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Discourse [Cook]
1. What is Discourse? 1.1Discourse and the Sentence: We have two different kinds of language as potential objects for study: One abstracted in order to teach a lang or literacy, or to study how the rules of language work And another which has been used to communicate something, and it ´s felt to be coherent (and may or may not correspond to a correct sentence or a series of correct sentences). The latter kind is language in use, for communication, is called Discourse; and the search for what gives discourse coherence is Discourse Analysis. The two approaches are not mutually exclusive. Discourse may be composed of one or more well-formed grammatical sentences but it doesn´t have to be. It can have grammatical `mistakes´ in it, and often does. Discourse treats the rules of grammar as a resource, conforming to them when it needs to, but departing from them when it does not. What matters is not its conformity to rules, but the fact that it communicates and is recognized by its receivers as coherent. There is a degree of subjectivity in identifying a stretch of language as discourse, yet in practice we find that discourse is usually perceived as such by groups, rather than individuals. 1.2Grammar withing and beyond that sentence: Grammar doesn´t stop with a full stop but reaches over it. There are also rules which limit what kind of sentence can follow another. In the same way that there are rules within sentences, limiting which words can follow others, so there might also be rules within discourses, limiting which sentences can follow another one. So we now have two possible answers to the problem of how we recognize a stretch of language as unified and meaningful. One is that we employ lang rules of the type studied by grammarians and taught in most language textbooks, and that these rules operate between sentences as well as within them. The other is that we employ knowledge – of the world, of the speaker, of social convention, of what is going on around us as we read or listen – in order to make sense of the language we are encountering. Coherence is created by factors outside language. 1.3Language in and out of context:
When we receive a linguistic message, we pay attention to many other factors apart from the language itself. If we are face to face with the person sending the message, then we notice what they are doing with their face, eyes, and body while speaking. In a spoken message we notice the quality of the voice as well. These are called paralinguistic features. We are also influenced by the situation in which we receive messages, by our cultural and social relationship with the aprticipants, by what we know and what we assume the sender knows. These factors take us beyond the study of language, in a narrow sense, and force us to look at other areas of inquiry – the mind, the body, society, the physical world – in fact, at everything. There are good arguments for limiting a field of study to make it manageable; but it is also true to say that the answer to the question of what gives discourse its unity may be impossible to give without considering the world at large: the Context. In linguistics, specially in the English-speaking world bet the 1930s and 1960s there have been several schools ot thought which believe that context - this knowledge outside the world outside lang which we use to interpret it – should be ruled out of language analysis as far as possible. In this way, it is believe, linguists will be able to make discoveries abt the language itself, and its system of rules which exists quite independently of particular circumstances. We may validly characterize it as sentence linguistics , because it confines its inquiries to what happens within sentences. Sentence linguists follow one of two procedures: they eitherinvent their examples for analysis, using their own intuitive knowledge as native speakers (their linguistic competence) as a yardstick, or they take language which people have actually used and remove all the features which tey believe to be irrelevant to their purposes. This process of eliminating the unique combination of circumstances in which language happens is technically known as Idealization. Yet for the discourse analyst it may be exactly these transient and variable features which enable us to understand the meaning of what is said, and the reason why the order of sentences proceeds in the way that it does. The langauge learner needs to be able to handle language which is not idealized – language in use. The lang teacher needs, therefore, to decide on the extent to which idealized language may help the development of this ability. We have then, two approaches to language: sentence linguistics and discourse analysis. Both have an invaluable contribution to make to the understanding of language, and both ultimately need each other. We cannot communicate with only the rules of semantics and grammar, so we just as surely cannot communicate very well without them.
language it turns out that almost all the results lie within a relatively short stretch which we may call the sentence... Only rarely can we state restrictions across sentences´. If we are to find an answer to the problem of what gives stretches of language unitiy and meaning, we must look beyond the formal rules operating with sentences, and consider the people who use language, and the world in which it happens as well. Yet before we do so, it would be as well to see just how far formal, purely lingusitic rules can go in accounting for the way one sentence succedes another.
