Date: 17-Jul-2006
From: Janet Fuller <jmfullersiu.edu>
Subject: Discourse Markers in Native and Non-native English Discourse
Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/17/17-874.html
AUTHOR: Müller, SimoneTITLE: Discourse Markers in Native and Non-native English DiscourseSERIES: Pragmatics and BeyondPUBLISHER: John BenjaminsYear: 2005
Janet M. Fuller, Department of Anthropology, Southern Illinois Universityat Carbondale
This monograph is based on the doctoral dissertation by the author, and hasas a primary audience scholars interested in the study of discoursemarkers, particularly English discourse markers. Because this book presentsa thorough review of the literature and a careful analysis of fourdiscourse markers ('so', 'well', 'you know' and 'like'), it is essentialreading for any researcher interested in this topic.
The volume begins with a long introductory chapter which discusses theproperties of functions of discourse markers and how they fit into thestudy of second language acquisition and applied linguistics, and then goeson to introduce the corpus and methodology used in the study. The followingfour chapters each focus on one discourse marker, and the sixth chapter isthe conclusion.
While for my taste the discussion of the data and research design would bebetter off in a chapter separate from the general properties of discoursemarkers, the organization of the introductory chapter is straightforwardand the sections clearly labeled. The first section of this chapter is agood summary of previous research, with a particularly fine discussion ofthe issues which have arisen in addressing the question of what constitutesa discourse marker. This aspect of discourse marker analysis is aparticularly pressing problem in a study such as this, which includes aquantitative analysis of all instances of the selected variables.Unfortunately, although the author does reach a verdict on discourse markerdelimitation (syntactic independence and grammatical optionality is theonly feature which can clearly distinguish discourse marker fromnon-discourse marker uses of a word), there is no concluding section onproperties of discourse markers which clearly states this. This point ispicked up again in the subsequent chapters, however, so it is not lost inthe analysis.
The author explicitly uses a 'bottom-up', data-driven approach to the studyof discourse markers, with the goal of cataloguing all functions of each ofthe four selected discourse markers in her corpus. This corpus comes fromthe Giessen-Long Beach Chaplin Corpus (GLBCC), collected in a study byAndreas Jucker in cooperation with Sara Smith. Müller herself wasresponsible for making most of the recordings used in the study. Thecorpus was collected in an experimental setting. Students from theUniversity of Giessen and California State University at Long Beach wereassigned roles (A and B) and put in a room to watch a silent movie. Afterthe first part of the movie, the person in role A was asked to come out andorally retell the first part of the film, while the person in role Bwatched the second part. Partner B then retold the second part of the filmto partner A, and then the two were instructed to discuss the movie, with alist of questions as a guide. All tasks in both settings were carried outin English. In some cases, when only one person showed up for the tapingappointment, this person would re-tell the whole movie and then go throughthe list of discussion questions on his/her own; this is referred to asrole C in the analysis. While the presence of speakers who had nointerlocutor is undesirable, the author used this difference to heradvantage by incorporating speaker role into her analysis as an independentvariable.
The variable which is the main focus of the study, however, is the statusof the speaker as a native or non-native speaker of English. All researchparticipants filled out a demographic questionnaire, which, for non-nativespeakers of English, provided information about their acquisition of andexposure to English. Only speakers who claimed English or German as their(only) first language were included in Müller's analysis, resulting in 77German native speakers and 34 native speakers of American English.
One chapter is allotted to each of the discourse markers 'so', 'well', 'youknow', and 'like'. The organization of each chapter is the same: first areview of the functions of the discourse marker in the literature ispresented, and then there is a sub-section on each functional categoryfound in the GLBCC. Following this is a short summary of the functionsfound in the data, and then quantitative results are presented, showingwhich functions are statistically significant in their use by native andnon-native speakers, and also addressing correlations with other factors:age, gender, relationship between the partners, speaker role, and thelanguage learning backgrounds of the non-native speakers. While both thediscussions of the previous literature on specific discourse markerfunctions and the presentation of the findings are thorough and clearlywritten, the overall format does not lend itself well to giving the readera good oversight of the findings; they are presented more in order ofdiscovery than in order of salience. The author begins the discussion offunctions by listing and discussing all of the non-discourse markerfunctions of the term, which I do not feel adds to the comprehensibility ofthe analysis; if these functions are to be included at all, they shouldcome at the end of the discussion. Also, each chapter ends somewhatabruptly without a synthesis of the most important results for thatdiscourse marker. On the other hand, a laudable aspect of these chapters isthat each is written in such a way that they can stand alone forresearchers interested in only particular discourse markers, and this ismanaged without excessive repetition across the chapters.
The chapter on 'so' is shown to perform nine different discourse functionsin this corpus. Three of these functions, the three most common in thecorpus, are used more by Americans at statistically significant levels.Germans who had higher levels of contact to native speakers of English alsoused 'so' more in these functions than the Germans who had little contactwith native English speakers.
