A socio-pragmatic analysis of the Turkish discourse markers of ‘şey’, ‘yani’, and ‘işte’ based on educational level of speakers

This paper analyzes the influence of the educational level of speakers on speakers’ preferences of the Turkish discourse markers (DMs) şey ‘uh’, yani ‘I mean’, and işte ‘you know’. 56 participants from age groups 33–50 and over 50 participated in the study. Speech data from each participant in two speech corpora (planned vs. spontaneous) were gathered via face-to-face interviews. Although various trends have been observed in two speech conditions in terms of the educational level of the speakers in the current data, the frequency rates of these markers were mostly higher in the speech of (especially male) participants with a lower educational level, compared to those of participants with a higher educational level. Educational-level related differences were also observed in further analyses of the functions of the three DMs under focus.