Jiushi as a Pragmatic Marker: Evidence from the Heart-to-Heart Radio Program

Abstract

Within the framework of interactional linguistics and relying on the corpus of Mandarin conversations, this thesis reinterprets the function of jiushi, an adverb in traditional grammar. Specifically, in the entire data, jiushi displays three statuses in the conversational structure: as an independent intonation unit, as an initiator of an intonation unit or elsewhere within an intonation unit. As a free standing intonation unit, it can either occupy an entire conversational turn, marking confirmation or positive evaluation, or forms part of a conversational turn, indicating the speakera??s hesitation or reformulation on any aspect of the previous utterance. When jiushi initiates an intonation unit, it marks two actions to be performed by the speaker: reinforcement and reformulation. When jiushi occupies any other position within the intonation unit, it still functions as an adverb.Through this study of jiushi, interactional linguistics is demonstrated as more viable to study dynamic language use.