Several new tendencies in the study of pragmatic markers which will be discussed in this essay. Present-day research on pragmatic markers is characterised by a broadening of the field to include new phenomena, as well as by a wide spectrum of approaches. The number of elements which are treated as pragmatic markers is growing and there is more interest in pragmatic markers which are less prototypical. It is for instance not unusual to describe connectives and vocatives as pragmatic markers (Fraser 1996). Research on pragmatic markers is expanding in different directions. Such markers are found in many languages and are therefore of interest to cross-linguistic and typological research. They are also studied diachronically, although natural spoken data is not available. Moreover, a synchronic analysis is often combined with a diachronic analysis focusing on the origin of the markers, to show how their pragmatic functions have evolved as the result of systematic semantic processes associated with the grammaticalization of lexical elements or constructions. Finally, there is more interest in considering sociolinguistic factors: who uses pragmatic markers and in what situations? There is little consensus as to the question of terminology as pragmatic markers are analysed from many theoretical perspectives. Some of the best known terms are pragmatic marker (used e.g. by Brinton 1996), discourse marker (used e.g. by Schiffrin 1987 and Jucker & Ziv 1998), discourse particle (Hansen 1998, Aijmer 2002), and pragmatic particle (Östman 1995).