Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• N. Alsager, Haroon
• Afzal, Naeem
• A .Aldawood, Arwa

Titel

Discourse Markers in Arabic and English Newspaper Articles: The Case of the Arabic Lakin and its English equivalent But

Ist Teil von

• Arab world English journal, 2020-03, Vol.11 (1), p.154-165

Ort / Verlag

Arab World English Journal

Erscheinungsjahr

2020

Quelle

Free E-Journal (出版社公開部分のみ）

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Discourse markers, as words or phrases, play a significant role in promoting coherent segments of discourse. This paper investigates the use of discourse markers (DMs) in newspaper articles. By applying Fraser's framework, this study aims at investigating the functions and positions of DM "but" (English) and its equivalent "lakin" (Arabic) in newspaper articles written by native and nonnative speakers of English and Saudi and Egyptian speakers of Arabic. It also highlights the similarities and differences in the functions and positions of DMs "but" and "lakin." This quantitative study adopts a corpus-based approach. The data consist of articles collected from 12 newspapers categorized as: Arabic language newspapers published in Saudi Arabia ("Alriyadh," "Al Jazirah," "AlHayat") and Egypt ("Al-Ahram," "Al-Gomhuria," "Eltahrir") and English language newspapers published in Saudi Arabia ("Arab News," "Saudi Gazette," "Asharq Al-Awsat") and the USA ("Washington Post," "The New York Times," "USA TODAY"). Findings demonstrate, first, that DM "but" is used frequently as a confirmation or addition marker by both native and non-native speakers. However, second, "lakin," functions as the primary correction DM in standard Arabic. Moreover, third, the native Arabic speakers mostly share the same functions of using "lakin" despite different dialects they have. This study also reveals that "lakin" can be found only in the medial position, whereas, "but" is found in the initial and medial position. It concludes that DMs "but" and "lakin" evidence that functions of DMs proposed by Fraser are universal and they could be generalized.