DISCOURSE MARKERS AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF INTERPERSONAL MEANING IN POLISH–ENGLISH DIGITAL COMMUNICATION: PRAGMATIC FUNCTIONS, SPEAKER STANCE, AND CONTEXTUAL INTERPRETATION

Digital exchanges between Polish and English are increasingly shaped by audiences who do not necessarily share the same assumptions about conversational alignment, disagreement, and interpersonal responsibility. This conceptual and contrastive article examines how discourse markers participate in the construction of speaker stance, social relations, and contextual interpretation in digitally mediated interaction. Building on discourse-marker theory, cross-cultural pragmatics, research on computer-mediated discourse, and accounts of relational work, the analysis distinguishes conventionalized discourse relations from situated interpersonal implications. Particular attention is given to Polish no, właśnie, przecież, więc, and reformulation expressions, compared with English well, actually, so, anyway, and I mean. Rather than treating lexical similarity as proof of functional equivalence, the study examines sequence, audience design, reply architecture, visibility, language alternation, and participant uptake. Constructed examples serve only to illustrate analytic alternatives and are not presented as empirical observations. The article develops a context-sensitive framework for analyzing potential equivalents and discusses implications for translation, multilingual education, moderation, and ethically grounded discourse research. Its central argument is that discourse markers should be compared as resources for accomplishing situated interactional actions, with uncertainty preserved whenever the available context cannot support a unique interpretation.