1 DISCOURSE AND DISCOURSE ANALYSIS According to Barbara Johnstone, discourse actually means instances of communication in the medium of language. Communication can involve other media or semiotic systems, besides language, for example, clothing, photography, architecture, dance, gestures, etc. Not all linguistic communication is spoken or written: there are manual languages, such as sign language, whose speakers use gestures rather than sound or graphic signs. The word “discourse” comes from the Latin word “discursus”, and it means conversation and speech. There are various definitions for the word, for instance, David Crystal defines it as “a continuous stretch of specially spoken language larger than a sentence, often constituting a coherent unit such as a sermon, argument, joke or narrative.” According to Guy Cook, novels as well as short conversations or groans might equally be termed discourse. For Cook discourse makes reference to stretches of language perceived to be meaningful, unified and purposive. David Nunan defines discourse as “a stretch of language consisting of several sentences which are perceived to be related in some way”. Discourse can also be defined as the use of language above and beyond the sentence. To make it short, discourse refers to actual instances of communication through the medium of language. Discourse isn’t a mere accumulation of words; it is a unit which has coherence. It may be spoken, written or mixed up. The discipline or branch of linguistics that studies discourse is called discourse analysis rather than language analysis to emphasise the fact that they are not centrally focused on language as an abstract system. They are interested in what happens when people exchange information, express feelings, make things happen, create beauty, entertain themselves and others, etc. When discourse is used in the plural, it refers to conventional ways of talking that create and are created by conventional ways of thinking. These linked ways of talking and thinking constitute ideologies and serve to circulate power in society. That is, “discourses” in this sense involve patterns of belief as well as patterns of language. So “discourses” are ideas as well as ways of talking that influence and are influenced by ideas. Discourse analysis is a methodology that can be used in answering many kinds of questions. What distinguishes discourse analysis from other sort of studies that deal with human language and communication lies not in the questions discourse analysts ask but in the ways they try to answer them: by analysing aspects of the structure and function of language in use. Discourse analysis looks at running conversation involving a speaker and a listener (or writer and reader), whereas other areas of language study might focus on individual elements of the language, such as words, sentences, sounds, etc. In discourse analysis the context of a conversation is taken into account as well as what is being said. This context may encompass a social and cultural framework, including the location of a speaker at the time of the discourse, together with non-verbal clues such as body language, and in the case of written language, it may also include images and symbols. 2 Discourse analysts often divide longer stretches of discourse into parts according to various criteria and then look at the particular characteristics of each part. Divisions can be made according to Who is talking When a topic arises Where the subject ends and predicate begins Where the paragraph boundaries are Are grammatical patterns different when social superiors are talking than when their subordinators are? Does new information tend to come in the first sentence of a paragraph? Are topic changes signalled by special markers? One way of analysing something is by looking at it in a variety of ways, taking several theoretical perspectives. Such analysis could include a breaking down into parts or into functions: What is persuasive discourse like? What is narrative like? Or according to participants: How do men talk in all-male groups? How do psychotherapists talk? Or settings: What goes on in classrooms? What goes on in workplaces? Or processes: How do children learn to get the conversational floor? Some uses of Discourse analysis Linguists have long been interested in the structure of words (morphology), and sentences (syntax). Discourse Analysis has moved the description of structure up a level, looking at actual stretches of connected text or transcript of oral production, providing descriptions of the structure of paragraphs, conversations, narratives, etc. This discipline sheds light on how speakers indicate their semantic intentions and how hearers interpret what they hear. Anyone who wants to understand human beings has to understand discourse, so the potential uses of D.A. are almost endless. Discourse analysts help answer questions about social relations, they help in the study of personal identity and social identification (gender, ethnicity) 3 The data of D.A. The material with which