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Article published In:
Pragmatics
Vol. 27:4 (2017) ► pp.479–506

The use of discourse markers but and so by native English speakers and Chinese speakers of English

 | Nankai University, China
Previous studies have found that but and so occur frequently in native and non-native English speakers’ speech and that they are easy to acquire by non-native English speakers. The current study compared ideational and pragmatic functions of but and so by native and non-native speakers of English. Data for the study were gathered using individual sociolinguistic interviews with five native English speakers and ten L1 Chinese speakers. The results suggest that even though the Chinese speakers of English acquired the ideational functions of but and so as well as the native English speakers, they underused the pragmatic functions of them. The findings indicate that there is still a gap between native and non-native English speakers in communicative competence in the use of but and so. The present study also suggests that speakers’ L1 (Mandarin Chinese) and overall oral proficiency in oral discourse affect their use of but and so.
Keywords: discourse marker, interlanguage, communicative competence, Chinese, oral proficiency, but, so
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Discourse markers
  • 2.Analytical framework of the study
  • 3.Literature review
    • 3.1Communicative competence and L2 DMs
    • 3.2Previous studies on ‘but’ and ‘so’ by L2 learners
  • 4.Methodology
    • 4.1Participants
    • 4.2Data collection
  • 5.Discourse marker categorization
    • 5.1Categorizing ‘but’
    • 5.2Categorizing danshi ‘but’
    • 5.3Categorizing ‘so’
    • 5.4Categorizing suoyi ‘so’
    • 5.5An overview of qualitative results
  • 6.Statistical evidence on the use of discourse markers
    • 6.1Statistical findings by English and Chinese speakers
    • 6.2Discussion
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.

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Published online: 3 November 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.27.4.01liu
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