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;from different aspects. This chapter makes a literature review of studies on discourse markers and metapragmatic awareness.

2.1 Definitions of DMs
DMs are a kind of very common language elements. However, the definition of DMs varies from scholars to scholars throughout the studying history since different scholars study DMs from different angles. Therefore, different terms are used to name discourse markers, such as sentence connectives (Halliday and Hasan, 1976), pragmatic connective (Vandijk, 1979), semantic conjuncts (Quirk et al, 1953), discourse particles (Schorupm, 1985), pragmatic formative (Fraser, 1987), discourse operators (Redeker, 1990), linguistic maker (Redeker, 1991), discourse connective (Blakemore, 1987, 1988, 1992), pragmatic marker (Fraser, 1988, 1990, 1996), pragmatic operators (Ariel, 1994), and pragmatic particles (Ostman, 1995), and so forth. Some of the influential definitions of DMs will be presented in the following part. According to Schiffrin, discourse markers are defined as “sequentially dependent elements which bracket units of talk” (Schiffrin, 1987: 25). Schiffrin’s (1987) definition of discourse markers is based on his careful study of eleven DMs (namely, oh, well, and, but, or, because, so, now, then, I mean, and you know) in the oral discourse of ordinary conversations. From the perspective of coherence theory, Schiffrin (1987) studies how DMs help make the discourse coherent and interpreted, and she believes DMs “provide contextual coordination for ongoing talk” (Schiffrin, 1987: 25).
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2.2 Studies on DMs
After the first scholar Quirk (1953) studied DMs, a large number of researchers at home and abroad, do researches on DMs from various angles, which range from regarding DMs as a whole unit to researching into an individual word or phrase such as you know, well, because and so on. The following section is a literature review of discourse markers from different aspects abroad and in China. Ostman, the first scholar who studies DMs in the 1880s, chooses you know in his study and names it a particle. According to Ostman (1982), pragmatic particles can implicitly convey the language users’ attitudes and emotions and the interpretation of every communicative action depends on the context where pragmatic particles appear because pragmatic particles can convey necessary information related to the context in the process of interpreting certain utterance. What is more, Ostman claims that pragmatic particles have three main functions which are: (1) discourse marking and organizing; (2) interaction signaling; (3) attitude marking (Ostman, 1982). Schourup (1983) calls DMs common discourse particles and his research mainly focuses on the following four common discourse particles: well, oh, like, you know. He believes that common discourse particles can express certain connection of the thinking process before and when the discourse comes into being in the speakers’ mind to the listeners and manifest this ki