FORM AND FUNCTION OF THE DISCOURSE MARKER ANYWAY - IMPLICATIONS FOR DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

Discourse markers have been observed to be an important component of l anguage which perform a variety of functions in discourse (Schiffrin 1 982, 1987). This study focuses on the form and function of a frequent but little-studied discourse marker, anyway (Polanyi and Scha 1983; Pr ince 1982, Haliday and Hasan 1976), using a corpus of tape-recorded or al narratives from 167 different informants. Syntactic and semantic in formation along with evidence from computerized pitch tracking of into nation 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/sid e structure. Two categories of triggers for use of anyway are proposed : teller-triggered and listener-triggered cases. Quantification reveal s that teller-triggered occurrences predominate three-to-one, showing the function to be primarily self-digression management. A brief discu ssion 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.