discourse analysts work consists of actual instances of discourse, often referred to as texts. Traditionally we associate texts with letters, essays, books, etc, that is, self-contained units which are materialised into paper and have a beginning and an ending. However, many analysts work with instances of discourse that do not have these characteristics. A great deal of D.A. is about non-written discourse. Since they cannot study discourse (spoken or signed) in real time (with one viewing or hearing), they study records of discourse which are in the form of transcripts of audio or video material. In transcribing oral discourse, they are transformed into a physical object, and they are given a structure and boundaries. The transcripts depend on the analysts’ choices of what to include and what not to include. A text of this kind might be a discussion, a whole series of TV, debates, a single mail, one conversation or all the talk that constitutes a relationship. Brief history of discourse analysis Discourse analysis is not something totally new; in fact, the first known students of language in western tradition were the scholars from Greece and Rome (Plato and Dionisius), who were aware of two approaches to language study. They divided grammar from rhetoric. Grammar was concerned with the rules of language as an isolated object; rhetoric was concerned with how to do things with words to achieve effects and communicate successfully with people in particular contexts. Throughout history there have been studies of language in context. In the 20th century there were influential approaches which studied language in its full context, as part of society and the world. In North America there was work on language conducted by Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf, who researched the languages and societies of the native Americans. They formulated a theory called the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis in which they claim that there is a certain correlation between the grammatical categories of the language that a person uses and the way this person sees and understands the world. In Britain, J.R. Firth saw language not as an autonomous system but as part of a culture. These traditions have plenty to offer to discourse analysis. In addition, there are many other disciplines like philosophy, psychology, psychiatry, sociology, anthropology, Artificial Intelligence, media studies, biblical studies, literary studies which often examine their object of study through language and carry out their own discourse analysis. these disciplines study something else through discourse, whereas discourse analysis has discourse as its main object of study. 4 Ironically, it was a sentence linguist, Zellig Harris, who, in 1952, coined the term “discourse analysis” and initiated a search for language rules which would explain how sentences were connected withing a text. In an article he wrote in 1952, he addresses two issues that will derive in the modern D.A., which are: first, overcoming the perspective limited to the study of the sentence, and, second, the correlation between culture (understood as non-linguistic behaviour) and language (linguistic behaviour). For Harris the connection between sentences is the result of the situation in which they have been articulated, which would lead to the conclusion that similar situations produce similar discourses. FORMALISM AND FUNCTIONALISM Discourse is often defined in two ways: a particular unit of language above the sentence, and a particular focus on language (Schiffrin, 1987). These definitions reflect different assumptions about the nature of language, about the goals of a linguistic theory, the methods for studying language and the nature of the empirical evidence (Schiffrin, 1994:20). These different outlooks result in the Formalist (or Structural) and the Functionalist paradigms, whose representatives are Chomsky and Halliday, respectively. They are opposed in the way of analysing language but not mutually exclusive. STRUCTURAL APPROACH (Chomsky) Focuses on the structure of the language, i.e. its grammatical structure (the code) Analyses language structure first, and then language use (language use derives from its structure) Considers the main function of language is referential, i.e. to describe the world around through propositions) Studies structures separated from context of use, ignoring the culture of those who use the language Assumes the language structure is independent fro m the social functions and uses. Any language can serve any social, cultural or stylistic purpose Assumes language as a single code within a homogeneous community: each speaker replicates a uniform structure FUNCTIONAL APPROACH (Halliday) Focuses on the structure of speech as acts or events Analyses language use before it considers its structure (language use and language structure are integrated) Considers that language has different functions: referential, stylistic & social Studies language in context and considers culture Assumes that languages, varieties & styles adapt to different situations, functions & uses Assumes that language has a repertoire of speech styles within a diverse community 5 Assumes the uniformity of speakers, hearers, actions, events, communities across world languages Investigates the diversity of speakers, hearers, actions, events & communities TYPES OF DISCOURSE (adapted form David Nunan) We can classify discourse types in terms of the communicative job they are doing. Study the following pieces of discourse and see whether you can categorise them according to the job they appear to be doing. 