Based on the Asian Corpus of English （ACE） and the British National English （BNC）, I investigated the features of discourse marker （DM） so in English as lingua franca （ELF） by comparing it with its use in nati...Based on the Asian Corpus of English （ACE） and the British National English （BNC）, I investigated the features of discourse marker （DM） so in English as lingua franca （ELF） by comparing it with its use in native speech. I first calculated the frequency of so in ACE and BNC. Then, taking Buysse＇s （2012） meta-functional theory of DM so as framework, I comprehensively analyzed the functions of so in ELF and native speech. The results show that Asian ELF speakers utter more tokens of so than native speakers, especially in the scopes of ＂marking results,＂ ＂marking conclusion,＂ ＂holding the floor,＂ ＂marking summary,＂ ＂opening new section of discourse,＂ and ＂shift-back and elaboration.＂ The study implies that in English teaching and learning, ELF should not be treated as an undeveloped language and that the teaching of discourse markers should focus more on the pragmatic functions than on semantic meaning in the narrow sense.展开更多
文摘Based on the Asian Corpus of English （ACE） and the British National English （BNC）, I investigated the features of discourse marker （DM） so in English as lingua franca （ELF） by comparing it with its use in native speech. I first calculated the frequency of so in ACE and BNC. Then, taking Buysse＇s （2012） meta-functional theory of DM so as framework, I comprehensively analyzed the functions of so in ELF and native speech. The results show that Asian ELF speakers utter more tokens of so than native speakers, especially in the scopes of ＂marking results,＂ ＂marking conclusion,＂ ＂holding the floor,＂ ＂marking summary,＂ ＂opening new section of discourse,＂ and ＂shift-back and elaboration.＂ The study implies that in English teaching and learning, ELF should not be treated as an undeveloped language and that the teaching of discourse markers should focus more on the pragmatic functions than on semantic meaning in the narrow sense.