In contrast, the findings for 'well' show that the German non-nativespeakers use this discourse marker more than the native speakers, at leastfor certain functions. Use of 'well' when searching for the right word wasmuch more frequent among the non-native speakers, and there were also twofunctions – conclusive 'well' and use of 'well' to continue anopinion/answer – which were used by some German but none of the Americans. Somewhat surprisingly, no discussion is made of potential transfer fromGerman to explain these usages.
The results for 'you know', like those for 'so', showed the pattern ofAmericans using the discourse marker at much higher rates than Germans, butwith stronger results than for 'so'. All but two of the functions showedstatistically significant differences in rates of use between groups.However, as is always the case in doing qualitative research,categorization of tokens is difficult and inevitably there will bedisagreement about the function of specific utterances. For instance, Ifelt that the examples given in the category 'appeal for understanding'could be incorporated into the rubric of 'marking lexical or contentsearch', as they both typically are used when a speaker is struggling toarticulate what s/he means. While this in itself is not a failing in thestudy – any qualitative analysis must rely on the researcher's subjectivejudgments – given this subjectivity, more discussion on broader patternswould have strengthened the analysis (for example, more comparison of howtextual functions compared with interactional functions, or simply onediscourse marker with another).
My dissatisfaction with the functional categories constructed continues inthe chapter on 'like'. In particular, I find one category, 'markinglexical focus', problematic, as it combines the concept of focus with the'loose meaning' aspect of this discourse marker. It is unfortunate that myown work on this topic (Fuller 2003) apparently came into print too late tobe taken into account in this analysis; our accounts are quite compatible.In my work, I suggest that because things which are marked as havingapproximate meaning (and earlier function of 'like') are in many cases alsothe focus of the utterance, the focal meaning has grown out of theapproximate meaning. While there are uses which are clearly one or theother, some uses are clearly both, as Müller suggests. However, as sheherself admits, it is difficult to categorize examples, in part because ananalyst cannot be sure if the speaker felt unsure about the exact meaningof what follows 'like'. Some of the examples she gives in this category inmy opinion clearly mark approximate meanings (e.g., 'he was like a moviedirector or something'), while other examples seem to fall more clearlyinto the category of 'searching for an appropriate expression' (e.g., 'whenthey like…take hands…). It should be noted that these critiques of Müller'sfunctional categories are based on the belief that her approach todiscourse markers – that is, the creation of functional categories – is avaluable one and worthy of continued discussion.
The quantitative analyses presented for each discourse markers arecomprehensive, but there are several aspects of this treatment whichdetract from the overall value of the volume. In general, too fewgeneralizations are gained from the statistical analysis. One specificproblem is that for each discourse marker there is a category of'unclassified instances' – in and of itself quite reasonable – but theauthor then insists on including these tokens in the quantitative analysisand discussing how the frequencies of use of this group of miscellaneous,unclear examples correlate with speaker group and other variables. Thisaspect of the analysis is nonsensical.
Otherwise, the quantitative analysis is carried out carefully and reportedconscientiously, but does not offer a cohesive picture of differencesbetween groups or in terms of gender, age, etc. While the lack of cleartrends in the date in terms of age, gender, etc. is hardly the fault of theauthor, the author does err on the side of reporting overly specificfindings if they achieve statistical significance even when these are notrepresentative of most speakers, resulting in a fragmented picture of the data.
In the conclusion, an excellent table (6.1, p. 246) shows all the functionsof the discourse markers and if they are used more by German or Americanspeakers. However, few clear generalizations are pulled out of these data. Some results cited, e.g., female American speakers used the textualfunctions of 'so' significantly more frequently than their malecounterparts (p.247), make an attempt at a somewhat broader scope, but noexplanation about why textual (as opposed to interactional) functions mightpattern in this way are provided. In short, the concluding remarks aboutthe quantitative analysis do not move beyond a description of thefrequencies found in the data. Motivation for these patterns, either interms of interactional functions or social motivations, is not provided.
However, the last several pages of the conclusion contain a veryinteresting discussion of how discourse markers are presented in severalleading English textbooks and some discussion of how this might haveinfluenced the use of discourse markers in the non-native speaker data.This link between pedagogical practices and language use is an enlighteningone which should be given further attention in the author's future research.
Overall, this book is a solid and ambitious piece of research. Although Ido not always agree with the functional categories constructed by theauthor, this should not be seen as a failing of the author but rather adifficulty inherent to qualitative research. A second criticism made hereof the book, that it does not provide motivated generalizations about thedata, is a more serious flaw, but must be mitigated by the admission thatdiscourse marker use is complex and variable, and not easily correlated toindependent variables. The analysis as it stands is a valuable referencefor anyone studying discourse markers, especially but not limited to thefour dealt with in these chapters.
REFERENCES:
Fuller, Janet M. 2003. 'Use of the discourse marker 'like' in interviews.'Journal of Sociolinguistics 7:3.365-377.
Janet M. Fuller is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at SouthernIllinois University in Carbondale, IL. Her past research has included thestudy of discourse markers in Pennsylvania German and (native andnon-native) English. She is currently finishing a sabbatical in Berlin,Germany, where she is doing fieldwork with pre-teen children inGerman-English bilingual classrooms. Among other things, she is interestedin the use of the discourse marker 'like' by young speakers of English as afirst or second language.
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