Although critical reception of discourse markers (DMs) such as like and you know has often been noted, surprisingly little research has actually investigated this attitudinal perspective on usage. Moreover, a recent, rapidly expanding body of research on non-L1 speakers’ use of discourse markers… read more
Canonical question tags feature prominently in spoken English, where they display great versatility. At face value they are meant to elicit a response from a co-participant in the form of (dis)agreement with the proposition to which the tag has been added. Their pragmatic scope is, however,… read more
This paper investigates how foreign language learners use discourse markers (such as so, well, you know, I mean) in English speech. These small words that do not contribute much, if anything at all, to the propositional content of a message but modify it in subtle ways, are often considered among… read more