A Discoursal Analysis of Functional Spectrum of Discourse Markers in Translation Criticism: Pedagogic and Research Implications in Discourse Monitoring

Establishing coherence in discourse is an interactive process that is activated through different types of communicative knowledge and skills. Part of this knowledge includes knowledge of the text to organize grammatical and lexical forms to convey meaning. Another part of this faculty is connected to the metalanguage level. It consists of the power to express personal and social identities, to use language to express attitudes and negotiate meaning, and the cognitive ability to manipulate ideas (Maschler and Schiffrin, 2015). Discourse markers (DMs) function in all of the above cognitive, expressive, social, and textual domains and operate as metacommunicative and metadiscursive elements (Frank-job, 2006). Consequently, they become devoid of semantic meaning due to their sensitivity to contextual variables in real-life situations and assume new interactive pragmatic behaviors and strategies known as pragmaticalization in discourse (Jucker & Ziv, 1998). Therefore, their real precise and comprehensive uses, functions, and strategies can mainly be explored within the framework of communicative purposes and interactive contexts. Accordingly, some researchers have come to the idea that analysis of a functional spectrum of discourse markers in social contexts is the most practical and useful method of investigation (Crible & Degand, 2019; Frank-job, 2006; Groute, 2002; Hyland, 2005; Trillo, 2009). As a result, the researchers tried to analyze translation criticism in the Persian language in terms of the types and the frequency of DMs functions. This descriptive, qualitative, and explorative study benefits from various scientific and research informing bases and resources: the study of famous and key authors’ theoretical studies, investigation of key empirically corpus-based researches, and pragmatic analysis of the functional spectrum of discourse markers in randomly selected translation criticism corpus in the Persian language during the three last decades. Moreover, the present study applied Fraser’s (2006) taxonomy of discourse markers and Brinton’s (1996) functional model for the analysis of discourse markers. The taxonomy of discourse markers provides the criteria for the determination of DM use from non-DM use of these metadiscursive elements in translation criticism discourse. And the functional model is applied to discover the functional range of DMs in this genre. Another informing resource of the research was its raters. Both raters were English instructors with 5 years of experience in teaching, familiar with the literature, have conducted researches in this area, and possessed the necessary expertise.   The corpus consisted of 15 translation criticisms written by Iranian translation professors (%75) and professional translators (%25) published in Motarjem, the Iranian journal with more than 30 years of experience in translation theory, analysis, and education. Moreover, the corpus consisted of more than 30000 words selected randomly. All of the instances of DMs’ use were determined and sorted by applying Fraser’s taxonomy of discourse markers and DMs functional spectrums were analyzed and explored through Brinton’s functional model. And about 50% of the instances of the DMs along with their functions in the sentence were extracted and given to the raters to approve the reliability of the research. The findings resulted in a six-plane functional spectrum model for a discourse monitoring system in the translation criticism genre including information indicators, topic switchers, attitude markers, temporal markers, opening markers, and closing markers. They are not covered in Persian grammar and dictionaries. Also, the correlation coefficient of inter-rater reliability was .61, which is an acceptable index of reliability. The diversity and flexibility in the functional spectrum can be justified from different perspectives. Subsequently, in the process of translation criticism DMs are manipulated creatively in order to prove the inadequacies of the translation or to characterize the qualifications of the rendering. This justification is in line with findings and ideas reported by Fischer (2006). Moreover, justification for this flexibility is related to Frank-job’s (2006) view of pragmaticalization of meaning in discourse. That is, in real-life situations, the propositional meaning of discourse markers is changed drastically, they assume pragmatic meanings, and these meanings change based on context. This context covers cognitive, expressive, social, and textual domains. These domains are manipulated by contextual variables. These variables include people, places, and times. DMs’ functional spectrums manipulated by the variables and they assume new interactive meanings in discourse. This functional spectrum may constantly be influenced by multiple, complex, innovative, and creative inferences and is always changing, developing, and evolving systematically. As DMs form the basic cognitive, social, cultural, and efficient discursive system of human communication, then, it is recommended that any modifications, developments, and plans in education, research, and management in various aspects of translation education be based on research on the pragmatic functions of these metalanguage elements.