Major approaches to discourse analysis

Cohesion and Coherence Major approaches to discourse analysis Group members Pham Thi Nguyet – K18C Trần Thị Thu Trang ( 85) – K18C Trần Thị Thu Trang ( 86) – K18C Dao Thi Sang – K18C Do Thi Thu Phuong – K18C Supervisor Pr Dr Nguyen Hoa AN INTRODUCTION TO DIFFERENT MAJOR APPROACHES TO DA 1 1 From Schiffrin’s view 1 2 From Nguyen Hoa’s view 1 4 MAJOR APPROACHES TO DA 2 1 The pragmatic approach 2 2 The speech act approach 2 3 The interactional and sociolinguistic approach 2 4 Functional vs Formal P.

Dao Thi Sang – K18C

Do Thi Thu Phuong – K18C

2

APPROACHES’ VIEW ON SOME ISSUES ( CENTRAL TO DA )

3.1 On structure and function 3.2 On context

3

6 major approaches to DA

Fr om

Sc hif

rin

’s vie w

Speech act theory

1

interactional sociolinguistics

6

in hypothetical context.

meaning at the level of utterances rather than text But

utterances situated in context, pragmatics often ends up including discourse analysis and providing means of

analyzing discourse along the way

Why Pragmatics is an approach to DA?

Meanings in Pragmatics

Together with the literal meanings or

propositional/ conventional meanings, these

assumptions are the basis to draw specific

inferences about intended meanings or

Grice’s pragmatic approach allows

speaker meanings to be relatively free of conventional meanings What speaker intends to communicate needn’t be related to conventional at all, and not conventionally attached to the words being used.

• E.g Sam is a boy

Meanings in Pragmatics

How do speaker-meanings

arise?

Cooperative Principle ( CP)

Gricean pragmatic approach is based

in…

CP

a set of general principles about rationally based communicative

conduct

tells S and H how to organize and use information offered

in a text, along with the background knowledge

of the world to convey more than what is said.

Grice’s pragmatics

1 Quantity

- Make yourself as informative as is required

- Do not make your contribution more informative than

is required

Grice’s pragmatics

2 Quality

- Do not say what you believe to be false

- Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence

E.g.

Repetition

Expansion

Constructed utterances and constructed context

A Smith doesn’t seem to have a girlfriend these days.

B He has been paying a lot of visits to New York

( from Grice 1975: 51)

- There is the lack of obvious connection between

two utterances

- This lack doesn’t prevent readers or A from trying to

interpret B’s utterance

-B can infer that A has implicated that Smith has a

girlfriend in New York, A is following the maxim of

relation

- Readers or hearers combine literal meaning of

utterances with the assumptions of human rationality

Speech Act approach to

DA

Why speech act theory is an

approach to DA?

Speech act theory was not first

developed as a means of analyzing

discourse, but some particular issues

in speech act theory lead to discourse analysis.

Speech act theory

Focuses Expansion Replacement

knowledge of underlying conditions for production and interpretation

of acts through words

communicative acts performed through speech/ language

Function of Language in SA

theory

Language is used not just to describe the world, but to perform a range of other actions that can be indicated in the performance of the

utterance itself

Speech Act theory

Deal with

Actual

utterances

utterances- types

less than

Speech Act theory

Deal with

the way speakers

and hearers build

upon inferences

in talk

the sort of knowledge that they can be presumed to bring to talk

less than

For example:

Do you want a coffee?

This utterance can be identified as:

Question:

S does not know if H wants act 1

Offer: S intends act 1

So request: S wants H to do act 2: Tell S if

H wants act 2

Act 1: S give

H a coffee

 Do you want a coffee?” can be paraphrased as “ I intend to give you

coffee if you want it” ( Act 1)

 S does not know if H wants a coffee, S attempts to get H to provide

information that S does not have ( Utterance is a question)

 S wants H to tell S if H wants coffee S attempts to get H to do something that S wants.( utterance is a request)

 S can undertake a commitment to give a coffee to H Thus, asking a

question can lead S to undertake an obligation to give coffee to H.

( utterance is an offer).

Relationship: One form for many functions

( one utterance for many acts)

• Stem from anthropology, sociology and linguistics, share the concerns of all the fields with culture, society, and language.

