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Home > English Language Programs > Teaching Pragmatics > Discourse Markers Well and Oh

Discourse Markers Well and Oh

Kent Lee
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, United States

Level: Advanced ESL or EFL students

Time: 30-35 minutes

Resources: Sample sentences and situations for role play

Goals: To use the discourse markers well and oh (also uh and ah) for smoother discourse flow

Description of the Activity
The teacher launches a mini role play by asking each student to request a favor from the teacher (Could I borrow your car? Can I borrow a dollar? Could you take me to the airport next weekend?). The teacher answers quickly without pauses or discourse markers, thus sounding abrupt, such as, No, I think I need it tonight. I'm afraid I don't have any money. I'm going to be out of town next weekend. The teacher repeats the situation with another student, but provides smoother responses, with delays marked by well, oh, uh, and/or ah (Well, I think I need it tonight. Uh, I'm afraid I don't have any money. Well... uh, I'm going to be out of town next weekend).

The teacher solicits the students' impressions of the second set of answers compared with the first. The students should recognize the second set as more polite and smoother. The teacher asks the students why the second set sounds better and the purposes and functions of words such as well (unexpected response) or oh, uh, or ah (realization). The students may not ascertain that such abstract discourse markers serve any purpose other than filling pauses and delaying. However, the teacher can use students' guesses to build up to an explanation of their discourse functions, as described above, in which well indicates negative or unexpected responses and oh or ah indicates sudden realization requiring a shift to another topic or to an unexpected response. With sample dialogues, the teacher can illustrate other related functions of well (turn-taking, topic shift or resumption) and oh or ah (repair, clarification), elicit students' impressions, and explain their function (see Teacher Resource). Students can then be provided with similar situations, which they use to practice with each other in small groups or pairs. Situations may require functions such as the following: making and declining difficult requests; responding to compliments; turn-taking; using repairs and pauses while planning responses to difficult questions; apologizing; and responses involving topic shifts, topic resumptions, and clarifications.

Procedure

1. Teacher-student mini role play (10 minutes)

a. The teacher asks several students to request a favor from the teacher.

b. The teacher refuses with slightly abrupt answers lacking discourse markers or other delays.

c. The teacher refuses with answers marked by delays and discourse markers.

d. The process is repeated with other linguistic functions: difficult requests, deflecting compliments, and apologies.

2. Discussion (5-10 minutes)

a. The teacher solicits students' impressions of the two sets of answers, including why the second version sounds better, and the purposes and functions of well (delay, and unexpected response) and oh (realization).

b. Drawing from students' responses and the role-play situations, the teacher explains the functions of the discourse markers.

3. Student role play (10-15 minutes)

a. Students are given more complex situations to role play conversations in groups of two or three.

b. The teacher circulates to help or to coach students in their conversational role-plays.

c. Optionally, the teacher may select a few groups to present their role-plays before the entire class.

Rationale
Some ESL/EFL learners may unintentionally come across as abrupt or brusque in social interactions in English because of a lack of expertise with linguistic devices such as discourse markers. This may be especially so in exchanges involving requests, refusals or compliments, which require special delay strategies and other devices to deflect their face-threatening nature (see Brown & Levinson 1987, Levinson 1983). A delay marked by silence would be socially and linguistically awkward, so it is often filled in with a discourse marker such as well, uh, oh, or ah. Because these markers refer to and anticipate the utterance that follows (Schiffrin 1987), they also have a transitional function. They can also deflect other potentially face-threatening acts, such as topic shifts (well, oh), which could disrupt the flow of the discourse. They could be used as realization markers or for topic shifts (oh), or they could be used for situations in which interlocutors compete in turn-taking (well) (see Schiffrin 1987). Oh can also be described as a mental change-of-state marker (Heritage 1984), indicating a change in the speaker's thinking that necessitates a shift in the discourse.

Instructors can tell students that such words are helpful or necessary whenever speaker A says something different from speaker B's preferences or expectations. Thus, functions such as making or refusing a request, deflecting a compliment, expressing a sudden realization, competing with a speaker for the floor, requesting clarification, pausing, making repairs, shifting topics or resuming previous ones are common conversational ploys. Such strategies are optimized by the use of discourse markers, which not only mitigate against unexpected or uncomfortable acts, but also improve discourse coherence and flow by enabling a transition to occur.

Alternatives and Caveats
An alternative way that the instructor could launch this pragmatic lesson is by asking students how they would respond to outlandish requests such as, Can I borrow your car? I need to drive to Alaska for a conference next week. Responses to such requests require special linguistic markers to maintain politeness. Audio or video clips with conversations illustrating these discourse markers would be helpful and could even substitute for the role-play, particularly in EFL contexts or if the teacher is a non-native speaker. For lower level students or for EFL contexts, it may be sufficient to make students aware of these linguistic devices via explanation and role-play. The instructor should point out other pause-filler markers (e.g., hmm, uh, and er), noting that they often occur between the discourse marker and the items that follow, are represented by commas in written English, and are more often used in spoken English or in informal written English than they are in formal written English.

Teacher Resource

Conversation excerpts with like and oh

A: How much education do you think a person needs to get a good job?
B: Oh, definitely a bachelor's degree.
A: Well, I think even more than that, at least a master's degree.

A: She can listen and tell you not only the composer, but also the name of the piece.
B: Well, that's no big deal.

A: Who wants to know?
B: Well, I want to know.

A: Can I borrow your car?
B: Well…my wife needs to use it tonight.

A. Well, as I was saying, I think the only difference between our neighborhoods might be the better trash collection in our neighborhood.

A. I think that law was passed in 1976. Oh, maybe it was 1978; I don't remember for sure.

A. How can I get a grant for that?
B: Oh, I didn't realize they gave grants. I'm not the one to ask about that.

References
Brown, P., & Levinson, S.C. (1987). Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Heritage, J. (1984). A change-of-state token and aspects of its sequential placement. In J. M. Atkinson and J.

Heritage (Eds.), Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis (pp. 299-345). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Levinson, S. C. (1983). Pragmatics. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Schiffrin, D. (1987). Discourse Markers. New York: Cambridge University Press.

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