discourse analysis discourse analysis danang october 2009 obiect of study here are two pieces of language this box contains on average 100 large plain paper clips applied linguistics is therefore n

term ‘DA’ & initiated a search for language rules which would explain how sentences were connected within a text by a kind of extended grammar.  In 1952, in an article entitled ‘[r]

DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

Danang, October 2009

OBIECT OF STUDY

 Here are two pieces of language:

 This box contains, on average, 100

Large Plain Paper Clips Applied

Linguistics is therefore not the same as Linguistics The tea’s hot as it could be This is Willie Worm Just send 12

Guinness ‘cool token’ bottle top

 Playback Raymond Chandler Penguin Books

in association with Hamish Hamilton To Jean and Helga, without whom this book could

never have been written One The voice on the telephone seemed to be sharp and

peremptory, but I didn’t hear too well what it said – partly because I was only half awake and partly because I was holding the receiver upside down.

Questions for Discussion

1. Which part of these two stretches of

language is part of a unified whole?

2. What sort of text is it?

3. What is the other one?

4. How do you distinguish between

them?

• does make sense

• is meaningful and unified

 In the 2nd piece, we could restore the

original layout and typography, identify the genre, the title, the publisher, the author, the dedication, make a guess at the identity of Jean and Helga, say that this is only the beginning of sth, predict possible continuations, say whether you would read on …

understanding meaningful language – to

communicating than knowing how to make and recognize correct sentences.

 People do not always speak or write in

complete sentences, yet they still succeed in communication.

“Ông cũng không biết tại sao ông lại ở đây

Bố mẹ là ai? Chịu Vật vã sống Vật vã lớn Vật vã tồn tại Vật vã già.”(Ng.Th Thu Huệ)

“Khuya Sài Gòn đổ một cơn mưa rất lạ Âm thầm Dai dẳng.” (Nguyễn Hương Tâm)

 “There were too many loose ends, too many leftovers Too much Hanging

over his head.”

 “He knocked hard Once, twice and a third time.” (John Katzenbach)

 “But I had to be alone To breathe air

To take a walk, may be.” (Erich Segal)

Discourse & the Sentence

- Two Different Kinds of Language

as Potential Objects for Study

 Sentences: concerned with rules

 Discourse (DA): may (not) be composed

of a correct sentence or a series of

correct sentences It is concerned with communication What matters is not its conformity to rules but the fact that it

communicates and is recognized by its receivers as coherent

 “We thought it was right to come to a

decision when I next met them last night.” (said by British politician Geoffrey Howe in a

TV interview)

 “Which of you people is the fish?”

 Discourse treats the rules of grammar as a resource, conforming to them when it needs

to, but departing form them when it does

not.

 Discourse can be anything: a grunt,

conversation, a novel,…

Two approaches to language: Sentence Linguistics (SL) and DA

 Achieving meaning

 In context

 Observed

The Origins of Discourse Analysis

 DA is not sth totally new.

 The first known students of language in the western tradition, the scholars of Greece and Rome, were aware of the 2 above different approaches, divided grammar from rhetoric.

 Grammar: concerned with the rules of

language as an isolated subject.

 Rhetoric: how to do things with words, to

achieve effects and to communicate

successfully with people in particular

contexts.

 In 20 th century linguistics, alongside sentence linguistics, there have been influential

approaches which studied language in its full context, as part of society and the world.

 US linguists and anthropologists did research into the languages and society of native

Americans (Indians).

 British linguists (J R Firth) saw language not

as an autonomous system, but as part of a culture.

DA at the intersection of

diverse disciplines

 Many other disciplines – philosophy,

psychology and psychiatry, sociology

and anthropology, Artificial Intelligence, media studies, literary studies often

examine their object of study – the

mind, the society, other cultures,

computers, the media, works of

literature – through language, and are thus carrying out their own DA

 Many disciplines have plenty of insights

to offer to DA

 The most useful distinction is to think of other disciplines as studying sth else

through discourse; whereas DA has

discourse as its prime object of study

The term “discourse analysis”

 Zellig Harris (a sentence linguist) coined the term ‘DA’ & initiated a search for language rules which would explain how sentences

were connected within a text by a kind of extended grammar.

 In 1952, in an article entitled ‘DA’, he

analyzed an ad for hair tonic & set about

searching for grammatical rules to explain why one sentence followed another.

 Harris’s conclusions: 2 possible

conclusions for DA:

 “continuing descriptive linguistics

beyond the limits of a single sentence

at a time” (This is Harris’s aim &

concern.)

 “correlating culture & language linguistic and linguistic behaviour)

(non- Having weighed up the two options, at the end of the article, Harris concluded:

’ … in every language it turns out that almost all the results lie within a

relatively short stretch which we may call the sentence… Only rarely can we state restrictions across sentences.’

Brown & Yule’s View

 “DA on the one hand includes the study

of linguistic forms and the regularities

hand, involves a consideration of the

general principles of interpretation by which people normally make sense of

 If we are to find the answer to the problem of what gives stretches of language unity and meaning, what must we do?

 We must see just how far formal, purely linguistic rules can go in accounting for the way one sentence succeeds

another

 We must look beyond the formal rules operating within sentences, & consider the people who use the language, the world in which it happens

Discourse versus Text

 1 st approach of text

 Type of linguistic unit

larger than the

sentence.

 The verbal record of a

communicative act

(Brown & Yule)

 The linguistic product of

occurrence which possesses 7 constitutive conditions of textual

communication: cohesion, coherence, intentionality, acceptability, informativity, situationality &

intertextuality) (De Beaugrande & Dressler)

Text Analysis (TA) & DA

(coherence, context

of situations, writer/speaker’s intention or

interpretation,…)

DA’S OBJECT OF STUDY

 ‘…discourse is … language in use.’

(Brown & Yule)

 ‘Discourse is a communicative process

by means of interaction Its situational outcome is a change in a state of

affairs: information is conveyed,

intentions made clear, its linguistic

product is Text.’ (Widdowson)