Discourse Markers in King Charles III’s Speeches on Climate Change
Discourse Markers in King Charles III’s Speeches on Climate Change

Summary/Abstract: The present article introduces and discusses a quantitative study that examines the use and the frequency of discourse markers (further – DMs), which are utilised in speeches on the issue of climate change by the current British monarch, King Charles III (thereafter – the King). The study involved a corpus of the King’s speeches on climate change from 2005, when the King was still referred to as His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales, to 2023, i.e. one year after his coronation. The corpus was examined in the software program AntConc (Anthony) for the presence of DMs, whose frequency was computed and subsequently processed in the statistical package SPSS (IBM). The results of the qualitative analysis revealed that the King’s speeches on the issue of climate change were characterised by such frequently used DMs, as and, as, but, and if. These findings are further discussed and illustrated in the article, which concludes with the summary of the major findings, their implications, limitations and direction for future research.

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