A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE ...

(4) Planes of discourse (from Schiffrin 1987:24-29)
EXCHANGE STRUCTURE turns in talk
ACTION STRUCTURE speech acts
IDEATIONAL STRUCTURE propositional content, ideas
PARTICIPATION FRAMEWORK how speakers/hearers relate to each other
INFORMATION STATE organization & management of knowledge
and meta-knowledge
It is against the background of this discourse model (which is a sociolinguistic one as
opposed to a purely semantic/pragmatic one) that Schiffrin identifies and characterizes
the discourse markers observed in her data. Recall that the discourse markers that
Schiffrin described were: oh, well, and, but, or, so, because, now, then, I mean, y’know.
These markers were all taken from a corpus of live conversations between herself and a
group of Jewish neighbors in a Philadelphia neighborhood. Some examples of these
markers from Schiffrin’s data are provided below, with all markers provided in bold type.
Note that commas in these examples mark brief pauses, and that no commas indicate that
the marker in bold is part of the intonational unit of the following content.
(5) Schiffrin’s discourse markers (from Schiffrin 1987)
a) Oh, well they came when they were a year. (p. 73)
b) Well, when y’get to the cemetery, y’make a right. (p. 122)
c) And, he says, ‘Well I don’t know.’ (p. 133)
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