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Discourse and Text: An Overview
Discourse and Text
Defining Discourse and Text
Discourse refers to spoken language, while text refers to written language (Coulthard, Beaugrande). Discourse is the process of which texts are the product (Halliday). Discourse is the interpretation of the communicative event in context (Nunan). Discourse can be anything from a grunt or single expletive to a lengthy legal case, as long as it communicates and is recognized as coherent (Cook). Text is any written record of a communicative event, which may involve oral or written language (Nunan).
Characteristics of Text and Discourse
Coherence: Texts and discourse form a meaningful whole. Cohesion: Different parts of the text are joined together in meaningful relationships. Intertextuality: The text is related to other texts in some way. Intentionality: The writer's attitude or purpose. Acceptability: How the text fits into what speakers, hearers, readers, and writers deem useful or relevant. Informativity: The amount or quality of new information delivered. Situationality: How the text interacts with the situation in which it is used.
Discourse Analysis
Discourse analysis studies how sentences and utterances are put together to make texts and interactions, and how those texts and interactions fit into the social world (Jones). There are two main approaches to discourse analysis: Analyzing the formal features and structure of the discourse. Studying a particular discourse to understand the participants and their use of language. Discourse analysis considers language in use, including the context, participants, and purposes of communication.
Language Assumptions
Language is ambiguous. Language is always "in the world" and inseparable from who we are and the social groups we belong to.
Contexts in Discourse
Linguistic context (co-text): The linguistic expressions before or after a given point in the interaction. Situational context (setting): The behavioral environment, including non-verbal and kinetic information related to the participants. General context (extra-situational): The social, political, and cultural features of the world. Other contextual features: The type of communicative event, the topic, the purpose, the setting, the participants, and the background knowledge and assumptions.
Variability in Language
An inherent feature of human language is its variability, as people use different linguistic forms on different occasions. This linguistic variation is highly systematic, not random, as speakers make choices depending on non-linguistic factors.
Language Varieties: Register and Dialect
Dialects are varieties associated with different groups of speakers (socially defined). Registers are varieties associated with particular situations of use (situationally defined). Dialects can differ in phonology, grammar, and lexis. Halliday's model of register includes field (subject matter), tenor (participant relations), and mode (medium of communication).
Analyzing Registers
Describe the situational characteristics that distinguish the register. Describe the typical linguistic features that are frequent across texts in the register. Interpret the relationship between the situational characteristics and linguistic features in functional terms.
Linguistic Features and Registers
Defining Characteristics
Register : Focuses on the linguistic characteristics that are common in a text variety, combined with an analysis of the situation of use of the variety. The underlying assumption is that core linguistic features like pronouns and verbs serve communicative functions. Genre : Includes description of the purposes and situational context of a text variety. It focuses on the conventional structures used to construct a complete text within the variety (e.g., the conventional way in which a letter begins and ends).
In genre, the linguistic features are not functional but conventional, while in register, these features are functional, and in style, the features are preferred because they are aesthetically valued.
Service Encounters
Scholars such as Ruqaiya Hasan and Eija Ventola have analyzed the language of specific spoken genres, such as service encounters. Ventola argues that most encounters in shops in Western culture follow this structure:
an offer of service -> a request for service -> a transaction -> a salutation
Variation in Language
We can use the following parameters to see how different texts or extracts of texts can be different:
Formal/informal Reciprocal/non-reciprocal Spontaneous/non-spontaneous Face-to-face/telephone conversation Public/private Task-oriented (discourse oriented towards a particular purpose) Literate (includes all modes of linguistic communication in writing) Memorable (intended to last, to be recorded for the future) Empathic (we can see what each participant is feeling) Monologic (one party tends to do most of the talking)
Spoken Language vs. Written Language
Spoken language emerged before written language, but written texts have been much more studied in general. Written language does, in fact, perform a similar range of broad functions to those performed by spoken language. However, the contexts for using written language are very different from those in which spoken language is used.
Differences between Speech and Writing
The syntax of spoken language is much less structured than that of written language. The kind of metalingual markers (conjunctions, connectives, etc.) used in written language are compared to those in spoken language. In written language, pre-modified noun phrases are quite common; it is rare in spoken language to find more than two premodifying adjectives. Whereas written language sentences are generally structured in subject-predicate form, in spoken language, it is quite common to find what Givón calls topic-comment structure, as in "the cats + did you let them out?"
In informal speech, passive constructions are relatively infrequent, while in writing, they are much more frequent. In chat about the immediate environment, the speaker may rely on gaze direction to supply a referent: "(looking at the rain) frightful isn't it?" The speaker may replace or refine expressions as he goes along: "this man + this chap she was going out with." The speaker typically uses a good deal of rather generalized vocabulary: "a lot of, got, do, thing, nice, stuff, place and things like that." The speaker frequently repeats the same syntactic form several times. The speaker may produce a large number of prefabricated "fillers": "well, erm, I think, you know, if you see what I mean, of course, and so on."
