Abstract
The present study aims to investigate the three near-synonymous Mandarin contrastive discourse markers keshi, danshi, and buguo from a discourse-pragmatic perspective. The study is based on 24 hours’ recording of natural spoken data, including conversations in group-consultation, daily conversations, telephone conversations, and radio call-in programs and interviews. Observing the naturally occurring spoken discourse in different styles within the approach of Relevancy Theory, various functions of keshi, danshi, and buguo are identified. The main function of keshi is to signal ‘contrast with sensitivity’, and that of danshi is to mark ‘contrast with emphasis’ while ‘contrast with backward remarks’ is examined as the main function of buguo. In addition, keshi and buguo tend to express implicit contrast whereas danshi conveys explicit contrast. As to their distribution, compared with the occurrences in written discourse in Sinica Corpus, keshi occurs more frequently in casual spoken discourse while danshi is preferable in formal written discourse. The result displays that that the use of keshi shows negotiable behaviors in interactional spoken discourse while danshi often occurs in formal written discourse, playing a transitional role in textual coherence.