Abstract :
This research examines the use of the discourse markers (DMs) you know, like, oh, well, yeah, and I mean in two speech contexts––interviews and casual conversations––to determine their role in marking and negotiating speaker roles. The DMs oh and well show statistically significant differences in rates of use between contexts, with both of these DMs occurring more frequently in conversations. Despite the initial classification of well as a presentation marker, these data indicate that oh and well both function primarily as reception markers and are used in conversations to create coherence between speaker turns. In interviews, the same speakers use oh and well less frequently because their role as interviewee does not require as much response to the other interlocutorʹs utterances. The DMs you know, like, yeah and I mean were used at similar rates across contexts, indicating that the functions of these presentation markers are more universal.
