Analysis of Contrastive Discourse Markers Implementation in ESP Books of Computer Science Developed by Non-native (Iranian) and Native (British) Authors

Abstract

Discourse markers (DMs) as connective words guide interlocutors to the proper comprehension of discourses. Therefore, this study tried to evaluate contrastively and descriptively 'contrastive' discourse markers` implementation in ESP books of computer science developed by non-native (Iranian) and native (British) authors. To do so, a corpus of  two academic ESP books which are used by ESP teachers in Iranian universities was chosen and all contrastive discourse markers in the first reading parts of the books (totally 32 texts, each book 16 readings) were counted and classified based on Fraser`s (2006) taxonomy. Then results were analyzed by SPSS software (version 21.0) using chi-square formula. As far as this research was concerned, the results indicated that the employment of contrastive discourse markers is not significantly different in non-native and native developed texts. Moreover, results showed that 'but' followed by 'however' are more common contrastive discourse markers both in native and non-native developed texts. Also, contrastive discourse markers were more frequent in native-authored texts (% 0.54) than their non-native counterpart (% 0.36). It is hoped that further studies on larger corpora shed more light on the importance of discourse markers and help EFL learners, teachers, and material providers.