2. Formal Links 2.1 Formal and contextual links: In order to account for discourse, we need to look at features outside the language. This facts enable us to construct stretches of lang as discourse, as having a meaning and a unity for us. The way we recognize correct and incorrect sentences is different. We can do this through our knowledge of grammar without reference to outside facts. We can describe the two ways of approaching language as contextual , referring to facts outside language, and formal , referring to facts inside language. Contextual features are somewhere outside this physical realization of the language. Streteches of language treated only formally are referred to as text. Now although it is true that we need to consider contextual factors we cannot say that there are no formal links bet sentences in discourse. We shall now try to categorize these formal links and then examine how far they will go in helping to explain why a succession of sentences is discourse, and not just a disconnected jumble. Formal links bet sentences and bet clauses are known as Cohesive Devices. Verb forms : The form of the verb can limit the choice of the verb form in the next. Parallelism : Another link within discourse is effected by parallelism, a device which suggests a connection, simpy because the form of one sentence or clause repeats the form of another. This is often used in speeches, prayers, poetry, and advertisements. It can have a powerful emotional effect. It doesn´t have to be necessarily grammatical parallelism. It may be a sound parallelism; as in the rhyme, rhythm, and other sound effects of verse. One might even extend the idea and talk of semantic parallelism where two sentences are linked because they mean the same thing.
Referring expressions : These are words whose meaning can only be discovered by referring to other words or to elements of the context which are clear to both sender and receiver. The most obvious example of them is third person pronouns. It is not only the third pers. pronouns which work in this way. The meanings of this and that , and here and there have also to be found either formally in another part of the discourse or contextually from the world. Anaphoric ref.: The identity of someone or something is given once at the beginning, and thereafter referred to with pronouns. Cataphoric ref.: The pronouns are given first and then the identity is revealed. Exophoric ref. : The meaning is foundcontextually from the outside world. Referring expresions fulfuil a dual purpose of unifying the text (they depend upon some of the subject matter remaining the same) and of economy, because they save us from having to repeat the identity of what we are talking abt again and again. Repetition and lexical chains: Repetition of wds can create the same sort of chain as pronouns, and there are sometimes good reasons for preferring it. In Britain, mother tongue learners of Eng are discouraged from using repetition on the grounds that it is bad style ´, and ecouraged to use a device known aselegant repetition´, where synonymous or more general wds or phrases are used. So instead of writing: The pineapple.. the pineapple.. the pineapple.. the pineapple They might write The pineapple.. the lusciuous fruit.. our meal.. the tropical luxury. The kind of link that we choose will depend upon the kind of discourse we are seeking to create, and elegant repetition is not always desirable. It may sound pretentious in causal conversation, or create dangerous ambiguity in a legal document. We have described referring expressions, repetition, and elegant repetition as establishing `chains´ of connected wds running through discourse. Such lexical chains need not necessarily consist of wds which mean the same, howver. They may also be created by wds which associate with each other. This association may be by virtue of some formal semantic connection ( good , for example, associates with its opposite bad ), or it may be because wds are felt to belong to some more vaguely defined lexical group (rock star; wld tour; millionaire; yacht). This last kind of connection, though it is sometimes treated as
language we are teaching is crucial if we are to help foreign learners to make their wds function in the way that they intend. From now on, we shall use the term utterance for a unit of language used by somebody in context to do sth – to communicate – and reserve sentence for grammatically complete units regarded purely formally, in isolation from their context and their function. 