Bahi-as-a -Discourse -Marker-in-Daily -Libyan-Arabic

Khadeja 11III.ObservationsFrom all of the above, it is quite obvious that ‘bahi’ can be used in different situations accordingto the speakers’ intentions to deliver certain messages that are expected to be perceived by thehearer. In the future, ‘bahi’ may develop other contextual meanings assigned the way in whichspeakers want it to be used. Again, the role that ‘bahi’ as a discourse marker plays is so helpfulthat it saves a lot of effort for the speakers in perceiving the meaning without having to say it inliteral longer words. ‘bahi’ as a discourse marker is functioning in the same way other discoursemarkers are. Discourse markers help speakers to interpret one utterance based on the informationgained from a prior utterance which is referred to as “local coherence” where linguistic andstructural function of discourse markers is to enhance the coherence of discourse. Schiffrin,(1987). On a sociolinguistic basis, ‘bahi’ use will continue to be used based on speakers’ choiceand perception of social norms such as that of age difference as noted in the data where olderspeakers use ‘bah’ form perspectives that are different from a speaker who is younger which isbasically based on the higher social status elderly or those older in age retain the advantage of‘bahi’ as well as other sociolinguistic phenomena. Also, ‘bahi’ is assigned different rolesaccording to speakers’ social perception in general.IV.ConclusionAs mentioned above, ‘bahi’ may take other roles and as a result indicate further variousmeanings in the future based on the high frequency in which it is used now and the speakers’agreement on any use in the sociolinguistic context. As for this paper, it is worth mentioning thatthe videos data collected were not solely recorded to investigate ‘bahi’ but ‘bahi’ was among thelinguistic forms that were observed in the Libyan speech and was chosen as one of the topics thatare worth to be studied. Accordingly, further work on the uses of ‘bahi’ in wider contexts and