This document consists of two abstracts, each investigating a discourse marker.

Write a paragraph summarizing the findings (minimum 150 words).

You cannot repeat the words/sentences used in these abstracts.

An ecyclopedia of the arts, 4, 4, 265-276 (2006)

“THANK YOU” AS A DISCOURSE MARKER”
Olateju Moji A & Adesanmi Taofik O

ABSTRACT

This study examined the various roles attributed to thanks (thank you)
as a discourse marker in conversations in some selected local government
areas of Osun State in Nigeria. The work seeks to: identify the different
forms of thank you as a discourse marker in conversations; describe the
functions and frequency of thank you or its variants in conversations and
explore the factors (social and situational) affecting the different uses of
thank you and its variants.

The data for this work were obtained from a secondary source. Oral
conversations involving the use of thank you were recorded mainly
surreptitiously from various subjects within Osun state in Nigeria. The
study found that thank you had many functions. In a nut shell, this study
discovered that thank you could be used for six (6) things i.e. (1) as gratitude
for a major or minor favor, (2) for phatic function between two speakers, (3)
for irony, sarcasm and brusqueness in conversations, (4) for acceptance of
service, (5) for dismissal of a person or service and (6) for rejection of service
or offer. Not only that, it was also observed that thank you as a variant of
thanking strategies featured in use more than the other variants like thanks,
I appreciate it, etc. In the same vein, this work concluded that thank you
had two (2) benefactions- material and immaterial benefactions.

Although our society is fast losing interest in upholding and observing

positive social habits, this study concluded that the basis for thank you and
its variants was politeness which should not be jettisoned at the expense of
modernization. In addition, and importantly too, having known the relevance
of conversational routines as it affects language learning, conscious efforts
should be made to incorporate the teaching of these routines, especially
thank you, into the English Language curricula in our schools.
Discourse Markers in Spontaneous Speech:
Oh What a Difference an Oh Makes

Jean E. Fox Tree and Josef C. Schrock

University of California, Santa Cruz

Discourse markers are usually studied from the vantage point of corpora analyses. By looking at
where they fall in spontaneous talk, hypotheses can be made about their possible functions.
However, direct tests of listeners’ uses of these expressions are rare. In five experiments, we
looked at the on-line spontaneous speech comprehension effects of one discourse marker, oh. We
found that recognition of words was faster after oh than when the oh was either excised and
replaced by a pause or excised entirely. We also found that semantic verification of words heard
earlier in the discourse was faster after oh than when the oh was either excised and replaced by a
pause or excised entirely, but only when the test point was downstream from the oh. Results
demonstrate that oh is not only a potential signal to addressees, as has been suggested by corpora
analyses, but that it is in fact used by addressees to help them integrate information in
spontaneous talk.