Evolutionary Perspectives on Discourse Markers in Cyber-Pragmatics: Between Dialogical Silence and Filler Expressions

This study aims to clarify the synchronic and diachronic status of discourse markers as a pragmatically
grounded linguistic category within cyber-communication. It investigates their functional and
developmental relationship with silence and filler expressions in order to distinguish these phenomena
conceptually and linguistically. By examining discourse-level change, the study seeks to contribute to
theories of language evolution and support the development of functional grammatical models capable
of accounting for discourse phenomena.
This study employs a qualitative, corpus-based methodology combining synchronic and diachronic
approaches to the analysis of discourse markers in cyber-communication. The primary dataset consists
of a private corpus of 600 instant messaging conversations conducted via Hangouts, Facebook
Messenger, and WhatsApp, supplemented by data from the Macedonian Web Corpus (mkWaC) as a
reference corpus. The analytical framework integrates conversation analysis, pragmatics, discourse
analysis, philosophy of language, and functional approaches to grammar to examine the communicative
and developmental aspects of discourse markers.
The study is expected to demonstrate that discourse markers constitute a pragmatically grounded
linguistic category with identifiable synchronic and diachronic functions in cyber-communication.
Findings are anticipated to clarify their developmental relationship with silence and filler expressions,
contributing to a more precise conceptual distinction between these phenomena. The research is also
expected to reveal discourse-level evolutionary processes and provide a theoretical-methodological
framework for analysing communication in digital environments.