A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE ...

2.1 Schiffrin’s definition of discourse markers
Much of the literature relies heavily upon the characterization that Schiffrin made for
discourse markers, as many scholarly works and articles cite her initial characterization.
That initial characterization was made in her 1987 work, where Schiffrin operationally
defined discourse markers as “sequentially dependent elements that bracket units of talk
(1987a:31), i.e. nonobligatory utterance-initial items that function in relation to ongoing
talk and text” (Schiffrin 1987a:31, Schiffrin 2001:57). Schiffrin analyzes the following
items as discourse markers: 12
(1) English discourse markers (from Schiffrin 1987a:327) 13
a) oh, well (particles)
b) and, but, or, so, because (conjunctions)
c) now, then (time deictics)
d) y’know, I mean (lexicalized clauses)
By “sequentially dependent elements,” she means those elements which function at the
discourse level (i.e. above the sentence), and which are not dependent upon their
containing clauses, or smaller units of talk, but are sequentially dependent on the
structure of the discourse (see Schiffrin 1987:39-40). For example, the coordinating
12
An “operational definition” allowed the reader, not yet familiar with the identification and designation of
discourse markers, to be able to follow her analysis.
13
These are only the discourse markers she considered in her analysis, but she acknowledges the existence
of others, e.g. the perception verbs see, look, and listen; the locative deictics here, there; the adverbial why;
interjections gosh, boy; the verb say, meta-talk such as this is the point, what I mean is…; and the quantifier
phrases anyway, anyhow, and whatever (Schiffrin 1987a:327-328).
18