Defining Discourse What is Discourse 1 Discourse is

Defining Discourse

What is Discourse? 1. Discourse is language above the sentence or above the clause (Stubbs, 1983). 2. How we organize language into units that are larger than sentences’ (Schiffrin, 1994).

What is Discourse? 1. Language above the level of a sentence 2. Language use linked to social practices and participants

Discourse Analysis • The analysis of discourse is the analysis of language in use. As such, it cannot be restricted to the description of linguistic forms without looking at the purposes or functions which these forms are designed to serve in human affairs (Brown & Yule, 1993). • Father: Is that your coat on the floor again? • Son: yes (goes on reading)

• Discourse analysis is an attempt to discover linguistic regularities in discourse using grammatical, phonological and semantic criteria e. g. cohesion, anaphora, coherence, etc. It is an effort to interpret what the writer or speaker intended to convey within a sensitive social context. A: What does Ali do for a living? B: Do you need to know? A: Oh, this and that. B: I’ve no idea. A: What’s that got to do with it? B: He doesn’t.

Devices for Discourse Analysis 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Cohesion Coherence Speech events Background Knowledge Conversational interaction The cooperative Principle

Cohesion • the ties and connections that exist within texts. • A number of those types of cohesive ties can be identified in the following paragraph.

• My father once bought a Lincoln convertible. He did it by saving every penny he could. That car would be worth a fortune nowadays. However, he sold it to help pay for my college education. Sometimes I think I’d rather have the convertible

• There are connections present here in the use of words to maintain reference to the same people and things throughout: father – he; my – I; Lincoln – it. There are connections between phrases such as: a Lincoln convertible – that car – the convertible.

• There are more general connections created by a number of terms that share a common element of meaning, such as ‘money’ (bought – saving – penny – worth a fortune – sold – pay) and ‘time’ (once – nowadays – sometimes). • There is also a connector (However) that marks the relationship of what follows to what went before

• The verb tenses in the first four sentences are all in the past, creating a connection between those events, and a different time is indicated by the present tense of the final sentence.

Coherence • Coherence is the relationships which link the meanings of utterances in a discourse or of the sentences in a text

• Example: • HER: That’s the telephone • HIM: I’m in the bath • HER: O. K. There are certainly no cohesive ties within this fragment of discourse. Here we see coherence but no cohesion.

Speech events • debate, interview, various types of discussions

Hedges • Hedges can be defined as words or phrases used to indicate that we are not really sure that we are saying is sufficiently correct or complete.

• We can use sort of or kind of as hedges in the accuracy of our statements, as in descriptions such as: • His hair was kind of long • The book cover is sort of yellow ( rather than. It is yellow. )

Implicatures • Implicature is an additional meaning conveyed by a speaker adhering to the cooperative principle. Example: • Carol: Are you coming to the party tonight? • Lara: I’ve got an exam tomorrow. Here Lara’s statement is not an answer to Carol’s Q. Lara doesn’t say Yes or No. But Carol will immediately interpret that the answer means No.

Background knowledge • Background knowledge is an information that is not in a text, but is used from memory by a reader to understand the text.

Schemas and scripts • A schema is a general term for a conventional knowledge structure that exists in memory

• If you hear someone describe what happened during a visit to a supermarket, you don’t have to be told what is normally found in a supermarket. You already have a supermarket schema‟ (food displayed on shelves, arranged in aisles, shopping carts and baskets, check-out counter and etc) as part of your background knowledge. • Examples: school, classroom, supermarket, bus, department store, airport and etc.