3.2 The classification of Macro-functions: There have been many attempts to classify the main functions of language ( macro-functions ). One of the clearest and most influential was formulated by the linguist Roman Jakobson (1960), and further developed by Dell Hymes (1962). The scheme proceeds by first identifying the elements of communication [7] as follows: The addresser : the person who originates the message. This is usually the same as the person who is sending the message, but not always, as in the case of messengers, spokepeople, etc. The adressee : the person to whom the message is addressed. This is usually the person who receives the message, but not necessarily so, as in the case of intercepted letters, bugged telephone calls, etc. The channel : the medium through which the message travels: sound waves, marks on paper, telephone wires, etc. The message form : the particular grammatical and lexical choices of the message. The topic : the information carried in the message. The code : the language or dialect, for example, Swedish. The setting : the social or physical context. Macro-functions [7] are then established each focusing attention upon one element: The emotive function : Communicating the inner states and emotions of the addresser (Oh! No!´,Fantastic!´) The directive function : Seeking to affect the behaviour of the addressee (Please help me´,Shut up!´). The phatic function : Opening th channel or checking that it is working, either for social reasons (Hello, lovely day!´,Do you come here often?´) or for practical ones (Can you hear me?´,Are you still there?´). The poetic function : In which the particular form chosen is the essence of the message (Beanz meanz Heinz). The referential function : carrying information. The metalinguistic function : Focusing attention upon the code itself, to clarify it or renegotiate it (What does this wd here means?´,This bone is known as the femur´´). **The contextual function** : Creating a particular kind of communication (right, let´s start the lecture´, `it´s just a game´). 3.3 Functional development:
It´s interesting to speculate, if one accepts this classification, on the evolution of functions in each human individual. The crying baby is being expressive, although her cries are not really language at all, but instinctive reactions to the envirnometn. When she realizes that by controlling these cries, and producing them at will rather than automatically, she can influence the behaviour of her parents, she has progressed to the directive function. Phatic communication also begins very early. Chuckling, gurgling, babbling, often have no function but to say: `Here I am, and so are you´. The poetic function is also apparent at an early statge: when young children latch on to a phrase and repeat it endlessly, without conveying any information. The referential function gains its prominence only at a later stage, and the metalinguistic function also comes later; these are the functions on which a considerable amount of attention is lavished at school. Surprisingly, considering this course of development, a good deal of foreign language teaching begins with the metalinguistic function, by explicitly stating the rules of grammar. 3.4 Micro-functions and functional language teaching: We might go on to subdivide each function and specify more delicate categories, or micro-functions:. A breakdown of the directive function for example: Question Requests for action Orders Requests for information Directive function Requests Requests for help Pleas Requests for sympathy Prayers Certainly no list could ever claim to be exhaustive and complete.
3.7 Flouting the co-operative principle: There are times when meaning derives from deliberate violations – or flautings as Grice calls them – of the co-operative principle, always provided that the sender intends the receiver to perceive them as such, and that this is how, in fact, the receiver does perceive them. It is possible to flout the quality maxim without lying. For example: `Queen Victoria is made of Iron´. Though it is not literally true, you will perceive such remarks as figures of speech. These are Hyperbole, metaphor, Irony and sarcasm and they will all depend upon the assumption that they will be interpreted as deliberate floutings of the charge to be true rather than as untruths intended to deceive. Just as the quality maxim can be flouted for effect, so can the other three. The quantity maxim is violated in both directions: creating prolixity if we say too much and terseness if we are too brief. We often say more than we need, perhaps to mark a sense of accasion, or respect; and we often say less than we need, perhaps to be rude, or blunt, or forthright. Sometimes we deliberately flout the charge to be relevant, to sign embarrasment or a desire to change the subject. Lastly, the maxim of manner is violated either for humour, as in the case of puns and doubles entendres, where rival meanings are deliberately tolearted, or in order to establish solidarity bet speakers and exclude an overhearer from the conversation. The meanings created by these floutings are often social, signalling the attitude of the sender to the receiver of the message, and the kind of relationship which exists or is developing bet them. Grice viewed these attitudinal meanings as being created by departures from the co-operative principle. 3.8 Conversational principles: Politeness: The politeness principle, like the co-operative principle, may be formulated as a series of maxims which people assume are being followed in the utterances of others. As with the co-operative principle any flouting of these maxims will take on meaning, provided it is perceived for what it is. Robin Lakoff formulated them as follows:
