| Author: | Yung, Hing Wah Amos |
| Title: | Pragmatic marker "you know" : a quantitative survey on its functions and role in spoken discourse |
| Degree: | M.A. |
| Year: | 2014 |
| Subject: | Pragmatics. Discourse markers. English language -- Spoken English. Hong Kong Polytechnic University -- Dissertations |
| Department: | Department of English |
| Pages: | 66 pages : illustrations |
| Language: | English |
| Abstract: | The pragmatic marker "you know" is labeled as a particle in spoken English. Even though it is widely used in English spoken discourse, formal language training excludes it from formal language classes. Unlike native English speakers who can learn the usage of "you know" from social interaction, non-native English speakers have limited opportunities to learn the usage of the pragmatic marker "you know". Researchers have classified various type of information which co-occurs with "you know". While most of the literature analyzes and compares "you know" with many pragmatic markers, this paper examines "you know" independently by surveying the Hong Kong Corpus of Spoken English. This study compiles the functions identified by previous researchers and examines the vagueness of information which co-occurs with "you know" in spoken discourse. The vagueness of the information indicates that the pragmatic marker "you know" is mostly used as a signal to Request the hearer to interpret the intended meanings embedded with the information given by the speaker. The pragmatic marker "you know" is not needed when the information itself does not need interpretation by the hearer. Also the usage of the pragmatic marker "you know" was found to be independent of whether the speaker is native English speaker or not, but its use does depend on the local context in the spoken discourse. |
| Rights: | All rights reserved |
| Access: | restricted access |
Files in This Item:
| File | Description | Size | Format | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| b27759039.pdf | For All Users (off-campus access for PolyU Staff & Students only) | 1.22 MB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
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