A Corpus-based Study of the Discourse-Pragmatic Functions of Mandarin Nǐ zhīdào (‘you know’)

• Main Authors: Yu-Min Cheng, 鄭玉敏
• Other Authors: Yu-Fang Wang
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2011
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/72077482323788072546

碩士 === 國立高雄師範大學 === 華語文教學研究所 === 99 === ‘Discourse markers’ are a very common linguistic phenomenon in oral conversation which helps both speakers and listeners to achieve successful communication. As mentioned by Zhong (2003), discourse markers such as “you know” also have strong pragmatic effects which bring people closer into a conversation and attract listener’s attentions. Many scholars, e.g. Schourup (1985), Holmes (1986), Schiffrin (1987), and Huspek (1989), have studied the function and importance of the discourse marker, “you know,” with fruitful outcomes. However, limited effort has been devoted to understanding Chinese discourse markers in real oral corpus and apply it to Chinese language teaching. This study explores the discourse-pragmatic functions of n ǐzhīdào and nǐ zhīdào ma in different discourse modes of Chinese spoken discourse using conversation analysis, and also explores the functional differences of nǐ zhīdào and nǐ zhīdào ma with rising tone and falling tone The study examines the distribution of nǐ zhīdào and nǐ zhīdào ma among corpus and explores their textual and interpersonal/interactional functions as described in Halliday’s (1994) model of language metafunction. ‘Conversation Analysis’ (Sacks, Scheloff, & Jefferson, 1974), ‘Politeness Principle’ (Leech, 1983), ‘Face-saving Theory’ (Brown & Levinson, 1987), and ‘Relevance Theory’ (Sperber & Wilson (1986/1995, 2001) are then applied to explain the phenomena. The result of the study suggests that nǐ zhīdào and nǐ zhīdào ma have thirteen pragmatic functions: at textual level, it has seven functions, including ‘monitoring’, ‘pause, ‘opening a new topic’, ‘turn keeping’, ‘emphasizing’, ‘fixing information’, and ‘omitting’; at interpersonal/interactional level, it has six functions, including ‘presuming consensual information’, ‘attracting attention’, ‘seeking for agreement or response’, ‘vying for turn’, ‘euphemism’, and ‘declining euphemistically.’ Nǐ zhīdào (ma) can be used at the beginning, middle, and end of a sentence turn. When at the beginning of a turn, nǐ zhīdào with the falling tone has a stronger function of ‘presuming consensual information’; nǐ zhīdào with the rising tone, on the other hand, can attract people’s attention. nǐ zhīdào ma shows a remarkable effect of attracting people’s attention at the beginning of a turn, and it shows an effect of seeking for other’s agreement or response when occurring after the focus construction, X. As for the construction pattern, the frequent construction patterns are ‘(X1), nǐ zhīdào +X, (X2)’ and ‘(X1), X+ nǐ zhīdào ma, (X2)’. Using the result of the study, suggestions are made for teaching material and methods as regard to the application of nizhidao and nizhidaoma in casual conversation teaching.