A study of the Amoy Chinese discourse marker Hõ

Abstract

This thesis focuses on a neglected category of discourse units in Amoy Chinese: Discourse markers (DMs). The central aim of the thesis is to explore the nature of the DMs in Amoy discourse through a detailed analysis of the Amoy utterance final DM ho. A further objective is to provide a theoretical framework for DM study in other languages. The main hypothesis is that the central meaning of ho is to seek affirmation that the newly introduced proposition(s) is/are appropriately recognized by the hearer, and whether the other discourse functions of ho, such as indicating the speaker's relinquishing the floor and asking for hearer's solidarity, are contextual variants of this central meaning. There were two reasons for selecting the utterance final marker ho for detailed study. The first was that ho has a typical distribution as do other DMs in Amoy: it can appear in two different type of utterance positions: an utterance conveying a complete propositional meaning and an utterance conveying an uncompleted propositional meaning. This distribution feature helps in understanding the complex nature of a DM. The second reason was that ho always co-occurs with other "inclusive" personal pronouns such as lan (inclusive "us") which couches a clear "selfhood" meaning. This "selfhood" meaning of ho helps to explain the social-cultural meaning of ho. The data in this study is based on twelve hours of authentic tape recordings of twelve native Amoy speakers (including the author), eight of whom currently study in Australian universities, and four of whom are new graduates currently employed in Amoy City. Four of the twelve were female speakers. The twelve speakers were divided into two groups: intimate and non-intimate groups according to their relationships to each other. The criteria for determining their relationships were a) time (how long they had known each other); b) type of relationship; c) age; d) education level; and e) gender. About three hours tape recordings were randomly taken during author's friends visit to him. Another three hours were taken when author's friends were invited to visit him. Some of the subjects were aware that they conversations were taped and some were not. Tape recordings were taken in either the author's horne ln Canberra or author's brother's horne in Amoy City. This thesis examines ho from the point of view of socio-linguistics, social psychology, pragmatics, information theory, and cybernetic theory. Comparisons between English and Mandarin are made in all seven chapters. A revision of Schiffrin's (1987) discourse analysis model is adopted for the study. Two basic categories have been added to the old model: phonetic features of DMs discussed in Chapter Three, and the implication of interpersonal relationship of DMs discussed in Chapter Seven. Also other changes have been made to the revised model, e.g. Action Structures and Participant Framework are no longer treated as independent categories, but have been incorporated into other categories' analyses because these two categories are not so significant to the DMs. The orientation of the use of DMs is pragmatic, as DMs mainly convey the speaker's attitudinal and emotional feeling towards the propositional content and the hearer. The nature of DMs can only be revealed by analysing the relationship between DMs' pragmatic function and their phonetic structures; their function in information structures; their function in the turn taking structure; their function in the interpersonal structure; and their function in the overall discourse system comprised of the above five components. During the course of this study, the above hypothesis was confirmed. Several specific points can be made in relation to the findings. The first point concerns the phonological features of ho. The basic intonation pattern of ho associated with its central meaning is a normal volume, short tempo, and with a falling lexical tonic pattern, approximating the "yinqu" lexical tonic pattern in Amoy Chinese. A second point is that ho's central meaning is goal orientated. It belongs to the application of the second communication goal: how to say it, to whom (compared with the first communication goal, what to say). DMs are always used when a discrepant expectation is created between the interlocutors. Another significant finding was that all other functions of ho are contextual variants of the central meaning. These variants are associated with different human cognitive states when newly introduced information is being processed in these states. Finally, this study shows that the DMs act as an antientropy force which is used to stabilize the communication system where a deviant factor is detected by the speaker.