The Influence of Age and Gender on the Selection of Discourse Markers in Casual Conversations

Abstract

This paper is a pragmatic, functional and discursive analysis of actual conversations. The aim of this research is to discover the extent to which the contributions of the participants in casual verbal interactions are influenced by variables such as age or gender. Casual conversation is the interactional pattern in which discourse markers could acquire the most innovative pragmatic meanings and functions due to the lack of discursive constraints that characterize this type of verbal exchange. Among the elements that generate such discursive individuality are the variables of age and gender. The latter variables could either contribute to the confirmation of the core pragmatic meanings and functions of discourse markers or they could trigger the speaker’s distancing from these central functional descriptions.