- Don´t impose
- Give options
- Make your receiver feel good. These maxims of the politeness principle explain many of those frequent utterances in which no new information is communicated. In Eng we often give orders, and make requests and pleas (directives) in the form of elaborate questions which give the option of refusal; we apologize for imposing and add in praise to make our hearer feel
good. Clearly the politeness principle and the com-operative principle are often in conflict with each other. Politeness and truth are often mutually incompatible and so are politeness and brevity. These conflicting demands of the two principles are something of which people are consciously awarre. In english, there is even a term for the surrender of truth to politeness: `A white lie´. 3.8 The social basis of conversational principles: The co-operative and politeness principles, and the tension bet them, reflect a dual purpose in human intercourse: to act efficiently together with other people, and to create and maintain social relationships. There are situations, and there are types of relationships, in which one of these purposes becomes dominant, and the other hardly matters at all. In emergencies, when there is a need for immediate action, it is hardly appropriate to follow the politeness principle. Brown and Levinson (1978), who have studied politeness phenomena, suggest that teir origin is teh same in all societies. All human beings, in order to enter into social relationships with each other, must acknowledge the face of other people. By this they mean that people both avoid intruding upon each other´s territory (physical territory, a part field of knowledge, a friendship) and also seek to enlarge the territory of others – in Lakoff´s terms, make the other person feel good – presumably on the assumption that the same will be done to them. The specific nature of face varies from society to society. The precise way of indicating respect for face may be culture specific, and not subject to direct translation. In some cultures, initial refusal of an offer may be merely polite, and invite repetition; in others the opposite may be true. Thourgh their realizations differ, the two, often conflicting, aims of communication – to co-operate and to maintain social relations – are universal. The theory also goes some wayy towards answering the question of why people speak indirectly. It enables them to give options and also to retreat behind the literal meaning of what is said. 3.9 Speech Acts: Inferring the function of what is said by considering its form and context is an ability which is essential for the creation and reception of coherent discourse and thus for successful communication. The principles of politeness and co-operation are not, on their own, enough to provide the explanation for this inference. To do this we also need knowledge of the physical and social world. We also need to make assumptions abt the knowlege of the people with whom we are interacting. An approach which tries to formulate how such knowledge is brought into play is speech act theory. This was first formulated by the philosopher John Austin (1962). These ideas were further developed
3.11 Speech act theory and coherence: Speech act theory provides us with a means of probing beneath the surface of discourse and establishing the function of what is being said. We shall be able to examine the structure of discourse both in terms of surface relations of form, and underlying relations of functions and acts. The family to which the act of ordering belongs is called directives. Another family of speech acts which has been suggested is expressives, which includes the act of thanking, apologizing, welcoming, and congratulating. We also have the commissives, which include acts of promising and threatening. 3.12 Underlying force: Speech act theory uses technical terms for these layers of intention and interpretation. The formal literal meaning of the wds is the locution ; the act which is performed by saying it the illocution ; a third layer is the perlocution or overall aim of the discourse. An utterance is said to have illocutionary force and perlocutionary force. If we go back to the private´s utterance `I´ve been scrubbing them all morning and they won´t come any cleaner´, we can relate it to these three layers as follows:
- The locution: a statement conveying information that the speaker has been cleaning his boots all morning.
- The illocution: to challenge the sergeant´s order.