1) A: it’s a worry, isn’t it? B: What? A: your money (yes) organising your money affairs B: tis… A big worry. C: Mmm B: I’ve got to manage my money to look after myself in my old age A: You’re in it. B: What? A: You’re in it—you’re in your old age. B: I might live for another ten years. Be… C: Be a bloody miracle (laughter) B: What? What did he say? A: Be a miracle—after the life you’ve led. If you’d led a nice sedentary existence and hadn’t drunk or smoked you might have been able to look forward to a telegram from the Queen C: Be a thrill! A: A big thrill 2) A: where do you keep your detergent and stuff? B: Next aisle—middle row of shelves A: Oh, yeah. Got it. Is this the smallest you’ve got? B: yeah. What’d you… A: …it’s a bit B: Mmm—the Down Earth Brand’s on special A: Ok, right…Mmm three fifty-nine—still not cheap B: Well, that’s the smallest they’ve made, I’m afraid. 3) This is Dr Graham Lowe. We’re closed for the weekend, but if you want to contact me after hours, send a written message to the following number and I’ll call you back as soon as possible. The number is xxxxxxx 6 One way in which the texts could be divided is into dialogue and monologue. Another division would be into those that are basically transactional in nature, and those that are basically interpersonal. Transactional language is that which occurs when the participants are concerned with the exchange of goods and services. Interpersonal language, on the other hand, occurs when the speakers are less concerned with the exchange of goods and services, than with socialising. If we follow this distinction, we will group text 1) under the heading interpersonal and texts 2) and 3) under the heading of transactional. This distinction is a common one in literature (Brown & Yule, 1983). This is not to say that a given text will only exhibit one or other of these functions. Many interactions which are essentially transactional in nature will also exhibit social functions, while essentially social interactions can contain transactional elements. This is shown in the following conversation in which there are both transactional and interpersonal functions: A: G’day B: Hi. A: Nice day. B: Yeah. Rohan been in yet? A: Dunno—I’ve just started. The usual? B: Ta: These two major functional categories do not exhaust the possibilities. Consider the function of the following text: The land drops away with it The last worry disagreement uncertainty This Is the freedom of the stop-over the Not being able to understand the Not having to explain The freedom of strangers Yet at the back of the mind A night thick with stars whose Warm breeze stirs the dust like A dark blanket and all around are voices The original city of man (Cataldi 1990) Here the primary purpose is neither to secure goods and services, nor to “oil the wheels of social life”. Rather, it fulfils an expressive or aesthetic 7 function. This aesthetic function is a third major purpose for which people use language. LANGUAGE FUNCTIONS What kind of rules enable people to infer the function of what is said from its literal, formal meaning? Following Guy Cook, in order to discover how such inferences are made, we will need firstly to examine the range of possible functions of language, and secondly to try to understand how people correctly interpret them. Understanding this connection between the form and the function of language will help us to explain how stretches of language can be coherent without being cohesive. We cannot assume that these interpretations will be made in the same way in all cultures and in all languages. The classification of macro-functions If we ask the question “what is the function language?” to non-specialists the most likely reply will be “to send information” or “to tell other people your thoughts”, but it is not difficult to imagine that that is a simplistic vision. However, it is true that the function that language has of transmitting information (referential function) is considered the most important. Yet it is by no means the only function or the first function of language in human life. In the world of the infant and parent, the referential function of language takes a subordinate role to others. There is little the four-year-old child can tell their parents that they do not know already, for they share the child’s world almost entirely. The same is true in other intimate relationships. Some conversations of couples, either affectionate or belligerent, have scant informational content. In the wider social world of adult intercourse, language clearly has many more functions than simply sending information. There have been many, sometimes conflicting, attempts to classify the main functions or macro-functions of language. 