Gender Difference: The Use of English Discourse Markers in Business News Articles by Vietnamese Journalists
Main Article Content
Abstract
Discourse markers (DMs) appear in a quite high frequency in both spoken and written language. Moreover, they are not only cohesive devices but also tools which help convey language users’ intentions to their discourse. Research into DMs is, nevertheless, still rare regarding the use of English DMs by Vietnamese writers. Therefore, the aim of this study is to examine the use of English DMs in business news articles by Vietnamese male and female journalists. To that end, 80 business news articles written in English by Vietnamese journalists were chosen. Kopple’s (1985) [1], Fung’s (2003) [2], and Fraser’s (1996, 1999) [3-4] theoretical frameworks are adapted for data analysis. It was found that both Vietnamese male and female employed English DMs in their writing in a similar way. Female journalists were, nevertheless, found to employ the interpersonal functions of the used English DMs more than their counterparts.
Keywords:
Business news articles; discourse markers; gender, Vietnamese journalists.
References
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[4] B. Fraser, What are Discourse Markers? Journal of Pragmatics, Vol. 31, 1999, pp. 931-952.
[5] D. Schiffrin, Discourse Markers, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
[6] D. Blakemore, The Relevance of Reformulations, Language and Literature, Vol. 2, No. 2, 1993, pp. 101-120.
[7] K. Aijmer, Analyzing Discourse Markers in Spoken Corpora: Actually as a Case Study, In P. Baker, and T. McEnery, Corpora and Discourse Studies: Integrating Discourse and Corpora, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015, pp. 88-110.
[8] M. Swan, Practical English Usage, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.
[9] R. Carter, M. McCarthy, Cambridge Grammar of English, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
[10] E. Dafouz-Milne, The Pragmatic Role of Textual and Interpersonal Metadiscourse Markers in the Construction Attainment of Persuasion: A Cross-Linguistic Study of Newspaper Discourse, Journal of Pragmatics, Vol. 40, 2008, pp. 95-113.
[11] J. Zienkowski, J. Östman, J. Verschueren, Discursive Pragmatics, The Netherlands: John Benjamins Publishing Co., 2011.
[12] A. O’Keeffe, Media Discourse Analysis, In Gee, J. & Handford, M. (eds), The Routledge Handbook of Discourse Analysis, London: Routledge, 2011, pp. 441-454.
[13] L, B. Jauro, G. G. Teneke, I. Bitrus, I. V. Moses, An Evaluation of the Use of Discourse Markers in Nigerian Newspapers, New Media and Mass Communication, Vol. 23, 2014, pp. 25-29.
[14] O. Kookhaei, M. Amerian, A Study of Proficient in the Use of Discourse Markers in Iranian EFL Learners’ Writing, Journal of Advances in Linguistics, Vol. 2, No. 2, 2014, pp. 107-113.
[15] Hyland and Tse, 2004.
[16] E. A. Escalera, Gender Difference in Children’s Use of Discourse Markers: Separate Worlds or Different Contexts? Journal of Pragmatics, Vol. 41, 2006, pp. 2479-2495.
[17] J. A. Fatalaki, A Sociopragmatic Study of Discourse Markers’ Use across Different Genders: Case Study of Iranian EFL Learners, The Iranian EFL Journal, Vol. 11, 2015, pp. 382-402.
[18] T. A. Pasaribu, Male and Female Students’ Use of Textual Discourse Markers in Writing Academic Essays, Journal of Language and Literature, Vol. 1, No. 1, 2017, pp. 74-81.
[19] M. Halliday, R. Hasan, Cohesion in English, London: Longman, 1976.
[20] L. Schourup, Common Discourse Particles in English Conversation, Garland: New York, 1985.
[21] G. Redeker, Ideational and Pragmatic Markers of Discourse Structure, Journal of Pragmatics, Vol. 14, No. 3, 1990, pp. 367-381.
[22] A. Knott, R. Dale, Using Linguistic Phenomena to Motivate a Set of Coherence Relations, Discourse Processes, Vol. 18, 1994, pp. 35-62.
[23] D. Blakemore, Semantic Constraints on Relevance, Oxford: Blackwell, 1987.
[24] Y. Maschler, Mitigating and Discourse Markers in Bilingual Conversation, Language in Society,
Vol. 23, 1994, pp. 325-366.
[25] M. M. Hansen, The Function of Discourse Particles: A Study with Special Reference to Spoken Standard French, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1998.
[26] L. J. Brinton, Pragmatic Markers in English: Grammaticalization and Discourse Functions, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1996.
[27] A. H. Jucker, Y. Ziv, Discourse Markers: Introduction, In A. H. Jucker, Y. Ziv, Discourse Markers: Descriptions and Theory, Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Co., 1998, pp. 1-12.
[28] L. Fung, R. Carter, Discourse Markers and Spoken English: Native and Learner Use in Pedagogic Settings, Applied Linguistics, Vol. 28, No. 3, 2007, pp. 410-439.
[29] M. Tavakoli, A. Karimnia, Dominant and Gender-Specific Tendencies in the Use of Discourse Markers: Insights from EFL Learners, World Journal of English Language, Vol. 7, No. 2, 2017, pp. 1-9.
[30] M. Halliday, An Introduction to Function Grammar (2nd ed), London: Edward Arnold, 1994.
[31] D. Schiffrin, Discourse Markers: Language, Meaning and Context, In Schiffrin, D., Tannen, D. and Hamilton, H.E, The Handbook of Discourse Analysis, Malden, Mass: Blackwell Publisher, 2001.
[32] K. Hyland, Metadiscourse: Exploring Interaction in Writing, New York: Continuum, 2005.
[33] C. M. C. Castro, The Use and Functions of Discourse Markers in EFL Classroom Interaction, Profile Issues in Teachers’ Professional Development, Vol. 11, No. 1, 2009, pp. 57-77.
[34] H. Kim, B. Kang, Gender and Usage of Discourse Markers in Spoken Korean, Proceedings of the 16th Conference of Pan Pacific Association of Applied Linguistics, Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2011, pp. 30-31.
[35] M. Alami, M. Sabbas, M. Iranmanesh, Gender and Discourse Difference: An Investigation of Discourse Markers in Persian Male-Female Casual Conversation, Archives Des Sciences, Vol. 65, No. 7, 2012, pp. 202-223.
[36] H. V. Koczogh, B. P. Furkó, Gender Differences in the Use of the Discourse Markers you know and I mean, Argumentum, Vol. 7, 2011, pp. 1-18.