Chapter One: Discourse and Text Analysis

The traditional concern of linguistic analysis was the construction of sentences but in the

years (1970s) there was an increasing interest in analysing the way sentences work in sequence to

produce coherent stretches of language.

Two main approaches developed. Discourse Analysis focuses on the structure of naturally

occurring spoken language, as found in such ‘discourse’ as conversations, interviews, commentaries

and speeches. Text Analysis focuses on the structure of written language, as found in such ‘texts’ as

essays, notices road signs, and chapters. But this distinction is not clear-cut, and there were many

other uses of these labels. In particular, both ‘discourse’ and ‘text’ can be used in a much broader

sense to include all language units with a definable communicative function, whether spoken or

written. Some scholars talk about ‘Spoken and Written Discourse’ and others about ‘Spoken and

Written text’. In Europe, the term Text Linguistics is often used for the study of the linguistic

principles governing the structure of all forms of text.

The search for larger linguistic units and structures has been pursued by scholars from many

disciplines. Linguists investigate the features of language that bind sentences when they are used in

sequence. Ethnographers and sociologists study the structure of social interaction, especially as

manifested in the way people enter into dialogue. Anthologists analyse the structure of myths and

folk-tales. Psychologists carry out experiments on the mental process underlying comprehension and

further contributions have come from those concerned with artificial intelligence, rhetoric,

philosophy and style.

These approaches have a common concern: they stress the need to see language as a dynamic,

social interactive phenomenon whether between speaker and listener, or writer and reader. It is

argued that meaning is conveyed not by single sentences but by more complex exchanges, in which
the participants’ beliefs and expectation, the knowledge they share about each other and about the

world, and the situation in which they interact, play a crucial part.

I.1 Spoken Discourse

Of the many types of communicative acts, most study has been devoted to conversation,

seen as the most fundamental and pervasive means of conducting human affairs. These very

characteristics, however, complicate any investigation. Because people interact linguistically in such a

wide range social situations, on such a variety of topics, and with such an unpredictable set of

participant, it has proved very difficult to determine the extent to which conversational behaviour is

systematic, and to generalize about it.

There is now no doubt that such a system exists. Conversation turns out, upon analysis, to be

a highly structured activity, in which people tacitly operate with a set of basic conversation. A

comparison has even been drowned with games such as chess: conversations, it seem, can be

thought of as having an opening, a middle, and an endgame. The participants make their moves and

often seem to follow certain rules as the dialogue proceeds. But the analogy ends: there A successful

conversation is not a game: it is no more than a mutually satisfying linguistic exchange. Few rules are

ever stated explicitly;)some exceptions are ‘don’t interrupt’, and ‘look at me when I talk to you’(.

Furthermore apart from in certain types of argument and debate, there are no winners.

I.1.1 Conversational Success

For a conversation to be successful, in most social contexts, the participants need to feel they

are contributing something to it and are getting something out of it. For this to happen, certain

conditions must apply. Everyone must have an opportunity to speak: no one should be monopolizing

or constantly interrupting. The participants need to make their roles clear especially if there are

several possibilities )e.g. ‘speaking as a mother /linguist/Catholic …(

They need to have to develop a mutual tolerance, to allow for speaking or staying silent: when to
stay aloof or become involved. They need to develop mutual tolerance, to allow for speaker

ambiguity and listener inattention: perfect expression and comprehension are rare, and the success

of a dialogue largely depends on people recognizing their communicative weaknesses, through the

use of rephrasing (e.g. ‘Are you with me?(.

There is a great deal of ritual in conversation, especially at the beginning and end, and when

topics change. For example, people cannot simply leave a conversation at any random point, unless

they wish to be considered socially inept or ill -mannered. They have to choose their point of

departure(such as the moment when a topic changes(or construct a special reason for leaving.

Routines for concluding a conversation are particularly complex, and cooperation if it is not to end

abruptly, or in an embarrassing silence, the parties may prepare for their departure a long way in

advance, such as by looking at their watches or giving a verbal early warning. A widespread

convention is for visitors to say they must leave sometime before they actually intend to depart and

for the hosts to ignore the remark. The second mention then permits both parties to act.

The topic of the conversation is also an important variable. In general it should be one with

which everyone feels at ease: ‘safe topics’ between strangers in English situations usually include the

weather, pets, children, and the local context(e.g. while waiting in a room or queuing (. ‘Unsafe

topics’ include religious and political beliefs and problem of health. There are some arbitrary

divisions: asking what someone does for a living is generally safe;asking how much they earn is not.

