Investigating the Pragmatic Functions of Discourse Markers in Ayi Kwei Armah’s The Beautyful Ones are not yet Born

Discourse managers are usually good persuaders. They exercise these skills when they present
projects, discuss problems, negotiate agreements and make decisions. It goes unsaid that
management is not a solitary activity but involves social interaction mediated by language. Thus, to
enhance the study of some discourse markers as linguistic evidence, we resort to Ayi Kwei Armah’s
The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, as a particular discourse type focused on the political
discourse. In fact, in this corpus, management is at stake because the upright man resisting the
temptations of easy bribes and easy satisfaction is expected to comply with the pervading corruption
and greed in his society. It is in other words especially an investigation of the communicative
strategies used by speakers to induce the co-speaker adherence. Therefore, attentions to discourse
markers "well", "you know" and "I think" have been maximized in this paper.