TERMINOLOGICAL TURMOIL IN THEORETICAL IDENTIFICATION OF DISCOURSE MARKERS

Abstract

Although discourse markers study has become a focus of intensive linguistic research within past three decades, there is still no unified empirically grounded theory on these language units. The cause of this, among other things, lies in the terminological turmoil which seems to be a serious problem also for all the newcomers to this field of linguistic research. Within a wide spectrum of various terms, which often offer only nuances in differences related to the theoretical identification of discourse markers, this paper takes into consideration the most frequently used terms and synthesizes the basic theoretical guidelines specific to each of them.