APPROACHES TO DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

A Brief Overview of Discourse and Discourse Analysis1.1 An Introduction to Discourse Analysis 1.2 The Concept of Discourse 1.3 Discourse and Text 1.4 Spoken and Written Discourse 1.5 Di

DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

Number of credits: 03 Starting from May 8 th 2021

Assoc Prof Dr Ho Ngoc Trung

hongoctrung74@gmail.com

0913 306484

 Working schedule

08/05/21 (Lectures)

09/05/21 (Lectures )

15/05/21 (Presentation ) 16/05/21 (Presentation)

1 A Brief Overview of Discourse and Discourse Analysis

1.1 An Introduction to Discourse Analysis

1.2 The Concept of Discourse

1.3 Discourse and Text

1.4 Spoken and Written Discourse

1.5 Discourse and Grammar

1.6 The Role of Context in Discourse Analysis

1.7 The Information Structure and Thematic Structure 1.8 Some Characteristic Features of Discourse

2 Some Approaches to Discourse Analysis

2.1 Pragmatics

2.2 Language variation

2.3 Interactional Socio-linguistics

2.4 Ethnography of Communication 2.5 Conversation Analysis

 Assessment

Your assessment will be based on the following components: (a) Attendance (10%):

(b) Presentation (20%):

(c) Doing ONE project (70%) Choose a topic and write a research proposal, adopting one of the approaches discussed (pragmatics, interactional socio-linguistics, conversational analysis, critical discourse analysis, cohesion / coherence, relevance, or discourse structure) Due week 13/06/2021.

TOTAL: 100%

 Required readings:

ENGLISH

1 Brown G & Yule G (1983), Discourse Analysis, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

2 Carthy M M (1993), Discourse Analysis for Language Teachers, Cambridge University

Press, Cambridge

3 Cook G (1999), Discourse, Oxford University Press, London.

4 Coulthard M (1990), An Introduction to Discourse Analysis, Longman Group Limited,

London.

5 Gee, J P (1999), An Introduction to Discourse Analysis London: Routledge.

6 Halliday M.A.K & Hasan R (1976), Cohesion in English London: Longman.

7 Halliday M.A.K (1992), Spoken and Written Language, Oxford University Press, London.

8 Hatch, E (1992) Discourse and Language Education Cambridge: CPU.

9 Nunan D (1993), Introducing Discourse Analysis, Penguin English.

10 Trung H N (2013), Lectures on Discourse Analysis, Hanoi: Vietnam Education

language usage Cambridge University Press, 1987.

Longman, 1997.

1/98, Trang 47-55, 1998.

1974.

VNU Press, 2000.

21 Nguyễn Thiện Giáp Dụng học tiếng Việt Hà Nội: NXB ĐHQG Hà

Nội,2000.

22 Potter, J., & Wetherell, M Discourse Analysis and Social

Psychology Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1987.

23 Schiffrin, D (Ed.) Framing in Discourse New York, Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 1993.

24 Stalnaker, R Context and Content Oxford: OUP, 1999.

25 Tannen, D (Ed.) Framing in Discourse New York, Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 1993.

26 Trần Ngọc Thêm Hệ thống liên kết văn bản tiếng Việt Hà Nội:

NXB KHXH, 1985.

27 Verschueren, J Understanding Pragmatics London: Arnold, 1999.

28 Wood, L.A & Kroger, R.O Doing Discourse Analysis London: Sage

Publications, Inc 2000.

29 Van H V (2006), Introducing Discourse Analysis, Education

Publisher, Hanoi.

1.1 An Introduction to Discourse Analysis

 American linguist Zellig Harris published a paper entitled “Discourse Analysis” (1952)

 Mitchell (1957): Buying and selling in Cyrenaica

 Dell Hymes (1964): studying speech in social setting

 Austin (1962), Searle (1969), Grice (1975): studying language as social action

 M.A.K Halliday (1973, 1978, 1994): functional approach to language, emphasizing the social functions of language and the thematic and the information structure of speech and writing

 Sinclair and Coulthard (1975): Towards an Analysis of Discourse

-Discourse analysis in Vietnam:

Trần Ngọc Thêm (1985): Hệ thống liên kết văn bản bằng tiếng Việt

Diệp Quang Ban (1998), Văn bản và liên kết trong tiếng Việt

Diệp Quang Ban (2002), Giao tiếp, văn bản, mạch lạc, liên kết, đoạn văn

Extract 1:

T: How long have you been learning English grammar? S: Three months

Extract 2:

A: Cậu có giấy trắng không?

