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BRIAN PALTRIDGE. DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
CHAPTER 1.
DISCOURSE ANALYSIS. Term first introduced by Zellig Harris in 1952 while analyzing connected speech and writing. He focused on: Examination of language beyond the level of the sentence → describe how language features are distributed within texts and the ways in which they combine. They are typical usage of language in particular situations. They not only share particular meanings but also have characteristic linguistic features associated with them. Relationship between linguistic and non-linguistic behavior → he referred to how people know how to interpret what someone says in varied situations; how to interpret a certain expression which can, in different contexts, have different meanings. Discourse analysis… ➢ is the analysis of language in use: it considers the language used in different contexts and aims to describe and analyze both spoken and written interactions. Its primary intent is to provide a deeper understanding and appreciation of texts and their meaning. ➢ studies how people organize what they say - what they say first typically, what they say next and so on: this in particular is cultural and language-related, as it varies across cultures and languages. PRAGMATICS. Included in the area of discourse analysis, especially regarding how the interpretation of language depends on knowledge of the real world and what people mean by what they say rather than the literal sense, which is of concern of semantics. DISCOURSE STRUCTURE OF TEXTS. Mitchell studied the ways in which people say what they say, focusing on the overall structure of these texts and introducing the stages : steps that language users go through in interactions. He explains how language is used as cooperative action and how the meaning of language lies in the situational context. It is quite experience related, as we know from our previous experiences how the interaction will typically start, what language will be used and how it will end. CONVERSATION ANALYSIS. Other researchers have investigated so-called recurring patterns in this area, looking at how people open and close and take turns and overlap their speech in conversations; they analyzed elements of the spoken language, such as overlap , pauses , increased volume and pitch and what they reveal about how people communicate with each other.. ETHNOGRAPHY OF COMMUNICATION. Hymes developed his studies in reaction to the neglect, at the time, of speech in linguistic analyses and anthropological descriptions of cultures, and also to the views of language which took little to no account of the social and cultural contexts. He considered in particular speech events : who is speaking to whom, about what, for what purposes, where, when, and how these impact on how we say and do things in culture-specific settings. COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE. Hymes' notion involves not only knowing a language, but also what to say to whom , how to say it appropriately, what is grammatically correct, when , where and with whom to use language appropriately and knowledge of the rules of speaking and how to use and respond to different speech acts. All of this involves taking account of the social and cultural settings, speakers’ and writers’ relationships with each other and the community’s norms, values and expectations for the speech events.
Communicative competence is made up of four underlying components: grammatical , the mastery of language code; sociolinguistic , the knowledge of appropriate language use; discourse , the knowledge of how to connect utterances in a text so it’s both cohesive and coherent; strategic competence , the mastery of the strategies that speakers use to compensate for breakdowns in communication and to enhance the effectiveness of it. Discursive competence draws together the notions of: TEXTUAL COMPETENCE → refers to the ability to produce and interpret contextually appropriate texts, using our linguistic, textual, contextual and pragmatic knowledge of what typically occurs, how it is typically organized and interpreted. GENERIC COMPETENCE → our ability to respond to both recurring and new communicative situations by constructing, interpreting, using and exploiting conventions associated with the use of genres of texts. SOCIAL COMPETENCE → describes how we use language to take part in social and institutional interactions to express our social identity within the constraints of the social situation and communicative interaction. DISCURSIVE COMPETENCE → includes language-related and text-level knowledge, and factors outside of the text to be taken into account. What is discourse analysis? Social science researchers argue that all their work is concerned with discourse analysis, yet often use the term in different ways. Mills shows how the term has shifted from highlighting one aspect of language usage to another and how it has been used in different ways by different researchers. Cazden focuses on two main views: the analysis of stretches of naturally occurring language and different ways of talking and understanding. Fairclough contrasts textually oriented discourse analysis with approaches that have a more theoretical orientation, but does not describe them as mutually exclusive. Cameron and Kulick make a similar observation: they say that the instances of language in use studied in a textually oriented view are still socially situated and need to be interpreted in terms of their social meanings and functions. Discourse analysis.. ➢ is a view of language at the level of text and the language in use: how people achieve certain communicative goals, perform certain communicative acts, participate in certain communicative events and present themselves to others. It considers how people manage interactions, how they communicate with particular groups and societies and cultures, how they do things beyond language and the ideas and beliefs that they communicate as they use language. ➢ as the social construction of reality : it sees texts as the communicative units in social and cultural practices. Discourse is both shaped by the world as well as shaping the world; is shaped by language as well as shaping it; is shaped by people using that language as well as shaping the language they use; is shaped by the discourse that precedes it as well as that which might follow; is shaped by the medium in which it occurs as well as shapes the possibilities for that medium; it shapes the range of possible purposes of texts.