Differences in Characteristics
| SPEAKING | WRITING | | --- | --- | | Face-to-face | Physical and temporal distance | | Time-bound, dynamic, transient | Space-bound, static, permanent | | Part of an interaction | Result of a situation | | No time-lag between production and reception | There's always time-lag | | Intonation and accent | Syntactic and textual organization |
Although the written language obviously does not have intonation, the reader will tend to read your text as though it were spoken to them. To create a better text, you can check whether your sentences are constructed in such a way that the reader is naturally drawn to place an accent on those elements which you wish to emphasize.
Conversation
Conversation is a pervasive activity among human beings. Its primary function appears to be to establish and maintain social cohesion through the sharing of experience, although secondarily it may promote other goals such as entertainment, exchange of information, and control of others' behavior.
Functional Survey of Conversation
Conversation takes place in the spoken medium. Conversation takes place in a shared context, typically carried out in face-to-face interaction with others. Conversation avoids elaboration or specification of the meeting. It has a strikingly low lexical density in comparison to the three written registers and a much lower phase of length than that of news and academic writing. Conversation is interactive, co-constructed by two or more interlocutors, dynamically adapting their expression to the on-going exchange. Conversation is expressive of politeness, emotion, and attitude, using polite or respectful language in exchanges such as requests, greetings, offers, and apologies, as well as interjections, preference for questions, and use of less vocative.
We do not approach difficult discourse by starting at the bottom levels and then patiently working our way towards the top and a general understanding of what is being said. Rather, we take some linguistic and situational detail as a cue, form a general hypothesis, and then try to build into that scaffolding.
Coherence in Discourse
Coherence is the underlying connectedness of a piece of spoken and written discourse. It involves several factors, including:
Language Users' Knowledge and Inferences
The language users' knowledge of the world The inferences these users make The receiver's past experience with other texts or messages, and their knowledge of the world
This knowledge and these inferences allow the receiver to make sense of the text, even in the presence of gaps or mistakes. There is a desire on the part of the reader/listener to believe that the message is meaningful.
The Role of Knowledge in Discourse
Research has shown that the order of letters in a word is not as important as the first and last letters being in the right place. This is because the human mind does not read every letter individually, but rather processes words as a whole.
Ideas about textual coherence and the role of knowledge in discourse production and comprehension have been influenced by findings in psycholinguistics and artificial intelligence. Concepts such as frame, script, schema(ta), scenario, and plan have been proposed to account for the organization of knowledge in memory.
Frames and Schemata
Frames: A remembered framework that is adapted to fit reality by changing details as necessary. Frames help us fit new information into what we already know. Schemata: Mental representations of typical situations, global patterns of events and states in ordered sequences linked by time, proximity, and causality. Schemata are used in discourse processing to predict the contents of the particular situation described.
Evidence for the Use of Schemata and Frames
We know that people use schemata and frames in language processing due to several observations:
Filling in of details about a text that were not actually given.
Certain uses of the definite article. Interpretation of words with more than one meaning, determined by the wish to make sense of the text.
Inferences and Coherence
Inferences are the mental connections made to connect two or more observations or utterances. We assume there should be a connection because we treat the two as part of a coherent discourse.
There are two types of inferences:
Bridging assumptions (non-automatic inferences), which take longer to process. Missing links (automatic connections), where the difference lies in being able to use the word "necessarily".
Types of Inferences
Every X has a Y. Every X is a Y. Every V involves a N.
In conclusion, the receiver plays a crucial role in the interpretation of a text, as they make inferences and activate knowledge from their frames and schemata to establish coherence, even if the text is imperfect.
Principles of Textual Coherence
Several principles have been proposed to ensure textual coherence:
Accessibility Principle
Makes lexical and syntactic choices to ensure that the initial constituent consists of accessible information.
Principle of End Focus
Places new information towards the end of the clause, preferably in the final position.
Thematic Patterning Principle
When choosing the starting point for the construction of a clause, take into account the best thematic pattern for achieving the rhetorical aim.
Principle of End Weight
Place shorter constituents towards the beginning of the clause and the longest and most complex constituents in the final position.
Topical themes: Refer to the features found in the theme of a clause.
Foregrounding and Backgrounding
The term "foregrounding" refers to new information in a sentence, in contrast to elements that form the background against which new elements are to be understood.
Foreground material carries the discourse forward and develops the theme. Background material serves as a commentary on the theme but does not contribute directly to the progression of the theme.
Thematic Progression
Thematic progression refers to the way in which the theme of a clause may pick up or repeat a meaning from a preceding theme or rheme, creating information flow in a text. There are several types of thematic progression:
Simple linear progression: The subject matter in the rheme of one clause is taken up in the theme of the following clause. Continuous (constant) theme: The theme is picked up and repeated at the beginning of the next clause. Multiple theme/split rheme pattern: A rheme may include multiple pieces of information, each of which may be taken up as the theme of subsequent clauses.
The main function of the theme is to signal the relationship between the thought in the speaker's mind and its expression in discourse. The speaker/ writer chooses the thematic element based on the thought they wish to express and how they wish to connect it to the surrounding text.
