Pragmatic functions of discourse marker ‘well’ in selected spoken discourse of Philippine English

Abstract

The present paper investigates the use of the discourse marker “well,” one of the expressions that evoke emotive rather than referential functions. Taking a discourse-pragmatic approach, this study examines the functions of well as a discourse marker in selected spoken discourse of Philippine English. This paper investigates the functions and frequency of the discourse marker well in various speech event categories set in a dialogue and monologue environments. The data for the analysis have been selected from the International Corpus of English – Philippines (ICE-PHI). Also, the study focuses on the spoken component of the ICE-PH, which is one of the least studied dimensions of Philippine English. Further, it employs both quantitative and qualitative analyses while applying the suggested classification proposed by Ran (2003) and Jucker (1993). This study claims that the discourse marker well has several discourse-pragmatic functions in various speaking contexts, including 1) initiating utterance; 2) indicating the speaker's hesitancy; 3) mitigating various Face Threatening Acts; 4) correcting one's utterance; and 5) changing or shifting the current topic, based on 346 cases of well in four different spoken types.