The Discourse Marker ‘Ja’ in TV Home Shopping Discourse
This investigation aims to identify the roles of the discourse marker ja in home shopping discourse. In 12 excerpts of home s hopping d iscourse, ja h as been f ound 8 6 times, u sed as a marker o f adding more information, changing a subject, starting a new topic, focusing and suggesting. The analysis showed that the adding more information function, which is the most frequently used one (35 times), and the suggesting one were newly found in this type of discourse and directly related to the characteristic of the discourse: show hosts tend to provide as much information about the product as possible and to justify the consumption by suggesting various reasons. In addition, cases in which ja was used more than two times by one speaker were often found, which is connected to the fact that it is necessary to keep consumers' attention for the purpose of selling products. Also, guests who occasionally appear to help the hosts never used ja, which is because only show hosts have the power to control the discourse. In the process of switching the topic (e.g. price, composition, product features, or rushing comments), ja was used as a subject-changing marker second most frequently (29 times), especially when making rushing comments. These findings turn out to be closely related to the distinctive features of home shopping discourse, demonstrating the importance of studying discourse markers within the context of institutional discourse.