engleski

Discourse Markers Like, Sort of and Kind of in the Spoken Discourse of Advanced L2 Students of English

This study explores the use of discourse markers (DMs) in the conversational discourse of non-native speakers of English. In particular, it investigates the functions and positions of the DMs like, sort of and kind of in conversations of Croatian speakers of English. The study investigates DMs in the conversations of first year university students of English. The sample consisted of four volunteers, two females and two males. For each participant two different speech events of about 15 minutes each were recorded. The speakers engaged in two casual, dyadic conversations. The results of the quantitative and qualitative analyses show the pervasiveness of DMs at this capability level and a variety in use. DMs like, sort of and kind of cover about 8% of the DMs used by the students in this study. Among them like is the most frequent and sort of is the least frequent. Variability has been noticed in the frequency distribution of these markers in the talk of individual students. Like most often occurred before a noun, sort of was the most frequent before a verb and kind of before an adjective. Multifunctionality of these markers has also been identified. Like was most often used as an approximator and sort of and kind of were most often used as compromisers.

discourse markers; like; sort of and kind of; non-native speakers of English

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