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 as follows: The Addresser: the person who originates the message. This is usually the person who is sending the message, but not always, as in the case of messengers, spokespeople, and town criers. The Addressee: 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, and eavesdropping. The Channel: the medium through which the message travels: sound waves, marks on paper, telephone wires, word processor screens. The Message Form: the particular grammatical and lexical choices of the message. The Topic: the information carried in the message. 8 The Code: the language or dialect used. The Setting: the social or physical context. Macro-functions are then established, each focusing attention upon one element: The emotive function: communicating the inner states and emotions of the addresser (“Oh, no!”, “Fantastic”, “Ugh!”, and swear words used as exclamations) The directive function: seeking to affect the behaviour of the addressee (“Please help me”, “Shut up!”, “I’m warning you!”) The phatic function: opening the channel or checking that it is working, either for social reasons (“hello”, “Lovely weather”, “Do you come here often?”), or for practical ones (“Can you hear me?”, “Are you still there?”, “Can you see the blackboard from the back of the room?”, “Can you read my writing?”) The poetic function: in which the particular form chosen is the essence of the message (The advertising slogan BEANZ MEANZ HEINZ would lose its point if it were paraphrased as “If you’re buying beans, you’re naturally buying Heinz”) The referential function: carrying information The metalinguistic function: focusing attention upon the code itself, to clarify it or renegotiate it (“What does this word here mean?”, “This bone is known as the ‘femur’”, “’Will’ And ‘shall’ mean the same thing nowadays”) The contextual function: creating a particular kind of communication (“Right, let’s start the lecture”, “It’s just a game”) Task What do you consider to be the most likely function of the following? 1. Dear Sir/ Madam 2. The value of the pound sterling has risen considerably. 3. Workers of the world, unite! 4. You make me sick! 5. The court is now in session 6. What do you mean by this? 7. Well, I’ll be damned! 8. Here’s Miss Julie Is it possible to assign a function to each, or are some of mixed function? How might the function of each utterance vary according to context? THE IMPORTANCE OF CONTEXT Following Guy Cook, when we receive a message, we pay attention to many factors apart from the language itself. In spoken messages, when we are face to face, we pay attention to the paralinguistic features that accompany the message such as gestures, body movement, and voice as a sign of nervousness or happiness, or a particular accent, for example. In writing we may be influenced by handwriting or typography or the surface where the message is written (an expensive book or a scrap of paper). We are also influenced by the situation in which we perceive messages, by our cultural or social relationships with the participants, but what we know or what we assume the sender knows. These factors take us beyond the study of 9 language and force us to look at other areas of inquiry—the mind, the body, society, the physical world; in fact, at the world at large. In short, we perceive the context. For Widdowson, context refers to “those aspects of the circumstance of actual language use which are taken as relevant to meaning.” For Yule, “context is the physical environment in which a word is used”. These definitions have an important point in common: the environment in which discourse takes place. The study of context can be divided into: linguistic context, situational context and cultural context. LINGUISTIC CONTEXT This refers to the context within the discourse; that is, the relationship between the words, phrases, sentences, even paragraphs. Linguistic context can be explored from three aspects: deictic, co-text and collocation Deitic context In a language event, the participants must know where they are in space and time, and these features relate directly to the deitic context. Included here are time expressions like “now”, “then”, spatial expressions like “here”, “there”, and person expressions like “I”, “you”, etc. in normal language behaviour the speaker addresses his utterance to another person and may refer to himself or others, to a certain place and to a certain time. Co-text The interpretation of words occurring in discourse are constrained by the co-text. It means that any sentence, apart from the first one, will have the whole of its interpretation constrained by the preceding text. SITUATIONAL CONTEXT This makes reference to the environment, time, place, etc. in which discourse occurs, and also to the relationship between the