한국인 EFL 학습자의 구술 담화에 나타난 담화표지 so의 편재성

The Ubiquitousness of the discourse marker so in Korean EFL Learners' spoken English

This paper attempts to account for the seemingly overuse of so in Korean EFL learners' spoken English from a discourse-pragmatic perspective. The data used includes group discussions among the college students. The functions of the discourse marker so are divided into those working at the textual level and those working at the interactional level. The total of 34 tokens were identified and their functions were categorized into the following:(i)expressing result/consequence, (ii) summarizing/rewording/elaborating (iii)marking discourse boundary or signalling the initiation/shift/closing of the topic and (iv)prefacing speech acts such as request or question or announcing who has the turn. The first three functions work at the textual domain, signalling relationship between clauses while the last function works at the interactional/interpersonal domain, marking the speaker's attitude and emotions. It is noted that the textual and interpersonal domains are not mutually exclusive. As such, so as a resumptive marker also functions as topic-switcher, boundary marker, action-prompter and turn-transitional marker. The ubiquitousness of so seems to be accounted for in terms of the learners' strategy; the token so possibly serves as a self-presentational strategy. The nonnative speaker presents an image to the recipient as one who claims that his utterances are coherently connected to each other. Since the nonnative speaker with limited command of English may feel the greater pressure to appear coherent and to successfully manage the interactional floor, the token so may provide one sort of means by which to do so.