- The perlocution: to undermine the sergeant´s authority, or to be cheeky, or to escape the duty of cleaning the boots. Notice how meaning becomes more and more slippery as we move from one layer to the next. This is something which human beings exploit to their advantage. It enables them to avoid commiting themselves and to retreat in front of danger; and this is one of the major reasons why people speak indirectly. Indirection also enables us to give others the option of retreat. Quite often, people explicitly discuss, or try to clarify the illocutionary and perlocutionary force, to formulate the upshot of what is said. Even in more casual situations people often try to get at the upshot of what is being said with such utterances as `what are you trying to tell me?´ 3.13 Pragmatics, discourse analysis, and language teaching: The fact that meaning is not constructed from the formal language of the message alone is crucial in explaining what it is that makes people perceive some stretches of language as coherent discourse
and others as disconnected jumbles. It is also important for the successful teaching and learning of foreign languages. The importance of pragmatic theories in lang learning is really twofold. Firstly, the divergence of function and form means that we cannot rely upon teachin only form. In production, learners need to choose the wds which most suitable realize their intentiiioon, and this does not always entail the most closely related form. There aer times when making language function effectively is more important than producing perfectly pronounced, grammatically correct sentences. Secondly, the linking of form to function may help learners to orientate themselves within a discourse. The underlying structure of the discourse may be a progression of functional units, and a breakdown in pragmatic interpretation may easily add to a learner losing his/her way. In order to `do things with wds´ either actively, as language producers, or passively, as language understanders, we clearly need more tools than the formal language system, though we do need that too. The needs of the language user might be represented like this: Pronunciation Lang system Grammar Vocabulary Voice USER Paralanguage Face GOAL Body Knowledge Cultural World Reasoning Traditionally, language teaching has concentrated only on the hree levels of the formal language system – pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary – and the way in which they function within the sentence, on the assumption that other aspects of communication will follow fairly automatically. It remains true, of course, that the formal system needs to be acquired in some way. Is is not, however, all that is needed for communication. What we need to decide as language teachers is the degree to which other components of communication need teaching. All human beings have reasoning power, world knowledge, and knowledge of at least one culture, but the divisions bet these categories, and the nature of their contents are not always clear. The pragmatic theories we have examined leave a number of unasnwered questions. It is not always clear, for example, where the
A pioneering and influential study in this field was carried out at the University of Birmingham by Sinclair and Coulthard (1975). The discourse type it chose to analyse was school lessons. S & C recorded a number of British primary school lessons. On the basis of these data they proposed a rank structure for these lessons as follows:
- Lesson
- Transaction
- Exchange
- Move
- Act They then drew up rules, based on the data, showing how these acts combine together to form moves and how moves combine to form various kinds of exchange – rather as grammarians formulate rules describing how words combine into phrases, or phrases into clauses. One kind of exchange, for example, consisted of between one and three moves: Opening (answering) (follow up) 4.3 Discourse typology: spoken and written; formal and informal: Traditionally, language teaching has divided discourse into two major categories, the spoken and the written, further divided into the four skills of speaking and listening, writing and reading. The traditional division of language into the spoken and the written is clearly and sensibly based on a difference in production and reception: we use our mouths and ears for one, and ours hands and eyes for the other. Yet as far as discourse structure is concerned, a more fundamental distinction seems to be bet formal, planned discourse, which may be either written or spoken, and less formal, unplanned discourse which – though it may also be either written or spoken – is usually associated with speech. Informal spoken discourse is something in which the modern foreign language learner, with opportunities for travel and social contact, is most likely to wish to succeed, but also the discourse type he or she is likely to find hardest, precisely because it is so informal and unpredictable. 4.4Conversation as a discourse type: The term `Conversation´ is widely used, in a non-technical sense, usually with the implication that the talk is less formal. We shall define the term as follows: Talk may be classed as conversation when: It is not primarily necessitated by a practical task.
Any unequal power of participants is partially suspended. The number of participants is small. Turns are short. Talk is primarily for the participants and not for an outside audience. Although these definitions are imprecise, they are useful. The boundary bet conversation and other discourse types is a fuzzy one, and there are many intermediate cases. A seminar, for example, might come somewhere bet the two poles. Formal spoken discourse------------------------------------------------ Conversation 4.5Turn – Taking: Overlap of turns occurs in only abt 5 per cent of conversation or less, strongly suggesting that speakers somehow know exactly when and where to enter. Where there is overlap bet turns it has some particular signnificance: signalling annoyance, urgency, or a desire to correct what is being said. Conversely, pauses bet turns also carry particular meaning. The significance of this approach for the langugage learner is considerable. Turn-taking mechanisms, the way in which speakers hold or pass the floor, vary bet cultures and bet languages. Overlap in a given situation is more or less tolerated in some societies than in others. Efficient turn-taking also involves factors which are not linguistic. Eye contact is one strong means of signalling, and in British culture (in very general terms) it can often be observed that speakers look away during their turn and then look their interlocutor in the eye at the end. Body position and movement also play and important part. Intonation and volume contribute to turn-taking too. The relative status of the speakers, or the role which one of them is playing, are also important. In formal situations roles can clearly give people special rights, but even in conversation – where according to our definition unequal power is suspended – it is unlikely that knowledge of participants´ social status will be wholly forgotten. Students fall silent when the professor speaks – in the bar as well as in the seminar. 4.6Turn types: One kind of turn alternation the ethnomethodologists describe is an adjacency pair. This occurs when the utterance of one speaker makes a particular kind of response very likely. A greeting, for example, is likely to be answered by another greeting. In an adjacency pair, there is often a choice of two likely responses. A request is most likely to be
Culture specific rules and procedures of turn-taking provide ample breeding ground for misunderstanding. Entering and leaving conversation, bidding for a longer turn, refusing without appearing rude, changing the topic, are all notoriously difficult for foreign learners: tasks for which the language classroom, where turns are patiently organised and controlled by the teacher, has hardly prepared them. Indeed the teacher who constantly itnerrupts the students´ discourse to correct every grammatical mistake not only violates usual turn-taking procedures but may also hinder the students´ acquisition of them.