participants. Here we find the notions of field (subject matter), tenor (relationship between the participants), mode (medium of transmission), which affect or influence the linguistic choices made by the participants of the communication act. CULTURAL CONTEXT This has to do with the culture, customs and background of epoch in language communities in which the speakers participate. Language is a social phenomenon, and it is closely tied up with the social structure and value system of society. Therefore, language cannot avoid being influenced by all these factors that include social role, social status, sex, age, etc. Social roles are culture-specific functions, institutionalised in a society. It refers to the relative social standing of the participants. In many situations, status is an important factor in the determination of who should initiate the conversation. Sex and age are often determinants of social status in some cultures. The terms of address employed by a person of one sex speaking 10 to an older person may differ from those which would be employed in otherwise similar circumstances by people of the same sex or the same age. THE CONTEXT OF SITUATION (Brown & Yule) Since the beginning of the 1970s, linguists have become increasingly aware of the importance of context in the interpretation of sentences. They found the need to specify what were the relevant facts of the context of utterance in order to understand what a sentence conveyed. Features of context Consider two invented scenarios in which an identical utterance is produced by two distinct speakers. Utterance: I do think that ADAM’s quick. (stress on Adam) Situation 1: Speaker: a young mother; hearer: her mother-in-law; place: a park, by a duck pond; time: a sunny afternoon in September 1962. They are watching the young mother’s two-year-old-son chasing ducks. The mother-in-law has just remarked that her son, the child’s father, was rather backward at this age. Situation 2: Speaker: a student; hearers: a group of students; place: sitting at a coffee table in the university canteen; time: evening in March 1980. John, one of the members of the group, has just told a joke. Everyone laughs except Adam. Then Adam laughs. One of the group remarks (utterance above) Interpretation It is clear that although the utterance is the same, the different contexts will have a lot of bearing in the interpretation of the meaning carried by the utterance. In situation 1, Adam is being compared favourably with his father. “Quick” may be interpreted in contrast with backward, as meaning “quick in developing.” In situation 2, Adam is being compared with the group of students unfavourably. In this case “quick” must be interpreted as meaning something like “quick to understand or react to the joke”. But since the utterance is said in a context where Adam has failed to react to the pun line of the joke as quickly as the other students, the speaker will be assumed to be implicating the opposite of what the words mean. For J.R. Firth, regarded by many as the father of modern British linguistics), a context of situation should consider these categories: a) The relevant features of the participants: 1. The verbal action of the participants 2. The non-verbal action of the participants b) The relevant objects 11 c) The effect of the verbal action Hymes views the role of context in interpretation as limiting the range of possible interpretations and, on the other hand, as supporting the intended interpretation. Hymes considers: a) The addressor (speaker/writer producing the utterance) b) The addressee (hearer/reader, recipient of the utterance) Knowledge of the addressor in a given communicative event makes it possible for the analyst to imagine what that particular person is likely to say. Knowledge of the addressee limits the analyst’s expectations even further. Thus, if we know the speaker is the prime minister, or the headmaster, or your family doctor, or your mother, and you know this person is speaking to a colleague, his bank manager or a small child, you will have different expectations of the sort of language which will be produced, with respect to form and content. If you know what is talked about, Hymes’ category of: c) Topic, your expectations will be further constrained in case you have information about it d) The setting (place & time) will also limit your expectations even further The remaining features that Hymes points out are: e) Channel (speech, writing, signing, signals) f) Code (the language or dialect used) g) Message form (chat, debate, sermon, letter) h) Event (the nature of the communication event within which a genre is embedded; e.g. prayer or sermon as part of a church service) Hymes says that the analyst may choose from the contextual features those necessary to characterise a particular communication event. TEXTS IN CONTEXTS (Thornbury) Texts do not exist in a vacuum. They are written and read, spoken and listened to by particular people in particular situations and for particular purposes; that is to say, texts have a context which influences both their production and their interpretation. CONTEXT OF USE JUST CUP YOUR HANDS TOGETHER AND ROLL CLOSE TO THE OUTLET Without a context it is quite difficult to work out the meaning of the above message. We may look at the imperatives used to guess that it is some kind of command or instruction, but it is difficult to imagine what the “outlet” refers to. If we add the rest of the text, that is, the co-text, the meaning starts to become clearer. Evaporation is the most hygienic of the practical methods of hand drying. Just cup your hands together and roll close to the outlet. 