| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立雲林科技大學 === 應用外語系碩士班 === 102 === The purpose of this research is an exploration into spoken English grammar and focuses on the frequency and function of vague language and discourse markers used by native English speakers. This research is a corpus study comprised of 20 transcripts from the Oprah Winfrey show. Using text-based analyses specific examples of vague language and discourse markers were analyzed in order to get an overall sense of their relevant prevalence in the English language
The most common vague language covered in this thesis were or something, whatever, and stuff and or anything in the corpus. These occurred once every 53, 90, 150 and 180 minutes respectively. The discourse markers covered in this research were I mean, like, well and you know. These occurred once every 5.66, 4.35, 2.55, 1.49 minutes respectively. Based on the frequency of occurrence observed in this study it appears that the need for discourse markers to facilitate conservation is greater than the need for being vague in a conversation.
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