The Importance of the Initial and Final
Positions
Using the Initial Position
How can you formulate what you want to say so that the information presented follows most naturally from the previous context and prepares the reader best for what is still to come? By using the initial position.
Using the Final Position
How can you formulate each message so that the reader immediately identifies the most important element in the message? By using the final position.
Thematic Fronting
Thematic fronting is a technique where certain elements are moved to the beginning of the sentence to give them prominence. Examples include:
[He asked me for paper, glue, sticky tape and clips.] All of these I bought him. [I swim thirty lengths a day for fun.] [He told us the history of the place.] Most of it we already knew.
Thematic fronting can be used with objects, adjuncts, and predicates.
Clefts
Cleft sentences are complex sentences that have a meaning that could be expressed by a simple sentence, but with certain parts moved to a different place to give them more emphasis.
It-Clefts
It-clefts have the structure: it + be + one focused constituent + that + clause. Examples: - It is Steiner's bold use of metaphor that is most striking.
- It is when their husbands are on active duty that army wives are most concerned.
Functions of It-Clefts: 1. It serves to focus a single constituent of a sentence.
- It is normal for the text that comes after this construction to pick up the focused element and develop it further.
Wh-Clefts
Wh-clefts have the structure: Wh + be + 1 focused constituent. Examples: - What is most striking is Steiner's bold use of metaphor. - What the government has failed to consider is the effect on old-age pensioners. - Why it is now time to act is because there are only twenty years of coal resources left.
Functions of Wh-Clefts: 1. It serves to announce the element expressed by the focused constituent, directing the addressee's interest and attention to the matter that the speaker wishes to develop at greater length. 2. It is particularly useful at turning-points in an argument, where the speaker has been dealing with one topic for a few paragraphs and wants to move on to a new subject.
Th-Clefts
Th-clefts are a variant of the wh-cleft, where the wh-word in the final clause is replaced by a longer noun phrase expression. Examples: - The matter that the government has failed to consider is the effect on old-age pensioners. - The reason that it is now time to act is because there are only twenty years of coal resources left.
Local topics: the topics of utterances and sentences that contribute to the episode and help build up the discourse
Topic is essential to concepts like relevance and coherence, but is difficult to pinpoint. It can serve as a central organizing principle for discourse, explaining why certain sentences or utterances should be considered together as a set.
Topic Continuity and Negotiation
Only a few referents become major topics in a discourse, while others may not be mentioned again. Topics are often not fixed beforehand but are negotiated in the process of conversing.
Topic Shift and Boundary Markers
Instead of defining what a topic is, it may be more useful to recognize when the shift from one topic to the next occurs. Certain expressions, called "topic boundary markers", explicitly mark these boundaries.
Openings and Closings
Discourses have beginnings, middles, and ends that may change in different situations and cultures. For example, a service encounter in a western culture typically follows the structure: offer of service → request for service → transaction → salutation.
Conversation Analysis and Discourse
Organization
Openings and Closings in Conversation
Openings and closings in conversation serve to signal and establish the type of activity that is about to take place. They orient the participants towards the features of the genre, the topic, the interpersonal relationship, and the mode of communication. Genres are quickly established in their opening phrases, even though individual features of the register may vary.
Casual conversations usually have recognizable beginnings when people come face-to-face, reflecting the culture we live in and belong to. Closings may be just as elaborate as openings.
Key Concepts in Conversation Analysis
Conversation analysis (CA) is mainly concerned with the detailed organization of everyday, informal, dialogic, spoken discourse. It was stimulated by the work of Garfinkel and Goffman.
Some key questions in CA include: - How do people take turns in conversation? - How do people open and close conversations? - How do
people launch new topics, close old ones, and shift topics? - How does conversation progress satisfactorily from one utterance to the next?
Turn-Taking
The basic unit of speech in CA is the speaker's 'turn'. Conversation analysts are interested in how speakers achieve smooth turn-taking and the 'rules' for who speaks when. In ordinary, informal conversation, there is hardly any overlap or interruption, and only minimal silences between turns. Sacks et al. observed that speakers are permitted to take turns when they are chosen by the current speaker, or if no one is directly selected, they may speak of their own choice. If neither of these conditions apply, the current speaker continues.
Adjacency Pairs
An adjacency pair is a pair of turns that mutually affect one another. Examples include greeting-greeting, offer-acceptance, and apology- minimization.
Backchannel Responses
Backchannel responses are vocalizations such as 'mmm', 'uh uh', 'yeah', and 'sure', which indicate the listener's engagement and understanding.
Transition Relevance Place (TRP)
The transition relevance place is the point in a conversation where a speaker change may occur.
Preference Organization
Conversation analysis distinguishes between preferred and dispreferred answers to questions or requests.
Insertion Sequences
Insertion sequences are nested adjacency pairs that interrupt the main sequence.
Repairs
Repairs can be self-initiated or other-initiated, and they involve the correction or clarification of previous utterances.
