactional functions.