This research examines Topic Orientation Markers (TOMs), within the contexts of political, academic, and cultural speeches. To achieve this purpose, the framework established by Fraser (2009) was employed to categorize and quantify various Topic Orientation Markers across a collection of 534 speeches. The data set was compiled from five distinct databases: Great Speeches of the 20th Century, The American Presidency Project, Famous Speeches and Audios, United Nations; Islamic Republic of Iran, and TED Talks. Analytical tools such as AntConc and Microsoft Word were utilized to process the data. The analysis was conducted manually, and the findings were systematically recorded. The results indicated that the most frequently occurring markers included “(what/like/just/already) told/ mentioned/ spoke…” with 77 instances in the Return to Prior Topic (RPT) sub-group, “let's” with 350 instances in the Continuation with the Present Topic (CPT) sub-group, “by the way” with 94 instances in the Digression from the Present Topic (DPT) sub-group, and “but” with 2,745 instances in the Introducing a New Topic (INT) sub-group. Notably, "but" emerged as the most common Topic Orientation Marker, underscoring its significant function in the introduction of new topics. Furthermore, the analysis revealed that political speeches exhibited the highest frequencies of RPT (84) and CPT (210) markers, while cultural speeches recorded the lowest frequencies of RPT (49) and CPT (117). In contrast, the academic genre demonstrated the highest frequencies of DPT (123) and INT (1,570) markers. The results enhance our understanding of the role of Topic Orientation Markers across various speech contexts. This study highlighted the significance of genre in influencing linguistic selections and provided valuable perspectives for forthcoming research in discourse analysis and communication methodologies. The implications of these findings are discussed in detail.