All texts make meanings against the background of other texts and things that have been said on other occasions. We thus make sense of every word, every utterance, or act against the background of some other words, utterances, acts of a similar kind. All texts are in an intertextual relationship with other texts. There are differences between spoken and written language which have implications for discourse analysis, according to Biber.
1. GRAMMATICAL INTRICACY AND SPOKEN DISCOURSE Writing is more structurally complex and elaborate than speech. Halliday argues that spoken discourse has its own kind of complexity and is no less organized. He presents the notion of grammatical intricacy to refer to the way in which the relationship between clauses in spoken discourse can be much more spread out and with more complex relations between them than in writing, yet we still manage to keep track of these relations. 2. LEXICAL DENSITY IN SPOKEN AND WRITTEN DISCOURSE Written discourse tends to be more lexically dense than spoken discourse , according to Halliday. Lexical density refers to the ratio of content (nouns and verbs) to function words (prepositions, pronouns, articles): in spoken discourse content words tend to be spread out rather than being tightly packed. 3. NOMINALIZATION IN WRITTEN AND SPOKEN DISCOURSE There is a higher level of nominalization (actions and events presented as nouns rather than verbs) in written texts. Halliday refers to it as a grammatical metaphor , where language items are transferred from a more expected grammatical class to another. Written texts typically include longer noun groups, so the information is more tightly packed and less spread out than in spoken texts. Qualifiers following a noun are also typical of written discourse. 4. EXPLICITNESS IN SPOKEN AND WRITTEN DISCOURSE Writing is more explicit than speech : it depends on the purpose of the text, what the writer or speaker wants the reader or listener to understand, how direct the wish to be. A person can work out the meaning of something said or written from the situational context they are in, from their own background knowledge and the textual contest of what is said or written. 5. CONTEXTUALIZATION IN SPOKEN AND WRITTEN DISCOURSE Writing is more decontextualized than speech , based on the perception that speech depends on a shared situation and background for interpretation whereas writing does not. Spoken genres do not generally show a high dependence on a shared context, but written genres do: for example, both fiction and non-fiction may also depend on background information. 6. THE SPONTANEOUS NATURE OF SPOKEN DISCOURSE Speaking is disorganized and ungrammatical. Spoken discourse is organized differently from written discourse; it does, however, contain more half-completed and reformulated utterances than written discourse, because it is often produced spontaneously and we are able to see the process of its production as someone speaks. Whereas, texts are the finished products and a
highly idealized version of the writing process. With spoken discourse topics can be changed and speakers can interrupt and overlap, ask for clarification or correct something, and misunderstandings can be cleared up immediately. It also uses gesture, intonation and body language to convey meaning.
7. REPETITION, HESITATION AND REDUNDANCY IN SPOKEN DISCOURSE Speaking uses more repetition, hesitation and redundancy because it is produced in real time. It uses pauses and filler, to give the speaker time to think about what to say while speaking, or to hold on to their turn in conversation. 8. A CONTINUUM OF DIFFERENCES BETWEEN SPOKEN AND WRITTEN DISCOURSE Mccarthy argues that there is no simple, one-dimensional difference between spoken and written discourse, but they have to be seen on a scale, or continuum , to avoid over-simplified distinctions but still bringing out key areas of differentiation. Some spoken texts may often be more implicit whereas written texts may be more explicit; some texts may be more fragmented than others in their performance, whereas others may be more tightly organized and integrated. Written discourse is not just speaking written down : both speaking and writing use the same underlying grammatical system but they encode meanings in different ways depending on what they wish to represent. Biber found that there is no single absolute difference in English, but rather dimensions of variation where linguistic features tend to cluster and which vary for different genres. Considerable variation occurs even within particular genres. He supports the notion of a spoken-written continuum ; there are no absolute differences in terms of predominance of a linguistic feature, but spoken and written language are multidimensional constructs. Certain linguistic features may cluster in texts that share a similar communicative function, but these clusters are often distributed differently in different types of spoken and written texts. Spoken and written styles may intermingle in that forms that are typically associated with spoken language may also occur in written language.