Interactional Sociolinguistics

- such that very different messages are produced and understood

how language is situated

in particular circumstances of social life, and how it adds different types of meaning and structure in those circumstances

concerns about language and culture

the sociologist

Erving Goffman

concerns about self and society

• Despite the different starting points, there are

several basic beliefs about language, context, and the interaction of self and other make a unity.

• Interactional approach relies upon actual utterances

in social context The focus of analysis is how

interpretation and interaction are based upon the

interrelationship of social and linguistic meanings

.

Focuses of the approach

Teacher: Freddy, what does

this word say?

Freddy: I don’t know

Teacher: Well, if you don’t

want to try someone else

The teacher’s response: Well, if

you don’t want to try someone else will” indicates her interpretation of

Freddy’s I don’t know not only in

terms of the literal meaning But also as an indication that Freddy did not wish to try to answer the question.

- However, I don’t know had final rising intonation which can be understood in African American community that Freddy need some encouragement

- The teacher here did not retrieve the contextual presuppositions needed to accurately interpret Freddy’s message from his using rising intonation

 There are two paradigms: functional and formal They provide different assumptions about the nature of language and goals of linguistics.

 First language is functional in the sense that it communicates information or emotions

 Second, to do this job, language has to behave as

a unit; therefore it is formal

Functional vs formal paradigms

32

Consider the example:

- Are you free for the party today?

- I have to take my wife to see her mother

 (Functional: express social and expressive meanings)

 (formal): question and answer

Functional vs formal paradigms

Hymes distinguishes between the two as follows:

- Lots of stylistic or social functions

- Elements & structures as ethnographically appropriate

Functional vs formal paradigms

languages, varieties, styles

- Speech community as matrix

of languages, taken for granted or arbitrarily postulated.

 Formalists regard language primarily as a mental phenomenon Functionalists tend to regard it as a societal phenomenon.

 Formalists tend to explain linguistic universals as deriving from a common genetic linguistic

inheritance Functionalists to explain them as deriving from the universality of uses to which language is put in society

Functional vs formal paradigms

36

 Formalists explain children’s acquisition of language

in terms of a built-in human capacity to learn language Functionalists explain in terms of the development of the child’s communicative needs and abilities in society

 Formalists study language as an autonomous

system Functionalists study it in relation to social function

Functional vs formal paradigms

Functional vs formal paradigms

 In short, we can say that functionalism is based on two general assumptions

 A language has functions that are external to the linguistic system itself

 B External functions influence the internal

organization of the linguistic system

 Formalism argue that functions do not impinge on the internal organization of language (though social and cognitive) Language has two defining

characteristics: autonomy and modularity

Speech act theory

 (a) S Do you want to go out for dinner at Rose restaurant?

H: Yes

 (b) S: That’s a romantic restaurant

H: Yes © S: Do you promise you’ll be there?

H: Yes

(a): the function of Yes is an answer to a question

(b): the function of Yes is an agreement with an assertment.

©: the function of Yes is making a promise.

Each of these functions is dependent upon the preceding act

Identifying speech act function of an utterance often requires looking at where it occurs in relation to other utterances Speech act functions lead to discourse structure.

Interactional sociolinguistics

 ( a) Are you free for lunch today?

 (b) I have to do some work on discourse analysis all day

contexts – other than a questioning function It may be said to function as a display of solidarity with (b) ( conative function) and to display gender identity( an emotive function) by using a conventionalized form of indirectness to check on (b)’s

availability.

No it would be more appropriate to provide a reason for non- availability.

 Gricean pragmatics is a functional approach to discourse

( Levinson, 1983:97).

 B’s utterance violates the maxim of quantity and relevance

Because we try to interpret B’s utterance as cooperative at some level, we infer that Bill may be at Sue’s house – We interpret that B’s utterance as an answer to A’s question.

 Two utterances can be heard to create a sequential position or structure Put another way, the sequential identity / discourse

Different approaches to context

 Different approaches make different assumptions about what aspects of context are relevant to the production and interpretation of utterances

 Speech act theory and pragmatics view context as

“knowledge”, interactional sociolinguistics view context as “knowledge’ and as “situation”

 Context may help to separate multiple functions of utterances from one another

Reference s

Speech Act New York Academic Press.

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