HOW TO EXPRESS YOUR EMOTIONS WITH ONE WORD: THE VERSATILE ROLE AND SOCIOLINGUISTIC ASPECTS OF THE SPEECH MARKERS 'EMA' AND 'EBA'

Abstract

In multilingual societies, the interaction of languages often leads to the emergence of unique linguistic features, especially in informal speech. In Kazakhstan, a country with more than 130 nationalities, Kazakh speakers often use elements of Russian in their everyday communication. Although the discourse markers in Indo-European languages have been extensively investigated, their functions in Kazakh remain underexplored. This study will fill that gap, contributing to three areas: (1) Linguistic Pragmatics and Prosody: analyzing how bilingual Kazakh speakers use ema and eba to manage conversation and express emotion improves our understanding of discourse markers. The main aspect of this analysis is studying the influence of intonation on the function of these markers; (2) Sociolinguistics and Identity: examining how these markers vary across social groups, shedding light on language's role in social identity; (3) Language Contact: exploring how bilingualism affects language structure with ema and eba in communication. In the circumstances of bilingualism in Kazakhstan, these markers reflect the mixing of Kazakh and Russian elements, enhancing the Kazakh language with new forms of expression. By addressing these unexplored aspects, this study will contribute to understanding discourse markers in Kazakh and advance the broader fields of discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, and bilingualism studies.