Significative differences in the use of discourse markers between native speakers of Spanish and SFL Slovene learners

Abstract

Intercultural rhetoric is a recent evolution of the discipline traditionally known as contrastive rhetoric. It says that foreign language learners transfer rhetorical patterns from their mother tongue. Its main field of investigation is written expression of foreign language students. Thus, there are numerous studies that analyze the use of discourse markers in university students’ essays. In this paper, we analyze the significative differences that came up during an investigation about the use of discourse markers in an argumentative-expositive essay written by native speakers of Spanish and Slovenian learners of Spanish as a foreign language. We do that in order to explain the differences that appeared in the case of causal and counterargumentative discourse markers.