12 The first sentence enables us to make sense of the second one, together with the cohesion in the repetition of the words “hand/hands” and “evaporation”. But until we know that the text was originally found on a hand-dryer in a wash room (its context) and not, say, a textbook, total coherence is still elusive. Put simply, texts not only connect internally, but they connect with their contexts of use. Can you make sense of this sign without information about its context? STEAM ! (It is a road sign situated in an area of geothermal activity in New Zealand with the purpose of warning motorists of the possibility of reduced visibility due to steam. Without this contextual information, it is virtually impossible to guess its meaning. An anthropologist, Malinowski, observed that “an utterance becomes intelligible only when it is placed within its context of situation.” Activity Identify the likely context for each of the following texts. What clues helped you to do the task? 1) For the perfect cup, use one tea bag per person and add freshly drawn boiling water. Leave standing for 3-5 minutes before stirring gently. Can be served with or without milk and sugar. 2) TEA Tea is made by pouring boiling water on to tea leaves. The leaves come from tea bushes, which are grown mainly in India, Sri Lanka and China. Tea first came to Europe from China in the 1600s. at first it was brewed and stored in barrels, like beer. 3) S1 Chris, do you want some cream on yours or? S2 Just a little bit. S1 It’s terrible for your arteries. (inaudible) S5 Have a cup of tea and wash it down. S6 So Adam, coffee? S5 I’ll have a coffee as well thanks. 4) We followed John into the tiled café. It was set back from the road and was not so far from where our van was now parked. “It’s a French hotel,” John whispered. “I think it might be a bit expensive.” “We’ll just have some tea,” Mum reassured him and we sat down in the shade of the terrace. The tea they brought was made from mint leaves and was very, very sweet. Mum looked into the pot. “It’s like syrup in there,” she said. 13 According to Thornbury, the language choices in texts seem to reflect the kind of text each one is. And, in turn, the kind of text each one is seems to be a reflection of context factors, such as the text’s purpose, topic, audience and mode (written or spoken). That is, there is a direct relation between the lower level choices of grammar and vocabulary and the text type. It can be said there is a relation between text, text type and context, which can be illustrated like this: CONTEXT TEXT TYPE TEXT Taking the above into account, it is possible to make confident predictions about both the text type and the context. Conversely, given sufficient information about the context, we can make accurate predictions about the kinds of texts that are likely to be found there and the textual features of these texts. Activity What texts would you expect to find in the following contexts? In what ways might these texts be similar or different? 1) The noticeboard in the teachers’ room of a language school 2) Inside a bus 3) A magazine targeted at teenage girls FIELD, TENOR AND MODE Other components of context that might have an impact on the choice of language in text production are: The what of the situation, that is, what kind of social activity is going on, and what sort of topic (FIELD) The who of the situation; that is, the participants and their relationship (TENOR) The how of the situation; that is, the means by which the text is created, e.g. written (an e-mail, a written monologue, etc.) or oral (e.g. a face-to-face talk, an interview on the radio via telephone, etc.) (MODE) Field, tenor and mode determine the register used. Register refers to choices at the level of grammar and vocabulary that create textual effects that we recognize as appropriate. For example, the register of a teenage magazine allows for the use of a lot of teenage slang, while the register of a scientific publication allows for academic language with highly specific terms. Activity Identify the field, tenor and mode of the following texts and the possible contexts for each text. a) THIS DOOR IS ALARMED 14 EMERGENCY USE ONLY. b) c) Hi. R u back yet? How was it? C u l8r ? S. d) I, Henry, take you, Alexandra, To be my wedded wife, To have and to hold From this day forward; For better, for worse, For richer, for poorer, In sickness and in health To love and to cherish, Till death us do part.
