discoursmarkers

Discourse markers are lexical items or short phrases that organize discourse, signal relations between parts of talk, and help manage interaction. They do not primarily add new propositional content; instead, they guide the listener, indicate the speaker’s stance, or mark shifts in topic or attention. In English, common examples include well, so, you know, I mean, anyway, and right. They can appear at the beginning of a turn, within a clause, or as stand-alone interjections.

Functions of discourse markers include signaling turn-taking and topic management, marking stance or evaluation, indicating sequencing or consequence (for example, therefore, so), and facilitating repair or alignment (okay, yeah). They also convey social meaning, such as levels of formality, emphasis, or solidarity with the interlocutor. Because of these roles, discourse markers are often more about discourse structure and interactional nuance than about the literal content of what is said.

Discourse markers are studied across languages and genres, particularly in corpus linguistics, pragmatics, and conversation analysis. They are often analyzed separately from traditional syntactic conjunctions, though their status can be fluid: some items function as markers in some contexts and as conjunctions or part of a clause in others. Typologies typically distinguish structural markers (topic introduction, turn-taking), stance markers (attitude, evaluation), and sequencing markers (transition, conclusion), among others. They are especially frequent in spontaneous speech and informal writing, though markers also appear in transcripts, fiction, and casual online communication.

The interpretation of a marker relies on context, intonation, and discourse environment. As a result, discourses markers are sometimes grouped with discourse particles or pragmatic markers, with terminology varying by theoretical tradition.