How egocentric is discourse marker use? Investigating the impact of speaker orientation and cognitive load on discourse marker production

Language has often been described as produced ‘for the hearer’. A case in point is the study of discourse markers (DMs), often presented as linguistic expressions that ‘provide instructions to the hearer’ (Hansen, 2006: 25). But what about their role for the speaker? Psycholinguistic research showing that speakers demonstrate egocentric behavior when their cognitive load increases (e.g. Keysar et al. 1998, Rosnagel 2000, Vogels et al. 2015) suggests that the lack of consideration for the role played by constraints on the speaker leaves us with an incomplete account of language production. To assess whether speakers use DMs with a communicative intention, i.e. purposefully and intentionally, this contribution reports on two experiments investigating the impact of speaker orientation (allocentric vs. egocentric) and cognitive load on the use of DMs. Results show that speakers use DMs both in the allocentric and egocentric conditions, but with systematic differences in terms of frequency, diversity and DM types. Cognitive load, however, does not seem to have any of the hypothesized effects on DM use.