III. the person who performs it must be the appropriate person to use it in the particular context; IV. the person performing must have the required thoughts, feelings and intentions. If the first and second of these conditions are not satisfied, the act will misfire ; if the third is not met, the act will be abused. Searle took Austin’s work further arguing that the felicity conditions are constitutive rules , not just something that can go right or wrong or be abused, but something which makes up and defines the act itself. In his view, the pragmatic use of language is rule-governed and these rules can be precisely stated; he tried to classify the speech acts into groups sharing the same conditions but found it impossible, and settled for a set of criteria : ➢ the most important are the purpose of the utterance, ➢ the direction of fit between the words we use and what we want the other person to do, and ➢ the amount of belief the speaker has in what they say. Thomas talked about principles , instead: she suggested that Searle was trying to describe a grammatical manner of communication by using the word rules. She also argued that it is extremely difficult to devise rules that describe the complexity of speech act behavior. According to her, there are five basic differences between rules and principles:
- rules are all or nothing , whereas principles are more or less ;
- rules are exclusive , whereas principles can co-occur ;
- rules aim to define a speech act, whereas principles describe what people do;
- rules are definite , principles are probabilistic ;
- rules are arbitrary , whereas principles are motivated , which means that people follow them for a purpose. The analysis of speech acts needs to also take account of the fact that we often deal with fuzzy categories, the physical and social context of use, the fact that meaning is not based on words alone and the different contributions that language users make to the meaning in interactions. PRESUPPOSITION. The common ground assumed to exist between language users such as assumed knowledge of a situation and/or of the world. conventional presuppositions , which are less context-dependent and linked to particular linguistic forms; pragmatic presuppositions , which are context-dependent and arise from the use of an utterance in a particular context. They are crucial to understand what people mean: it is because people make assumptions that discourse normally proceeds as smoothly as it does. COOPERATIVE PRINCIPLE. Grice says that for a person to interpret what someone else says, some kind of cooperative principle must operate: said principle says that we should make our contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs and by the accepted purpose or direction of the exchange. We base our understanding on the assumption that they are saying what needs to be said, at an appropriate point and they have a reason for saying it. Both people, thus, cooperate in its production and interpretation.
Grice bases his principle on four maxims: I. the maxim of quality says we should say only what we believe to be true and have evidence for; II. the maxim of quantity says that we should make our contribution as informative as it is required; III. the maxim of relation says we should make our contribution relevant, or indicate in which way it is not; IV. the maxim of manner says we should be clear, avoid obscurity or ambiguity, and be brief and orderly. If someone is unsure of what they want to say, wants to avoid someone else inferring, they often use metadiscourse to comment on what they are about to say or just said: it shows both their attitude to what they are saying and their attitude to the audience of the text. FLOUTING A MAXIM. There are times in which being truthful, brief and relevant might have a different meaning: this leads to a flouting of the principle and its maxims. To flout means that the person speaking purposely does not observe the maxim, and intends their hearer to be aware of this. According to Thomas and Cutting , flouting happens when the speaker does not observe a maxim but has no intention of deceiving or misleading, whereas violating a maxim means that there is a likelihood that they are purposely misleading the other. One can also infringe a maxim when they fail to observe a maxim with no intention to deceive. Overlap also sometimes happens between Grice’s maxims: an utterance may be both unclear and long-winded, flouting both the maxims of quality and quantity; it may also be socially acceptable to flout a maxim for reasons of tactness and politeness. Thus, it is quite important to understand to what extent people are following these maxims or not for the purposes of production and interpreting. The ways in which people perform acts and what they mean by what they say in the moment of performing them varies across cultures. Different languages and cultures have different ways of dealing with pragmatic issues and observing Grice’s maxims. For example, different speakers from different countries may have a different understanding of the maxim of quantity in conversations, or so has been observed by the studies of Béal in a communication in the workplace between French and English people, or those of Nakane in miscommunication between Japanese and English students, or even Austin ’s discussion of letters of recommendation in academic settings in English and Japanese language. CROSS-CULTURAL PRAGMATICS. Studies that concentrate on cross-cultural use of speech acts. Wierzbicka observed that different pragmatic norms reflect different cultural values which are, in turn, reflected in what people say and what they intend. Two key notions in this area are: pragmalinguistics , the study of the more linguistic end of pragmatics where we consider resources that a given language provides for conveying particular illocutions, or to simply put it, the study of speech acts in relation to typical linguistic structures ; sociopragmatics , the pragmatic performance of speech acts in specific social and cultural contexts , referred to specific local conditions of language use. CROSS-CULTURAL PRAGMATIC FAILURE. The failure to convey or understand a pragmatic intention. sociopragmatic failure happens when a speaker of a second language assesses situational factors on the basis of the sociopragmatic norms of their first language;
