THE PRAGMATIC FUNCTIONS OF DISCOURSE MARKERS IN THE RUSSIAN LANGUAGE FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF RELEVANCE THEORY

Abstract

Relevance theory states that in communication people should provide certain information that can indicate the relevance of utterances. This role can be played by the discourse markers, which are very common phenomenon in the language, and play a particularly important role in the study and understanding of utterances. From the perspective of relevance theory, discourse markers are explicit linguistic markers that might greatly increase the relevance between utterances. Therefore, they can be used to infer the speaker’s true intention with less cognitive efforts from the audience. Thе present study, analyzing from the viewpoint of relevance theory, shows three pragmatic functions of discourse markers in the Russian language. First of all, they create a positive contextual effect. Secondly, they reinforce the relevance between utterances. Thirdly, they regulate the illocutionary power of utterances.