The study of markers in the narration of Iranian children’s short story

Abstract

Discourse markers (DMs) are linguistic elements that index different relations and coherence between units of talk (Schiffrin, 1987). Most research on the development of these forms has focused on conversations rather than narratives and furthermore has not directly compared children narrative (both sex between 10 -12). This article examines various discourse markers in oral Persian narratives of short story in 60 Iranian children (both sex between 10 -12), and that their functions within the oral narrative context follow neither from their usual meanings nor from their usual discourse functions in other contexts. These markers just help to continue the narrative procedure. Narrative experts illustrate how “well” and “but” initiate and conclude narrative action, how they guide listeners following their interruption and sequence of narrative elements. The results showed that frequency and functions of markers in girls and boys are different. Overall, the findings of this article showed that how girls use other factors such as the repetition of previous phrase or word to guide listeners back to the main sequence of narrative elements, while boys do not use these factors and just rely on the markers “then” and “and” .They also use “pause” and silence as new marker elements.