B: Ngoài cửa hàng bán đầy

Extract 3:

Only five hundred years ago, the oceans were the limits of people’s knowledge of the world in which they lived They were afraid to sail out into the oceans because no one knew what might be waiting for them there; the shore was the edge

of the world, many people believed The Portuguese navigators who began to break through this darkness stayed within sight of the coasts as they discovered the shape of Africa Then in 1492 Christopher Columbus sailed directly across the Atlantic He thought he had reached India, but he had really discovered the American continents and islands in the unknown seas until those lands had become familiar parts of the world

Discourse can be defined as a stretch of language consisting

of several sentences, which are perceived as being related in some way Sentences can be related, not only in terms of the idea they share, but also in terms of the jobs they perform within the discourse – that is in terms of their functions (David Nunan)

Discourse is language that is functional – language that is doing some job in some context as opposed to isolated words or sentences Discourse can be spoken, written or in any other medium of expression.

Discourse is a unit of language in use It is not a grammatical unit, like a clause or a sentence.

Discourse is a semantic unit, a unit not of form but of meaning A discourse does not consist of sentences; it is realized by , or encoded in sentences.

(Halliday & Hasan)

In terms of size, a discourse can be realized by a word, a phrase, a clause /sentence, a paragraph, a cluster of paragraphs, a book or even as big as a whole library providing that it forms a meaningful whole.

Discourse analysis/text analysis is a branch of linguistics that studies discourse/text.

 Two ways of looking at the relationship between discourse and text:

(i) Discourse and text: two different terms: Nunan D (1993), Cook

G (1989), Crystal D (1992)

(ii) Discourse and text: the same concept, used interchangeably: Halliday & Hasan (1976), Brown & Yule (1983), Coseriu E (Galperin I.R 1987:37), Van H.V (2006)

No distinction is made between discourse and text The two terms can be used interchangeably.

Written language and spoken language differ in three aspects, namely grammar, lexical density and situation.

Extract 1: Investment in a rail facility implies a long-term commitment.

Extract 2: If you invest in a rail facility, this implies that you are going to be committed for a long term.

(a) The written text seems to have more information packed into it.

Extract 3: This morning Associate Professor Dean Wolfe will talk about the science of music at half past eleven, and we’ll hear some fascinating things such as music backwards – but most of it will be played forwards!

Extract 4: This morning at half past eleven, Associate Professor Dean Wolfe will present a programme entitled ‘The Science of Music’, in which the listener will experience a number of fascinating things, including music played backwards - although most will be played forwards.

(b) Linguistically, written language tends to consist of clauses that are internally complex, whereas with spoken language the complexity exists in the ways in which clauses are joined together.

(c) The syntax of spoken language is typically much less structured

than that of written language

(i) Spoken language contains many incomplete sentences, often

simply sequences of phrases

(ii) Spoken language typically contains rather little subordination (iii) In conversational speech, where sentential syntax can be

observed, active declarative forms are normally found In over

50 hours of recorded conversational speech, very few examples

of passives, it-clefts or wh-clefts are found

it’s quite nice the Grassmarket since + it’s always had the antique shops but they’re looking + they’re sort of + em + become a bit nicer +

(d) In written language an extensive set of markers exists to mark relationships between clauses (that complementisers, when/while temporal markers, logical connectors like besides, moreover, however, in spite of, etc.; in spoken language the largely organised chunks are related by and, but, then and if.

(e) The speaker is typically less explicit than the writer: I’m so tired (because) I had to walk all the way home.

In written language rhetorical organisers of larger stretches

of discourse appear, like firstly, more importantly than and

in conclusion These are rare in spoken language.

(f) In written language, rather heavily modified noun phrases are quite common:

A man who turned into a human torch ten days ago after snoozing

in his locked car while smoking his pipe has died in hospital.

It is rare in spoken language to find more than two premodifying adjectives In spoken language only one predicate is attached to a given referent at a time as in:

It’s a biggish cat + tabby + with torn earns

Old man McArthur + he was a wee chap + oh very small + and eh

a beard + and he was pretty stooped

(g) Whereas written language sentences are generally structured in subject-predicate form, in spoken language it

is quite common to find topic-comment structure.

The cats were let out

The cats + they were let out.

(h) In informal speech, the occurrence of passive constructions is relatively infrequent.

Oh everything they do in Edinburg + they do it far too slowly

(i) 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

(j) The speaker may replace or refine expressions as he goes along:

This man + this chap she was going out with

(k) The speaker typically uses a good deal of rather generalised vocabulary: a lot of, got, do, thing, nice, stuff, place and things like that

(l) The speaker frequently repeats the same syntactic form several times over:

I look at fire extinguishers + I look at fire exits + I look at what gangways are available + I look at electric cables what + are they properly earthed + are they properly covered.

