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WHAT IS DISCOURSE ANALYSIS?
Discourse analysis examines patterns of language across texts and considers the relationship between language and the social and cultural contexts in which it is used. Discourse analysis also considers the ways that the use of language presents different views of the world and different understandings. It examines how the use of language is influenced by relationships between participants as well as the effects the use of language has upon social identities and relations. It also considers how views of the world, and identities, are constructed through the use of discourse. Discourse Analysis and Pragmatics. Pragmatics is interested in what people mean by what they say,rather than what words in their most literal sense might mean by themselves. THE DISCOURSE STRUCTURE OF TEXTS. Mitchell was one of the first researchers to examine the DISCOURSE STRUCTURE OF TEXTS.
- How people organize what they say. - Mitchell introduces the notion of STAGES in discourse analysis. Cultural ways of speaking and writing. The ways in which language is used by particular groups is through the notion of ETHNOGRAPHY OF COMMUNICATION. -Ways of saying things in different cultures COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE AND DISCOURSE. Communicative comptence is an important part of communication. Communicative competnce involves: -knowing language -what to say to whom -how to say is appropriately in a particular situation. Communicative competence consists of four components: -grammatical competence -socio linguistic competence -discourse competence -strategic competence.
DISCURSIVE COMPETENCE.
Discursive competence draws together the notions of: •textual competence: ability to produce and iterpret contextually appropriate texts. •generic competence: how we are able to respond to both recurring and new communicative situations. •social competence: how we use language to take part in social and institutional interactions. Discursive competence includes not only language related and text level knowledge, but also includes complex factors outside of the text which are required for effective communication. DIFFERENT VIEWS OF DISCOURSE ANALYSIS. Discurse analisys is a view of language at the level of the text and a view of language in use. Discourse analysis considers how people manage interactions with each other and how people communicate within particular groups and societies. DISCOURSE AS THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF REALITY.
- Texts as communicative units embedded in social and cultural practices. - Discourse is shaped by language. - Analysis of the BBC Panorama interview with Princess Diana, is an example of the role of language in the construction of the social role. In this interview Princess Diana doesn’t only talk about herself, but while she talking she constructs her social world in a way that she wants people to see. DISCOURSE AND SOCIALLY SITUATED IDENTITIES. - We use more than just language to display who we are (clothing, gestures, act/interact) - Discourses involve the socially situated identities that we enact and recognize in the different settings that we interact in. DISCOURSE AND INTERTEXTUALITY. - All texts more or less implicitly cite other texts. - Umberto Eco (1987) analysis of Casablanca. - A movie that, due to a low budget, mixed many genres (adventure, gangster, action,romance) DIFFERENCES BETWEEN SPOKEN AND WRITTEN DISCOURSE.
Pragmatics is the study of meaning in relation to the context in which a person is speaking or writing. LANGUAGE, CONTEXT AND DISCOURSE. There are aspects of cotext that are crucial to the production and interpretation of discurse. These are: •Situational context: in terms of what people know about what they can see around them •Background knowledge context: in terms of what people know about each other and the world •Co-textual context: in terms of what people know about what they have been saying. Meaning is not something that is inherent in the words alone, nor is it produced by the speaker alone or the hearer alone. Making meaning is a dynamic process, involving the negotiation of meaning between speaker and hearer, the context of utterance (physical, social and linguistic), and the meaning potential of an utterance. SPEECH ACTS AND DISCOURSE. Two influential works in pragmatics: Austin: How to Do Things with Words and Searle: Speech Acts We use language to ‘do things’, not just to refer to the truth or falsity of particular statements. -We make requests/promises/threast -We ask questions -We give orders/warnings/advice Austin refers to three types of acts: Locutionary acts : literal meaning of the actual words Illocutionary acts : intention of the speaker when uttering the words Perlocutionary acts : the effect the utterance has upon the thoughts or actions of recipients. DIRECT AND INDIRECT SPEECH ACTS. Most of our illocutionary acts are expressed indirectly. Waiter: Can I take your order now? Illoc. Act: Offer / Syntactic Form: Interrogative=> Indirect Customer: Can I have one hamburger with fries?