Cultural variations can cause problems: commenting about the cost of the furniture or the taste of a

meal maybe acceptable in one society but not in another.

It is difficult to generalize about what is normal, polite, or antisocial in conversational

practice, as there is so much cultural variation. Silence, for example, varies in status. It is in an

embarrassment in English conversations, unless there are special reason)such as in moments of grief

(. However, in some cultures (e.g.Laps, Danes, the Western Apache(,it is quite normal for participants

to become silent. Often, who speaks and how much is spoken, depends on the social status of the
participants – for example, those of lower rank maybe expected to stay silent if their seniors wish to

speak. Even the basic convention of ‘one person speaks at a time ’maybe broken. In Antigua, for

example, the phenomenon of several people speaking at once during a whole conversation is a

perfectly normal occurrence.

I.1.2 Conversational Analysis

In recent years, the phrase “conversation analysis” has come to be used as the name of a

particular method of studying conversational structure, based on the American sociological

movement of the 1970s known as ethno methodology.

The emphasis in previous sociological research had been deductive and quantitative focusing

on general questions of social structure.

In conversation analysis, one data thus consist of tape recordings of natural conversation and their

associated transcriptions. These are then systematically analysed to determine what properties

govern the way in which a conversation proceeds. The approach emphasizes the need for empirical,

inductive work, and in this is sometimes contrasted with’ discourse analysis’, which has often been

more concerned with formal methods of analysis (such as the nature of the rules governing the

structure of texts).

I.1.3Conversational Maxims

The success of a conversation depends not only on what speakers say but on their whole

approach to the interaction. People adopt a ‘cooperative principle when they communicative: they

try to get along with each other by following certain conversational maxims that underlie the

efficient use of language. Four basic maxims were proposed after (H.P.Grice,1975)
The maxim of quality states that speakers’ contribution to a conversation ought to be true they

should not say what they believe to be false anything for which they lack adequate evidence.

The maxim of quantity states that the contribution should be as informative as is required for the

purposes of the conversation. One should say neither too little nor too much.

The maxim of relevance states that contributions should clearly relate to the purpose of the

exchange.

The maxim of manner states that the contribution should be perspicuous -in particular, that it should

be orderly and brief, avoiding obscurity and ambiguity.

Other maxims were also proposed, such as “politeness and consistency”. The principle of relevance is

currently attracting most attention, as it was proposed as a fundamental explanatory principle for a

theory of human communication. Listeners will normally assume that speakers are following these

criteria. Speakers may of course break or flout these maxims- for example, they may lie, be sarcastic,

try to be different, or clever- but conversation proceeds on the assumption that they are not doing

so.

Listeners may then draw inferences from what speakers have said(the literal meaning of the

utterance) concerning what they have not said (the implications or’implicatures of the utterance ).

For example:

A: I need a drink

B:Try the Bell

If B is adhering to the cooperative principle, several implicatures arise out of this dialogue for

example the Bell must be place that sells drinks and is open (as far as B knows); it must be nearby, if

B is not being cooperative(e.g. if he knows that the Bell is closed, or is the name of a greengrocer’s),

he is flouting the maxim of quality and relevance.

sarcasm, joking or deliberate unpleasantness. More likely is the inadvertent flouting of

conversational maxims- as would happen if B genuinely did not know that the Bell was closed, and

accidentally went on a wild goose chase. In every day conversation, misunderstandings often take

place as speakers make assumptions about what their listeners know, or need to know that turn out

to be wrong. At such points, the conversation can break down and may need to be repaired, with the

participants questioning, clarifying, and cross-checking. The repairs are quickly made in the following

extract, through the use of such pointers as ‘told you’ and sorry.

A: Have you got the time?

B: No, I told you, I lost my watch.

A: Oh, sorry, I forgot.

But it is quite common for participants not to realize that there has been a breakdown and to

continue conversing at cross purposes.

I.1.4Conversational Turns

Probably the most widely recognized conversational convention is that people take turns to

speak, but how do people know when it is their turn?

Some rules must be present; otherwise conversations would be continually breaking down

into a disorganized jumble of interruptions and simultaneous talk. In many formal situations, such as

committee meetings and debates, there are often explicit markers showing that a speaker is about to

yield the floor, and indicating who should speak next (‘I think Mr Smith will know the answer to that

question’). This can happen in informal situation too (‘what do you think, John’ ?), but there the turn-

taking cues are usually more subtle.

way in advance that they are about to conclude.

