The use of the pragmatic discourse markers and, so and okay in academic conference presentations

Abstract

In this paper we analyse the use of some pragmatic discourse markers in spoken academic discourse, more concretely in academic conference presentations. We aim at providing insights in the use speakers made of the pragmatic markers “and”, “so” and “okay”, understanding them as markers of the inferential component within the framing relational function of speaker-hearer and/or speaker-speech. The pragmatic markers are analysed from a multimodal perspective, considering not only the linguistic and semantic meaning but also paralinguistic features, prosodic (intonation, and stress) and kinesics (gestures and body language). The study is conducted on a set of ten conference presentations taken from the MASC (Multimodal Academic and Spoken Corpus). Results drawn from the analysis can be useful for both native and no-native speakers of English when participating on attending international conferences. On the other hand, we look at using the analysis outcomes as well as the multimodal corpus itself for English lecturer / researcher training courses. This multimodal conference corpus analysis can be brought into the class to show novice conference speakers how to use these pragmatic discourse markers from a holistic approach.