Discourse Marker oh in Everyday Communication and in Txting: Functional perspective

Armenia, ID LLCE2016-232;         In recent years a notable tendency towards the study of discourse markers has been noticed. The point is that the investigation of speech from the pragmatic point of view comes to prove that most of everyday speech consists of a great number of discourse markers (DM) which “fill the gap” between the turn-takings in the flow of speech thus performing great multifunctionality. The functional analysis of discourse markers is perhaps the only pertinent manner in which they can be studied given the fact that some of them are even devoid of semantic meaning (Schiffrin, 1987; Ariel, 1998; Trillo, 2009). Due to their powerful functional and pragmatic character the majority of  discourse markers helps  us  convey certain  communicative  meanings  as  well  as  reveal  certain  emotive colouring in  speech. DMs are different from ordinary words in the language because of the large number of pragmatic values they can be associated with. Nevertheless the speakers aren’t troubled by this multifunctionality, moreover, they seem to know what a particle means and be able to use it appropriately in different contexts.

Our aim in this article is to concentrate mainly on the discourse particle oh which is one of the most frequently used DMs both in txting and in oral communication and which is often accompanied by a great number of other particles in the flow of speech thus changing the communicative value of the given context.

Key words: discourse markers, txting,  context, communicative meaning, pragmatic value.