The clues may be semantic (‘So anyway….’,‘Last but not least…..’); but more commonly the

speech itself can be modified to show that a turn is about to end – typically, by lowering its pitch,

loudness, or speed. Body movements and patterns of eye contact are especially important. While

speaking, we look at and away from our listener in about equal proportions; but as we approach the

end of a turn, we look at the listener more steadily.

Similarly, when talking to a group of people, we often look more steadily at a particular person to

indicate that in our view this should be the next speaker.

Listeners are not passive in all of this. Here too, there are several ways of signalling that

someone wants to talk next. Most obviously, the first person in a group actually starts speaking, after

the completion of a turn, will usually be allowed to hold the floor. More subtly, we can signal that we

want to speak next by an observable increase in body tension- by leaning forward, or producing an

audible intake of breath. Less subtly, we can simply

interrupt- a strategy which may be tolerated, if the purpose is to clarify what the speaker is saying,

but which more usually leads to social sanctions.

I.1.5 Exchanges

Because conversational discourse varies so much in length and complexity, analysis

generally begins by breaking an interaction down into the smallest possible units, then examining the

way these units are used in sequences. The units have been called ‘exchanges’, and in their minimal

form consist simply of an initiating utterance (I) followed by a response utterance (R), as in:

I: What’s the time?

R: Two o’clock.
Two- part exchanges (sometimes called’ adjacency pairs’) are common place, being used in such

contexts as questioning, answering, informing/acknowledging, and complaining/excusing. Three part

exchanges are also important; where the response is followed by an element of feedback (F).Such

reactions are especially founding teaching situations:

Teacher: Where were the arrows kept? (I)

Pupil: In a special kind of box. (R)

Teacher: Yes, that's right, in box (F)

What is of particular interest is to work out of the constraints that apply to sequences of

this kind. The teacher –feedback sequence would be inappropriate in many everyday situations:

A: Did you have a good journey?

B: Apart from a jam at Northampton..

A: * Yes, that’s right, a jam at Northampton.

Unacceptable sequences are easy to invent:

A: Where do you keep the jam?

B: * It's raining again.

On the other hand, with ingenuity it is often possible to imagine situations where such a

sequence could occur (e.g., if B were staring out of the window at the time). Discourse analysts are

always on the lookout for unexpected, but perfectly acceptable, sequences in context, such as:

A: goodbye.

B: Hello.
(used, for example, as A is leaving an office, passing B on his way in ). Many jokes too break discourse

rules as the source of their effect:

A: Yes, I can.

B: Can you see into the future?

(B made a challenge since he/she hears A saying I can, so he/she told him/her can you predict the

future).

I.1.6 Conversation Manoeuvres

Conversational turn-taking is often marked by clear signals of direction.

Openings

 Guess What ……......................

 Sorry to trouble you …………...

 Lovely day!

 Got a match?

 Can I help you?

 Good morning. Excuse me …….

 Did you hear the one about …….

 Can you spare a minute?

 Halt! Who goes there?

But not:* How much do you earn?

On-going checks

By the speaker:
  Do you see?

 Can you guess what he said?

 Are you with me?

 Do I make myself clear?

 Don’t you think?

 Let me put it another way ……..

 Don’t get me wrong ……………..

 What I’m trying to say is ………..

By the listener:

 You mean ………………………..

 Have I got you right?

 Mhm. I don’t get you.

 Let’s get that straight ……………..

Changing topic

Introducing a new topic:

 That reminds me ………

 Incidentally ……………

 That’s a good question.

 By the way ……………

 Speaking of John ………

 Where was I?
Concluding a topic:

 So it goes

 That’s life.

 Makes you think. doesn’t it?

 Let’s wait and see.

Ending

 Sorry, but a have to go new.

 Nice talking to you.

 Well, must get beak to work.

 Gosh, is that tune?

 I mustn’t keep you.

I.1.7 Misunderstandings

An important aim of discourse analysis is to find out why conversations are not always

successful. Misunderstanding and mutual recrimination unfortunately are fairly common.

Participants often operate with difference rules and expectations about the way in which the

conversation should proceed, something that is particularly evident when people of different cultural

backgrounds interact. But even within a cultural, different ‘rules of interpretation’ may exist.

