Topic 8: Discourse Analysis

Text and discourse

Text = any object that can be read   Discourse = use of language (spoken / written) in social context for communication   Discourse analysis = study - relationship between language and its context                                  - what gives discourse coherence

Discourse analysis

60's American school Dell Hymes (speech in social settings) British School Austin, Searle and Grice (language as a social action) Speech Act Theory Conversational Maxims Pragmatics

70's American school Gumperz and Hymes (conversation analysis) storytelling, greetings and verbal duels Labov (oral narrative) Discourse organisation Social constraints (politeness, face-preserving) British school Halliday (functional approach - SFL) Text related to social situations (filed = purpose; tenor = relationship; mode = channel)

Seven standards of textuality

(de Beaudegrande and Dressler) Cohesion (ways components are connected) Coherence (continuity of senses) Intentionality (text fulfils an intention) Acceptability (receiver's attitude towards text) Informativity (information: given / new) Situationality (text relevant to a situation) Intertextuality (text dependant on other texts)

Cohesion

Grammatical Substitution - nominal / verbal / clausal Ellipsis - textual / clausal / situational Reference - exophora / endophora (anaphora / cataphora) Deixis - place / time / discourse / social (T-V distinction / honorifics) Conjunction - elaboration / extension / enhancement Graphological devices

Lexical (Halliday and Hasan, 1976) Repetition = reiteration Synonym Identity of reference (synonym in its narrowest sense / superordinates) without identity of reference Hyponymy = higher linguistic unit Meronymy = part of entity represented Antonymy = opposite Collocation Lexical chains = sequence of related words (ex. Rome -> capital -> city -> inhabitant)

Coherence and discourse markers

Coherence Cohesion (important contribution) Receivers interpretation of logical relations intentionality, acceptability, situationality, informativity and intertextuality Achieved by presuppositions or implications connected to general world knowledge

Discourse markers Definition = glue that binds together a text Linking words or phrases or sentence connectors additive adversative causal temporal