Bazhura T. Discourse markers YOU KNOW / YOU SEE / I SAY in Contemporary English Dialogic Communication: Communicative and Metacommunicative Aspects

This thesis focuses on the study of discourse markers YOU KNOW / YOU SEE / I SAY in Contemporary English dialogic communication. The paper defines discourse markers YOU KNOW / YOU SEE / I SAY as multifunctional syntactically free fixed expressions of communicative and metacommunicative nature, partially or completely desemanticised. The markers under analysis foster smooth, logically coherent and cooperative interaction. Discourse markers YOU KNOW / YOU SEE / I SAY occupy the initial, medial or final positions, where they are enclosed by punctuation marks, mainly commas. The function, which this or that discourse marker performs, predetermines its position in the sentence. Due to their metacommunicative nature discourse markers YOU KNOW / YOU SEE / I SAY do not influence on the propositional meaning of the utterance. Instead, they contribute to the process of dialogic interaction to secure its smooth flow. Discourse markers YOU KNOW / YOU SEE / I SAY do not have propositional meaning as they do not add anything new to the meaning of the utterance. Having lost their basic lexical meaning, the metacommunicative discourse markers become functional elements, stable phrases, which do not change the meaning of the sentence when they are omitted. However, their absence switches a speech style to unnatural, less colloquial or vivid. The research has established that the discourse markers YOU KNOW / YOU SEE / I SAY are important elements in dialogic interaction. They perform two types of functions, i.e. communicative and metacommunicative. Communicative functions of the discourse markers YOU KNOW / YOU SEE / I SAY include evidential and emphatic ones. They enhance or mitigate the illocutionary force of a speech act, in which they function. In addition to that, the analyzed discourse markers serve as thematic / rhematic signals actualizing either the theme or rheme of the sentence.