Illoc. Act: Request / Syntactic Form: Interrogative=> Indirect The room needs to be cleaned Act: Request / Syntactic Form: Declarative=> Indirect FELICITY CONDITIONS AND DISCOURSE. In speech felicity conditions is important. The communication must be carried out by the right person, in the right place, at the right time For example, an invitation to a wedding: -A written invitation; -Someone getting married; -Someone has to send the invitation. PRESUPPOSITION AND DISCOURSE. In speech and in pragmatics is important the presupposition. Presupposition refers: The common ground that is assumed to exist between language users such as assumed knowledge of a situation and/or of the world. Two kinds of presupposition: •Conventional presuppositions (less context-dependent) •Pragmatic presuppositions (context-dependent) THE CO-OPERATIVE PRINCIPLE OF DISCOURSE. In Grice’s paper, ‘Logic and conversation’ (1975), he argued that in order for a person to interpret what someone else says, some kind of cooperative principle is assumed to be in operation. The Cooperative Principle, proposed by Grice, maintains that people follow a pattern in conversation: There is a set of principles which direct us to a particular interpretation of what is said. The cooperative principle says we should aim to make our conversational contribution: Grice based his cooperative principle on four sub-principles, or maxims. These are
Two important notion in pragmatics and discourse are politeness and face. FACE: The respect one has for helself or himself. Lakoff (1973) introduced three maxims of politeness. These are: -don’t impose -give options -make your hearer feel good. If our listeners are meant to understand the intended meaning effectively and comprehensively the we must maintain the three maxims to convey the message. IMPORTANCE OF POLITENESS. The concepts of politeness is important in interpreting why people choose to say things in a particular way in spoken or written discourse and why they choose to: -Flout a maxim. -Expresses an illocutionary act indirectly, rather than directly POLITENESS STRATEGIES. Politeness strategies are developed in order to save the hearer’s face. We usually try to avoid embarrassing the hearer or making him/her feel uncomfortable. Universally, we usually respect each other’s expectations regarding self-image; we take account of others’ feelings and avoid Face Threatening Acts (FTAs). FACE THREATENING ACTS. Face Threatening Acts : Acts that infringe on the hearer’s need to maintain her/his self-esteem and to be respected. Example: When you ask a classmate to lend you her class-notes, you would be infringing on her exclusive right to her notes. i.e. you would be imposing on her to give you something that is hers. -Thus, face threatening acts (FTAs) are often unavoidable. Speakers can redress a FTA with negative politeness that respects the hearer’s negative face. Or they can redress the FTA with positive politeness, which respects the hearers’ positive face. NEGATIVE FACE AND POSITIVE FACE. •Negative face : The person’s desire to be:
-Autonomous (self-governing) -Free -Not imposed on by others -Respected by others in terms of time, privacy and possession. •Positive face : The person’s need to be: -Accepted and liked by others -Treated as a member of their group.
In our interactions with one another, we are aware of our hearers’ positive and negative faces and we try to redress our FTAs to protect those faces. POLITENESS STRATEGIES. There are four politeness strategies used by people to maintain a balance in protecting the positive and the negative faces of each other and acting appropriately in social interactions. Politeness Strategies: 1)Off-record (Least direct- Most polite) 2)Negative politeness 3)Positive politeness 4)On record baldly (Most direct- Least polite)
- OFF-RECORD is appropriate when:
The speaker is not that familiar with hearer. -So the speaker gives the hearer the option of not taking the hint, and pretending she/he did not understand. -By hinting the need, the speaker is being very respectful of your hearer’s autonomy, i.e. negative face. There is social distance between speaker and hearer. -Including differences in age, status, role, [gender]…etc. -Imposition is great
‘ Making a hearer feel good’ may not always be achieved in words, but in how the words are said. For example: voice impression. INVOLVEMENT AND INDEPENDENCE IN SPOKEN AND WRITTEN DISCOURSE. Two further issues in discussions of face and politeness are the notions of involvement and independence. Involvement (positive face): A person’s right and need to be considered a ‘normal,’ contributing, supporting member of society Evidenced by: Showing interest in someone Agreeing with others Approving what others are doing Using in-group identity markers (first names or nicknames) Independence (negative face): A person’s right not to be dominated by others, not to be imposed on by others, and to be able to act with individuality. Evidenced by: Respecting other people’s needs or interests Giving people options Not imposing on other people Apologizing for interruptions FACE AND POLITENESS ACROSS CULTURES. Face and politeness varies from colture to colture and society to society. In some societies, parents have more right to interfere in the domestic affairs of adult children. In some cultures, a bedroom is private and cannot be entered. POLITENESS AND GENDER. Holmes (1995) found that, overall, women are more polite than men. Mills in her book, Gender and Politeness (2003), argues that:
- Context has an important role to play in determining whether something is ‘polite’ or not. -We need to consider who is saying what to whom, from what position, where and for what purpose. FACE THREATENING ACTS. We use mitigation devices in conversations to take the edge off FACE THREATENING ACTS. Pre-sequence is one mitigation device. 2.3. PositiveNegative
Off-record speech act is another mitigation device. POLITENESS AND ACROSS-CULTURAL PRAGMATIC FAILURE. Brown and Levinson’s Model of Politeness Strategy: DISCOURSE AND GRAMMAR. Cohesion and Discourse Reference Lexical Cohesion Collocation Conjunction Substitution and Ellipsis Theme and Rheme Thematic Progression Attitude and Grammar Grammar and Engagement GRAMMAR FROM A DISCOURSE PERSPECTIVE. Different linguistic items such as ‘it’, ‘this’ and ‘that’ show different interpretation from a discourse analysis point of view. For example, the use of the word ‘it’ would mean a reference to a non-living thing already mentioned before in a discourse. This grammatical term will be very different and would mean something else compared to the use of the word ‘he’ later in the chapter. GRAMMAR AND DISCOURSE FROM A CONTEXTUAL PERSPECTIVE. Hilles ( 2005) describes the process of examining grammar and discourse from a contextual perspective. The first stage in this process is to make a decision as to what aspect of language to investigate, in next stage, to look at as many sources as possible from reference grammar and the final stage is to test the hypotheses that
(Collocation is the association between vocabulary items which have a tendency to co-occur, such as combinations of adjectives and nouns.) Relationship between words that commonly co-occur in texts: Example: “real-estate agents”, “fresh fruit and vegetables”, “right direction”, “wasting time” (* “fresh real-estate agents”) Expectancy relation: Example: waste-time, online – dating Lexical bundles : multiword combinations : “as a result of”, “in the other hand”, “I don’t think so”, “as shown in” CONJUNCTION. Conjunction refers to words, such as ‘and’ ‘however’ that joins phrases, clauses or sections of a text in such a way that they express a logical semantic relationship between them. Basic options for conjunction (Martin and Rose, 2007):
- Logical Relation: addition Meaning: addition Examples: and, besides, in addition
- Logical Relation: comparison Meaning: similarity/ contrast Examples: like, as if, similarly / but, whereas, on the other hand
- Logical Relation: time Meaning: successive Examples: then, after, subsequently, before
- Logical Relation: consequence Meaning: cause / means / condition Examples: so, because, since, therefore / by, thus, by this means /if, provided that, unless SUBSTITUTION AND ELLIPISIS. Substitute form is used for another language item, phrase or group. For example ‚ ‘’Try reading this book. That one’s not very good.’’ Here,‘one’s’ is substitution for book. In ellipsis some essential element is omitted from the text and can be recovered by referring to a preceding element in the text. THEME AND RHEME. Theme is the starting point of the clause, what the clause is “about”, the “element which serves as the point of departure of the message” (Halliday, 1985: 38) The remainder of the clause is the rheme.
INTERPERSNAL THEME.
Refers to an item that comes before the rheme which idicates the relationship between participants and text. Expresses probability (perhaps), usuality (sometimes), typicality (generally), obviousness (surely), opinion (to my mind), admission (frankly), persuasion (believe me), entreaty (kindly), presumption (no doubt), desirability (hopefully), prediction (as expected) (Halliday and Matthiessen,
MULTIPLE THEME. More than one single thematic element in the Theme component of the clause. THEMATIC PROGESSION. The notion of theme and rheme are also employed in the examination of thematic progression, or method of development of texts. CONSTANT THEME. Textual theme : Rheme: Text, can be used for spoken and written language. It usually refers to a stretch, an exact or complete piece of writing or speech. Discourse is a much wider term. It can be used to refer to language in action, such as legal discourse, which has characteristic patterns of language LINEAR THEME. Textual theme: Rheme: The term ‘modality’, describes a range of grammatical resources used to express probability or obligation. Generally, obligation is used in speech, speech especially when wanting to get things done such as ‘You should keep your room tidy
- ATTITUDE AND GRAMMAR. Attitude refers to resources used to make either a positive or a negative evaluation of phenomena (Droga and Humphrey, 2007:75) - “ appalling terrorist attacks”, “Tuesday’s terrible tragedy”