It has been suggested, for example, that there are different rules governing the way in

which men and women participate in a conversation. A common source of misunderstanding is the

way both parties use head nods and ’mhm’noises while the other is speaking –something that

women do much more frequently than men. Some analysts have suggested that the two sexes mean

different things by this behaviour. When a woman does it she is simply indicating that she is listening
 and encouraging the speaker to continue. But the male interprets it to mean that she is agreeing with

everything he is saying. By contrast, when a man does he is signalling that he does not necessarily

agree, whereas the woman interprets it to mean that he is not always listening. Such interpretations

are plausible, it is argued, because they explain two of the most widely reported reaction from

participants in cross-sex conversations-the male reaction of ‘It’s impossible to say what a woman

really thinks, and the female reaction of ‘you never listen to a world I say. (Maltz&Borker, 1982)

I.2Textual Structure (Written Discourse)

To call a sequence of sentences a ‘text’ is to imply that the sentences display some kind of

mutual dependence: they are not occurring at random. Sometimes the internal structure of text is

immediately apparent, as the headings of a restaurant menu; sometimes it has to be carefully

demonstrated, as in the network of relationships that enter into a literary work. In all cases, the task

of textual analysis is to identify the linguistic features that cause the sentence sequence to ‘cohere’-

something that happens whenever the interpretation of one future is dependent upon another

elsewhere in the sequence. The ties that bind a text together are often referred to under the heading

of cohesion (Halliday&Hasan, 1976). Several types of cohesive factor have been recognized:

 Conjunctive Relation: What is about to be said is explicitly related to what has been said before,

though such notion as contrast, result, and time:

 I left early, however, Mark stayed till the end.

Lastly, there’s the question of cost.

 Coreference: Features that cannot be semantically interpreted without referring to some other

feature in the text. Two types of relationship are recognized: anaphoric relation look backwards for

their interpretation, and cataphoric relations look forwards. Several people approached. They

seemed angry.

 Listen to this: John’s getting married.

I’ve got a pencil, do you have one?

Will we get there on time? I think so.

Ellipsis: A piece of structure is omitted and can be understood only from the preceding discourse.

Where did you see the car?In the street.

Repeated Forms An expression is repeated in whole or in part.

Canon Brown arrived. Canon brown was cross.

Lexical Relationships: One lexical item enters into a structural relationships whit another: the rovers

were lovely. He liked the tulips best.

Comparison: A compared expression is presupposed in the previous discourse.

That house was bad. This one’s far worse.

Cohesive links go a long way towards explaining how the sentences of a text hang together,

but they do not tell the whole story. It is possible to invent a sentence sequence that is highly

cohesive but nonetheless incoherent (Enkvist, 1978, p110).

A week has seven days. Every day I feed my cat.

Cats have four legs. The cat is on the mat. Mat has three letters.

A text plainly has to be coherent as well as cohesive, in that the concepts and relationships expressed

should be relevant to each other, thus enabling us to mark plausible inferences about the underlying

meaning.
 Coherence

The textual world (what the text is about) is made up of concepts and relations. Coherence

concerns the way in which concepts and relations are mutually accessible and relevant. In other

words, a coherent text is one which is easy for us to understand because it is easy for us to make a

mental representation of it. Remember that it is possible for a text to be cohesive but not coherent.

I.2.1Two Ways of Demonstrating Cohesion

Paragraphs are often highly cohesive entities. The cohesive ties can stand out very clearly if the

sentences are shuffled into a random order. It may even be possible to reconstitute the original

sequence solely by considering the nature of these ties, as in the following case:

1. However, nobody had seen one for months.

2. He thought he saw a shape in bushes in the bushes.

3. Mark had told him about the foxes.

4. John looked out of the window.

5. Could it be a fox?

(The original sequence was 4,2,5,3,1,)

We can use graphological devices to indicate the paragraph of James Joyce’s shout story’ A

Painful Case. the sequences of pronouns, the anaphoric definite articles, and the repeated phrases

are the main cohesive features between the clauses and sentences.
Several of course refer back to previous parts of the story, these making this paragraph, out context,

impossible to understand.

He turned back the way he had come, the rhythm of the engine pounding in his ears. He

began to doubt the reality of what memory told him. He halted under a tree and allowed the

rhythmto die away. He could not feel hear near him in the DARNESS nor her voice touch

his ear. He waited for some minutes listening. He could hear NOTHING: the NIGHT was

Perfectly silent. He listened again: perfectly silent. He felt that: he was ALONE.

