LING 80.11 Conversation Management: Discourse Markers and the Like

The little words and fixed expressions “oh”, “so”, “um”, “yeah no”, “you know”, “anyways”, and the ubiquitous “like” seem virtually meaningless, and yet they permeate our conversations. In this seminar we will embark on an in-depth consideration of what linguists believe these little words and others like them, called discourse markers, do in terms of managing our conversations on a variety of levels. We will also consider comparable phenomena in languages with different structures from ones like English, where discourse markers have been studied in relatively less detail, as well as look at where discourse markers come from historically. Students will locate original data sources and conduct independent research projects on specific discourse markers and related phenomena in languages of their choice.

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Department-Specific Course Categories

Linguistics