- Discourse as dialogue. 5.1 Dialogue in communnicative development : Developmentally, dialogue comes first, both for the human specied, and for the human individual. We have no hard evidence of the origins of language in prehistoric communities, but is seems reasonable to assume that speech preceded writing and dialogue preceded monologue. As with societies, so with each individual infant. Turn-taking and interaction are among the first communicative skills. 5.2Disourse typology: reciprocity: In discourse analysis it has been fairly common to distinguish bet two fundamental types of discourse: reciprocal and non-reciprocal. Discourse is reciprocal when there is at least a potential for interaction, when the sender can monitor reception and adjust to it- or, to put it in another way, where the receiver can influence the development of what is being said. In non-reciprocal discourse, sender and receiver may have no opportunity for interaction. The prototype of non-reciprocal discourse is a book by a dead author. The distinction, however, is misleading. Absolutely non-reciprocal discourse is unlikely. Even writers working in solitude try to form some idea of the receiver of their work and adjust to it- the meaningfulness of what they say can be viewed as a measure of the success of that predicition and adjustment. Reciprocity is a question of degree. All discourse is more or less reciprocal, if only because it is based upon assumptions abt receivers. It should also be clear that although there is a general tendency for speech to be more reciprocal and writing to be less so, this is by no means necessarily true, and the reciprocal-non-reciprocal cline, like the formal-informal cline, cuts across the distinctionbet speech and
writing. A monarch´s speech at a state opening of parliament though spoken, is farm from the reciprocal end of the scale, but a scribbled memo from one teacher to another, though written, may trigger off a series of replies and counter replies, and is thus highly reciprocal. 5.3Information structure in discourse: One widely accepted explanation is that the ordering of information is determined by the sender´s hypotheses abt what the receiver does and does not know. With interpretation we might divide information into two types – that which the sender thinks the receiver already knows, and that which the sender thinks the receiver does not already know – and label these two types given information and new information respectively. Any unit of information may of course change status as the discourse proceeds, and what was new in one sentence becomes given in the next, precisely because it has just been said. Indeed, communication might be defined as the conversion of new information into given information, and a successful communicator as a person who correctly assesses the state of knowledge of his or her interlocutor. If we misjudge, and treat what is given as new, we will be boring; in the reverse case when we assume the new to be given, we will be incomprehensible. A typical discourse, then, proceeds roughly as follows: Given....... New. Given...... New. Given....... New. Each given unit being already known by the receiver, or deriving from a preceding piece of new information. Our choices among the options for arranging the information are neither arbitrary, nor just aesthetic devices to ensure variety, but have some communicative funciton, making discourse more readily comprehensible. As we do make important choicies bet alternative versions of sentences, even though each one is correct in itself, then in a succession of sentences, it is possible that the choice is being dictated by the sentence before, each one having a knock-on effect on the structure of the next. At first then, it would seem that this ordering of information is another instance of a formal connection bet sentences in discourse. On closer inspection it turns out to be also contextual, dictated by what is going on in the mind of the sender and the assumptions he or she makes about what is going on in the mind of the receiver. One way of understanding this is to view the discourse as proceeding by answering imagined and unspoken questions by the receiver. In this light, all discourse seems to proceed like a dialogue, even if the other voice is only present as a ghost.
