Discourse markers in writing

Abstract

Words like well, oh, and you know have long been observed and studied in spontaneous speech. With the proliferation of on-line dialogues, such as instant messaging between friends or back-and-forth postings at websites, there are increasing opportunities to observe them in spontaneous writing. In Experiment 1, the interpretation of discourse markers in on-line debates was compared to proposed functions of those markers identified in other settings. In Experiment 2, the use of discourse markers in spontaneous speech was compared to their uses in spontaneous writing. Results support the conclusion that although they vary in frequency in spoken versus written domains, discourse markers are used similarly across domains, but with particular communicative functions that make them non-interchangeable.