ABSTRACT
Pragmatic markers are indeed 'small', in that most of them are short words – some, such as 'oh', are not even full words, and most are commonly classed 'interjections', that is, items whose key feature is their syntactic independence. One reason why pragmatic markers are a popular topic in corpus linguistics (CL) is the fact that they are both high-frequent in and characteristic of spontaneous conversation. Pragmatic markers are first and foremost defined by, and identifiable via, the functions they perform in context. Pragmatic markers occur in key positions in discourse and interaction. These positions have in common that they are "transitions in the discourse where the hearer needs to be made aware that a new activity starts or that the speaker takes on a new role". The pragmatic marker 'well' has "received more attention than any other English pragmatic marker" both diachronically and synchronically. Pragmatic markers often occur in clumps, or clusters.
