The Pragmatic Functions of the Discourse Marker Bas in Jordanian Spoken Arabic: Evidence from a Corpus

Abstract

This study investigates the pragmatic functions of the discourse marker bas (Lit. But) in Jordanian Spoken Arabic. To this end, a corpus of 24 dyadic conversations, consisting of 93313 words were obtained from natural conversations of native speakers of Jordanian Arabic (males and females). 1113 instances of bas were identified in the data. This study is based on Fraser’s (2006) grammatical-pragmatic framework. Qualitative methods were employed to answer the question of the study. The analysis was based on the pragmatic functions introduced by Brinton (1996) and Fraser (2006). The data analysis reveals that the DM bas serves the following pragmatic functions in JSA: initiating a topic, signaling topic change, closing a turn, ending a conversation, indicating speaker’s hesitancy, mitigating Face Threatening Acts, making a correction, attracting hearer’s attention, expressing restrictions and conditions, showing disbelief and indicating a question, providing interpretation, showing contrast, expressing regret , showing agreement, indicating emphasis, and finally filling in gaps in an interaction. Finally, this study suggests that DMs in Arabic play a vital role in people’s daily communication; therefore, they should not be neglected by linguists.

Unpacking the function(s) of discourse markers in academic spoken English: a corpus-based study

“…Discourse markers can have various functions when they are used in different contexts. Apart from the context, the mode of communication can exert an effect on the usage and function of discourse markers (Li, 2004;Al Rousan et al, 2020). As for speaking, for example, "discourse markers are used constantly by speakers and play a significant role in speech, in particular in spontaneous speech" (Huang, 2011, p. 7), which necessitates their study from a pragmatic point of view (Aijmer, 2002).…”

Two Types of Concession: Evidence From Discourse Markers

“…In this paper, the authors discuss the alternation of bass and ʔilla in ʕala alruʁum utterances. They do not provide analysis of these two discourse markers, but see Al Rousan et al (2020) for a relevant discussion of bass .…”