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.