Abstract
Drawing on data from the two corpora LINDSEI-NO and LOCNEC, this project examines and compares the three discourse markers 'like', 'well' and 'you know' as spoken by Norwegian advanced learners of English (NLEs) and British English speakers (BESs). Making use of Granger’s (2015) Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis2 model, the study investigates whether and how the two speaker groups differ in their production of these DMs, and discusses possible explanations for the observed differences. This study is founded on the assumption that Norwegian learners differ from the British English speakers in their use of DMs, which is also confirmed by the results revealing a general underrepresentation of the three DMs in the NLE data. The findings indicate that although both speaker groups display a similar functional scope of the DMs, i.e. both speaker groups use the markers for the same pragmatic functions, the frequency of these pragmatic functions is mostly lower in the NLE data than in the BES data. A qualitative analysis of a selection of these functions uncovers that the learners often demonstrate a less systematic use of the DMs than the British speakers, especially in terms of collocation patterns. It is argued that lack of input in English textbooks and classroom instruction may explain some of this observed discrepancy between the two speaker groups. However, the findings suggest that this factor alone cannot explain the differences, and that other factors, such as transfer from Norwegian, learners’ lack of selfconfidence and cultural differences, also require consideration. In addition to mapping the two speaker groups’ use of the three DMs, this thesis contributes to the discussion of the importance of teaching DMs in school, as they are crucial elements in the learners’ effort to achieve communicative competence. It is argued that by directing the learners’ attention toward discourse markers in the teaching of English in Norway, they may reach a higher level of communicative competence and thereby display a more systematic and reference language-like usage of DMs.