“Awww, we r sorry wai”: Pragmatic functions of L1 discourse markers in Ghanaians’ English-based WhatsApp conversations

Abstract

The use of discourse markers (DMs) in written conversations has long been seen as features of oral conversations that chatters transfer into their written conversations when they wish to activate the informal relationships they developed in oral conversational contexts (see e.g. Landone 2012 and Ramón 2015). This paper shows this conclusion to be true of the use of seven DMs (o, wai, saa, paa, waa, koraa and la) by Ghanaians in their in-group English-based WhatsApp conversations. The DMs are from some Ghanaian languages, and using the Markedness Model of Myers-Scotton (1993, 1998, 1999) it is shown that they occur as marked codeswitches in the otherwise English texts where, in addition to informalising interactions, serve as exhibits of chatters’ Ghanaian identity and in-group solidarity; it is unlikely that such forms as wai, saa, paa, waa, koraa and la will appear in chats of non-Ghanaians. Data analysed for the study were extracts from WhatsApp platforms with only Ghanaian participants.