Discourse Markers Functions in Social Interviews

Abstract

Face to face interviews are considered as a type of genre in spoken discourse and they include various linguistic strategies that worth investigating. Within these interviews, there is context sensitivity, since the interaction is active and direct between participants. Thus, there should be a use of certain expressions to perform a number of functions such as: topic shift, introducing a new topic, producing personal comment by participants, expressing politeness, etc. Those expressions are called discourse markers (henceforth DMs); they are of different categories and they convey textual functions (expressing coherence and cohesion) and pragmatic functions (expressing the speaker's attitude and other communicative purposes). DMs act as connectors ( connect clauses, sentences, and paragraphs) , indicators (indicate relations in discourse), and instructors (direct participants to the accurate interpretation of an utterance). This study is a discourse study that concerns with the functions of different types of DMs in spoken interaction (social interviews).