The Use of ‘Oh’ and ‘Well’ as Discourse Markers in Conversation of Bandung State Polytechnic Students

Abstract

Discourse markers could be particles such as ‘oh’, ‘well’, ‘then’, ‘you know’, and the connectives ‘so’, ’because’, ‘and’, ‘but’, and ‘or’. This research study was focused on discourse markers as particles: ‘oh’, and ’well’ since the data was taken from spontaneous students’ conversation. Based on the theory of Tree and Schrock (1999), discourse markers mostly used in spontaneous conversation are ‘well’, ‘I mean’, ‘like’, and ‘oh’. From the students’ conversation, only two discourse markers were found, namely: ‘oh’ and ‘well’. This study was conducted using both qualitative and quantitative methods with the descriptive/interpretative approach. The aims of the research are:  first, to analyze the use of ‘oh’ and ‘well’ in the conversation of students’ at Polytechnic State of Bandung; second, to analyze the erroneous use of ‘oh’ and ‘well’ as discourse markers in students’ conversation. The findings revealed that ‘well’ was mostly used as a face-threat mitigator, while the use of ‘well’ as a qualifier, indicating some problems on the preceding utterance, was not found. Meanwhile, the use of ‘oh’ was mostly used as pure surprise. The other uses of ‘oh’ as assertion, emphasis, and reaction were not found. From this study, it can  be found that the use of discourse marker ‘oh’ was more frequent than ‘well’ since ‘oh’ is also more commonly used in Indonesian conversations than ‘well.’ Another finding is, although students are more familiar with the use of ‘oh’ in their conversations, they made more errors in using it than ‘well’, because they do not know the correct use of it.