A Comparative Study of the Discourse Marker Sort of in Academic and Informal Speech Corpora

Abstract

This study examines the use of the discourse marker (DM) sort of in two distinct discourse types, based on data from academic speech (British Academic Spoken English Corpus: BASE) and informal face-to-face conversations (Spoken British National Corpus 2014: Spoken BNC2014). The analysis shows that sort of is more frequently used in the Spoken BNC2014, where it serves a wide range of functions, including softening statements, marking common ground, and filling pauses. In contrast, in the BASE, sort of is primarily used as a marker of imprecision, reflecting the academic tendency towards cautious language. Regarding its positional distribution, sort of is commonly found in the medial position of utterances in both corpora, but it appears notably in the utterance-final positions in the Spoken BNC2014, particularly when used as a pause filler. This reflects the informal and spontaneous nature of everyday conversation. The analysis demonstrates that sort of is a flexible discourse tool that adapts to the demands of various communicative contexts. These findings have implications for language teaching, particularly in helping learners navigate the pragmatic subtleties of spoken English, and for improving how language processing systems interpret sort of in context.