I.2.2Macrostructures

Not all textual analysis starts with small units and works from the bottom up. Some

approaches aim to make very general statements about the macrostructure of a text. In psychology,

for example, attempts have been made to analyses narratives into schematic outlines that represent

the elements in a story that readers remember. These schemata have been called story- grammars

(though this is an unusually broad sense of the term ‘grammar’)

setting, theme, plot, and resolution. The setting has three components: the characters, a location,

and a time. The theme consists of an event and a goal. The plot consists of various episodes, each

with its own goal and outcome, Using distinctions of this kind, simple stories are analysed into these

components, to see whether the same kinds of structure can be found in each. Certain similarities do

quickly emerge, but when complex narratives are studied, it proves difficult to devise more detailed

categories that are capable of generalization, and analysis becomes increasingly arbitrary.

Exercises

How is discourse analysis defined?

Maxims

What happens in the following examples?

1. What is implicated by the sentence or discourse?

2. What maxims are involved?

3. Are maxims being obeyed, violated or flouted?

(1) A: In a few years. I will be rich and famous!

B: Yes, and I will be the secretary-general of the United Nations.

(2) A: Did Manchester United win from Roda JC, yesterday?

B: Is the pope catholic?

(3) Quiz master: The Louvre is located in which European capital.

Contestant: (silence)

Quiz master, after a while: It starts with a ‘P’.

(5) A: What would you like for your birthday?

B: Well, my camera is not working.

(6) A: Who are those two people?

B: That’s my mother and her husband.

(7) A: Of the three friends you invited to your party, who turned up?

B: John did.

(8) A: Where can I buy a newspaper?

B: There’s a news agent around the corner.

(9) [in a testimonial about a pupil who is a candidate for a philosophy job]

Dear Sir, Mr X’s command of English is excellent and his attendance at tutorials.

Give an example of each Gricean maxim and an example of its violation.

Example of Text Cohesion

Compare these two texts and identify the linking devices in the second text.

Text 1

Bobby was a Skye Terrier. Bobby roamed the streets of Edinburgh. Bobby met John Grey in

the 1850s. Grey worked as a night watchman in the Edinburgh police. Bobby kept John Grey

company. The winters in Edinburgh can be very cold. Grey fell sick with tuberculosis. Tuberculosis

was a fatal disease back in the 1800s. On 15 February 1858, Grey died.
 Bobby followed John Grey to his grave at GreyfriarsKirkyard in the old part of Edinburgh.

Bobby did not leave the grave except for when he was hungry. Bobby did not leave the grave except

for when he was very cold.

People started to notice the dog in the churchyard. People started worrying about Bobby. The City of

Edinburgh had decided that ownerless dogs should be shot. The city council bought a licence for

Bobby. Bobby could keep on watching his master’s grave. Bobby survived his master by 14 years. He

died in 1872. He was buried just inside the gate of the churchyard. He could not be buried together

with his master. The church ground is sacred.

Text 2

Bobby was a Skye Terrier roaming the streets of Edinburgh in the 1850s until he met John

Grey. Grey worked as a night watchman in the Edinburgh police and Bobby kept him company. The

winters in Edinburgh can be very cold and one day Grey fell sick with tuberculosis. This was a fatal

disease back in the 1800s and on 15 February 1858, Grey died.

Bobby followed him to his grave at GreyfriarsKirkyard in the old part of Edinburgh and he did

not leave the grave except for when he was hungry or very cold.

People started to notice the dog in the churchyard and they started worrying about Bobby

because the City of Edinburgh had decided that ownerless dogs should be shot. However, the city

council bought him a licence and he could keep on watching his master’s grave. Bobby survived his

master by 14 years, and when he died in 1872 he was buried just inside the gate of the churchyard.

He could not be buried together with his master, since church ground is sacred.

Linking words

Complete the Sentences

He didn’t get the job _____________ he arrived late for the interview.

He watched TV ______________ he was waiting for dinner.

She wanted to spend the holiday in Norway _____________ could not afford the ticket.

The public cheered for their team ______________ it did not play very well.

The country is very picturesque ______________ tourism is an important industry.

The weather is fine _____________ I think we should go for a picnic.

We did not go to the beach ____________ it was too cold.

His parents waited up ____________ he came home.

At the foot of the mountain there was a small, picturesque village __________ I lived.
The book was very good _____________ the film version was better.

Logical order

Order the jumbled sentences to make a logical text.

because there were no more chips.

and chose a table by the window.

and the customer replied that he was.

I’ll have the roast beef, please.

A man went into a restaurant to eat dinner

“I’m sorry, sir, the roast beef is finished.”

“Are you ready to order, sir?” the waitress asked

“No thank you” he replied. I don’t like lamb.”

“Would you like to try the lamb instead?”

Again the waitress had to apologise

“Why don’t you have a salad with your hamburger instead”, she suggested.

He finally decided to have a hamburger and chips.