Analysis of pragmatic functions of Chinese cultural markers

Although a discourse marker does not have semantic truth-value and can only generate meanings in the pragmatic category, it can indicate the implicit meaning in the context and contribute to the deduction of the speaker’s intention. If the listener does not know the psychological, social and cultural background implied in the speaker’s utterance, it is hard for him/her to get the true emotion and intention the speaker conveys in the discourse since discourse markers sometimes trigger cultural features of the particular language. Those which can trigger Chinese culture and display distinctive way for Chinese to communicate are termed as Chinese cultural markers (CCMs) in this paper. In Chinese conversation, CCMs have strong pragmatic complexity because their pragmatic functions are implicit rather than explicit. In order to assist the mastery of Chinese language for foreign students, this paper has probed into the pragmatic functions by New Intention and New Common Ground Theory. After the logical analysis, we have found that in daily conversation CCMs usually play such pragmatic roles as follows:①promoting mutual reciprocity between interlocutors;②softening the strong tones in speech; ③ hiding interlocutor’s true feelings; ④ alleviating negative expressions; and ⑤ smoothening the progress of discourse.