(m) 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.

A content word/lexical word: is a word that refers to a thing, quality, state, action or event.

A function word in one that indicates only grammatical relationships.

My mother is a very good teacher of English

Lexical density refers to the number of lexical or content words per clause.

The use of this method of control unquestionably leads to safer and faster trains running in the most adverse weather conditions.

A spoken version:

You can control the trains this way/ and if you do that/ you can be quite sure/ that they’ll be able to run more safely and more quickly/ than they would otherwise/ no matter how bad the weather gets

Written language displays a much higher ratio of content words to total running words.

Written language Spoken language

- No common situation

Inferred from the text

- Words carry all shades of

meaning

- Making assumptions about

the reader’s state of

knowledge Faceknowledge toknowledge face interaction

- Part of the meaning

 Carthy (1983: 62): “When speakers and writers are producing discourse, they are, at the same time as they are busy constructing clauses, monitoring the development of the larger discourse , and their choices at the local level can be seen simultaneously to reflect the concerns of the discourse as an unfolding production … A discourse- oriented approach to grammar would suggest not only a greater emphasis on contexts larger than the sentence, but also a reassessment of priorities in terms of what is taught about such things as word order, articles, ellipsis, tense and aspect …”

 Context refers to the situation giving rise to the discourse, and within which the discourse is embedded.

 There is a dialectical relationship between discourse and context The context creates the discourse as much as the discourse creates the context.

 Linguistic context (or co-text đồng văn bản) is the language that surrounds or accompanies the piece of discourse under analysis.

‘I feel chilly,’ he said ‘I didn’t feel strong enough to walk to

which the discourse takes place

Non-linguistic contexts include the type of communicative event (e.g joke, story, lecture, greeting, conversation): the topic; the purpose of the event; the setting including location, time of day, season of year, and physical aspects of the situation (e.g size of room, arrangement of furniture), the participant and the relationships between them; and the background knowledge and assumptions underlying the communicative event.

Utterances are not only dependent on the physical context for their interpretations, they are also closely related to the language surrounding them (co-text) Apart from a very small number of discourse kinds which consist of only one word/phrase/sentence, almost all sentences other than the first one are put in relation to each other Therefore, the interpretation of one sentence is hardly achieved without looking back at the previous sentences or referring

to the coming ones

Couldn’t you draw in the other room?

I’d like to be here by you Besides I don’t want you to keep looking

at those silly ivy leaves.

Tell me as soon as you have finished because I want to see the last one fall I’m tired of waiting.

Therefore, according to Brown & Yule, the more context there is, in general, the more secure the interpretation is (1983:50)

 Three models of context:

(i) J R Firth’s Model of Context

Firth saw linguistics as the study of meaning and to him all meaning was function in context The elements in his model are as follows: The relevant features of participants: persons, personalities 

The verbal action of the participants;  The nonverbal action of the participants.

The relevant objects: the surrounding objects and events.

The effect of the verbal action: what changes were brought about

by what the participants in the situation had to say.

(ii) Dell Hymes’ Model of Context:

The model consists of the following concepts:

to the speaker or writer who produces the utterance, and addressee refers to the hearer / reader who receives or decodes the utterance.

 Topic: what is talked about or written about.

 Setting: the time and place of a speech event For example, a conversation can take place in a classroom, a garden, a church, and it can take place at any hour of the day The setting of a speech event may have an effect on what is being said and how it

is said (also including posture, gesture, and facial expressions)

 Channel: the way in which a message is conveyed from one person to another The two most common channels of communication are speech and writing Other examples are the use of drum beats, smoke signals, or flags.

 Code: A term which is used instead of language, speech variety, or dialect.

 Message form: tells us about what forms are intended; whether the piece of language is a sermon, a fairy tales, a love story, a lecture etc.

 Event tells us about the nature of the communicative events within which a text may be embedded.

 Key: involves evaluation of the text (the tone, manner, or spirit

in which a speech act is carried out, for example, whether mockingly or seriously) – i.e whether the text is a good lecture,

or an interesting seminar on language teaching.

 Purpose: refers to the outcome which the participants wish to happen as a result of the communicative event

(iii) Halliday’s Model of Context

Halliday’s model has the following factors:

 The field of discourse (trường văn bản) refers to what is happening, including what is being talked about.

 The tenor of discourse (môi trường văn bản / không khí văn bản) refers to the participants who are taking part in the exchange of meaning, who they are and what kind of relationship then have to one another

 The mode of discourse (phương thức văn bản) refers to what part the language is playing in this particular situation, for example, in what way the language is organized to convey the meaning, and what channel is used – written or spoken or a combination of the two.