Form and function of the discourse marker <i>anyway: </i>implications for discourse analysis

Abstract

Discourse markers have been observed to be an important component of language which perform a variety of functions in discourse (Schiffrin 1982, 1987). This study focuses on the form and function of a frequent but little-studied discourse marker, anyway (Polanyi and Scha 1983; Prince 1982; Haliday and Hasan 1976), using a corpus of tape-recorded oral narratives from 167 different informants. Syntactic and semantic information along with evidence from computerized pitch tracking of intonation contours is used to differentiate three linguistic subtypes of anyway (two adverbial and one discourse marker). The discourse marker is found to function as a signal to the interlocutor on how to bracket discourse coherently into foreground/background or main structure/side structure. Two categories of triggers for use of anyway are proposed: teller-triggered and listener-triggered cases. Quantification reveals that teller-triggered occurrences predominate three-to-one, showing the function to be primarily self-digression management. A brief discussion of form variation, both historical and social, of the alternate forms anyway, anyways, anyhow, at any rate shows they are differently distributed in the population. Implications point the way to new areas of inquiry for discourse markers, such as historical evolution, role of prosody in their development, and social variation