Discourse markers in football reports of an online Arabic news portal / Nuradlina Khairudin

This study investigates the development and diversity of discourse markers in accordance with the Modern Standard Arabic approach employed in online news articles. 867 football news articles were downloaded from Al-Jazeera.net to analyse the use of discourse markers based on previous studies along with Modern Standard Arabic grammar books, as well as the theories of Fraser (2005) and Al-Khawaldeh (2014). Both data coding and analysis were completed manually. In accordance with the theories, this study lists 115 of discourse markers from five different categories. The results showed that in linking textual fragments, discourse markers under the Elaborative category are
the most frequently used in all the articles. Moreover, for each category, the researcher discovered a new set of discourse markers that was not considered in previous works. The manual coding process has also led to the discovery of a new category – Affirmative, with a comprehensive list of discourse markers. This category is originated from the Elaborative category, however with a more specific function in which its purpose is to strengthen and create emphasis to a context. Besides, this study also found that most Modern Standard Arabic discourse markers are constructed from a combination of two to three elements, known as Murakkab. Results from this study have shown that discourse markers with Modern Standard Arabic approach can evolve and expand through Classical Arabic approach. Hence, it is hoped that this study can function as an important reference for researchers who are interested to delve deeper into Arabic Discourse Markers.