| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立高雄師範大學 === 華語文教學研究所 === 101 === Chinese suǒyǐ is a typical causality conjunction. Previous studies had plenty of discussion on its diachronic development, semantic, syntactic and text analyses. However, limited effort has been devoted to understanding it as a discourse marker in real oral discourse and applying it to Chinese language teaching. Hence, this research is a corpus-based study, using Conversation Anyalysis approach (Sacks, Scheloff & Jefferson, 1974) as the analytic framework, along with Principle of Politeness (Leech, 1983), Face-saving Theory (Brown & Levinson, 1987) and Relevance Theory (Sperber & Wilson, 1986/1995) to account for its pragmatic-discourse functions, with the intention of discovering how suǒyǐ is used as a discourse marker, which can be used to accomplish various communicative purposes.
According to the corpus analysis, suǒyǐ can be categorized into five functions in the textual level, listed by frequency of usage as follows: (1) presenting an argument, (2) further elaboration, (3) delaying, (4) resuming a previous topic, and (5) transforming a topic. In addition, suǒyǐ also has four functions in the pragmatic/interpersonal level, including: (1) attracting the listener’s attention, (2) eliciting response, (3) euphemizing something unpleasant, and (4) seeking for agreements. Furthermore, suǒyǐ can be used at the beginning, the middle, and the end of a turn. Due to its original meaning and its cohesive function, it is most commonly seen at the beginning of a turn, guiding the listener’s comprehension. If it appears at the beginning of a turn, it is more frequently used as a strategy to attract the listener’s attention. If it is placed at the end of a turn, it is used to express inquiries in order to guide the listener to further understanding. Last but not the least, suǒyǐ can be used as a result marker, its reasoning function can be listed into four syntactic types, including yīnwèi……suǒyǐ…… and Ø……suǒyǐ…… that puts the reason to the front, yīnwèi……suǒyǐ…… and Ø……suǒyǐ…… that puts the reason behind. The structure Ø……suǒyǐ…… that omits the reasoning marker is the most frequently used, because in discourse, yīnwèi or other reasoning marker is usually not used unless the speaker intends to emphasize the context or to use it as a guide to the cohesion of the cause and result. Lastly, different oral parataxis also has an influence on the speaker’s pragmatic strategy in using suǒyǐ.
Given the results of the study, suggestions are made for teaching material and methods regarding to the application of suǒyǐ in conversation teaching.
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