Discourse Markers as Indicators of Register

Abstract

The speech of twenty Spanish-English bilingual children, aged six to ten, was recorded while the children engaged in pretend play with puppets in Spanish. The puppets represented a variety of characters with different social relationships. Analyses focused on the distribution of discourse markers (DMs) across the different roles played. Results indicate that these children use DMs to specifically mark differences in sta- tus and in familiarity/intimacy between interlocutors: High-status roles (parents, teachers) reveal greater use of DMs than lower-status roles (children), and this difference increases when familiarity decreases (i.e., more DMs by teacher in the classroom setting than by parent in the family setting). Finer differences among DMs are also demonstrated, and the relationship between DMs and particular speech acts is explored. The find- ings are discussed in the context of prior research on the acquisition of register knowledge in English and in French.

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