Discourse Markers

This week in Discourse Analysis, we've been working on Discourse Markers. A Discourse Marker typically serves to show the relationship between the statement that follows it with something that precedes it. A DM can function on the local level, linking two statements that are adjacent, or on a more global level, either linking to something that was said earlier in the discourse, or to the entire theme of the discourse.

Bruce Fraser (no relation) and Deborah Schiffrin have done the most definitive work in Discourse Markers.

Here is a little data analysis exercise I worked on this week. I examine Donald Rumsfeld's use of Discourse Markers in his testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Reactions are encouraged. I'm very interested in hearing what other people have to say about this (particularly Bruce Fraser and Deborah Schiffrin, although my odds of them reading this are about a million to one).

Due to the cruelty of MicroSoft Word, I have to present this as a pdf. Maybe later in the day I can reformat the whole thing and present it in html. In the mean time, here's the pdf: Rumsfeld