Politeness strategies also differ according to gender. Holmes’ works reveal that the relationship between sex, politeness and language is complex and that while researches show that women are more polite than men, it also depends on what we mean by polite , which women and men are compared and what community of practice the interaction occurs in. COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE. Group of people who come together to carry out certain activities with each other and in which the ways they talk, do things and their common knowledge, values and beliefs emerge and develop. This community of practice view was discussed by Christie while analyzing parliamentary debate in the UK, and she noticed that there is not much evidence of gender specific impoliteness, but rather politic verbal behavior. Mills points out that context has an important role. We also need to consider who is saying what, to whom, from what position, where and for what purpose. Politeness and gender research show that it may not always be a person’s gender identity the most salient in a particular situation but perhaps some other aspects of their identity that mostly influences their linguistic behavior. FACE-THREATENING ACTS. Sometimes we use mitigation devices not to threaten a person’s face: a pre-sequence or an insertion sequence , for example, to take the edge off the act, or an off-record speech act. The particular nature of face varies across cultures and politeness strategies are not necessarily universal: what may be a face-threatening act in one culture and may not be seen the same way in another. Politeness strategies are not the same across languages and cultures and might mean different things. A lack of understanding of politeness strategies can be a cause of cross-cultural pragmatic failure. Different views of pragmatic appropriateness can easily lead to misunderstandings and inhibit effective cross-cultural communication. Learners often acquire the linguistic means of performing politeness strategies before they acquire pragmatic rules of use; working on linguistic aspects such as word choice or intonation manipulation that affect the way each strategy is executed in a more subtle and effective way.
CHAPTER 6.
Hilles examines grammar and discourse from a contextual perspective:
- the first stage is to make a decision as to what aspect of language to investigate;
- look at as many sources as possible (it may include looking at how the item is used in other languages, how the use of it has changed over time);
- look at real-life native speaker examples;
- data needs to be analyzed: here, a key point is the role of the language item in the overall discourse or contextual factors that may influence the use of it.
- the final step is to test the hypotheses by asking native speakers. Hughes and McCarthy make comparisons between discourse and sentence-based grammar : discourse-based grammar makes a strong connection between form, function and context and aims to place appropriateness and use at the center of its descriptions; it acknowledges language choice, promotes awareness of interpersonal factors in grammatical choice and can provide insights into areas of grammar, such as ellipsis and tense-function correlations. Discourse-based grammar is also useful for looking at the relationship between vocabulary items in texts, and conjunctions. Hasan discusses two important attributes of texts, unity of structure and unity of texture. Texture results where there are language items that tie meanings together in texts as well as tie meaning to the social context in which texts occur. Hasan describes texture as being a matter of meaning relations , and a crucial notion is that of a tie connecting meanings of words to each other and to the outside world; thus, the area is that of semantics. COHESION. It refers to the relationship between items such as words, phrases and clauses to other items such as pronouns, nouns and conjunctions in texts. REFERENCE. It refers to the situation where the identity of an item can be retrieved from either within or outside the text. ANAPHORIC REFERENCE is where a word or phrase refers back to another word or phrase used earlier in the text; CATAPHORIC REFERENCE describes an item referred forward to another word or phrase used later in the text; EXOPHORIC REFERENCE looks outside the text to the situation in which the text occurs for the identity of the item being referred to; HOMOPHORIC REFERENCE is where the identity of the item can be retrieved by reference to cultural knowledge; COMPARATIVE REFERENCE refers to the identity of the presumed item which is retrieved not because it has already been mentioned, but because an item with which it is being compared has been mentioned; BRIDGING REFERENCE is where an item refers to something that has to be inferentially derived from the text or situation, that has to be presumed indirectly. LEXICAL COHESION. Relationships in meaning between lexical items and content words and the relationship between them. These relationships are not usually explicit; thus, if someone does not already know them, they are left to work it out from the text. REPETITION refers to words that are repeated in a text, including inflected words for tense or number or derived from particular items; SYNONYMY refers to words similar in meaning;
