DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

• The word “discourse” is usually defined as “language beyond the sentence” and so the analysis of
discourse is typically concerned with the study of language in texts and conversation. In many of
the preceding chapters, when we were concentrating on linguistic description, we were concerned with
the accurate representation of the forms and structures. However, as language-users, we are capable of
more than simply recognizing correct versus incorrect forms and [Link] can cope with
fragments in newspaper headlines such as Trains collide, two die, and know that what happened in the
first part was the cause of what happened in the second [Link] can also make sense of notices like No
shoes, no service, on shop windows in summer, understanding that a conditional relation exists between
the two parts (“If you are wearing no shoes, you will receive no service”).
• We have the ability to create complex discourse interpretations of fragmentary linguistic
messages.
INTERPRETING DISCOURSE

• My Town
My natal was in a small town, very close to Riyadh capital of Saudi [Link] distant
between my town and Riyadh 7 miles [Link] name of this Almasani that means in
English Factories. It takes this name from the peopl’s carrer. In my childhood I remmeber
the people live. It was very simple. Most the people was farmer
• This example may serve to illustrate a simple point about the way we react to language that
contains ungrammatical forms. Rather than simply reject the text as ungrammatical,
we try to make sense of it. That is, we attempt to arrive at a reasonable interpretation
of what the writer intended to convey. (Most people say they understand the “My Town”
text quite easily.)
• It is this effort to interpret (or to be interpreted), and how we accomplish it, that are the key
elements investigated in the study of [Link] arrive at an interpretation, and to make our
messages interpretable, we certainly rely on what we know about linguistic form and
structure. But, as language-users, we have more knowledge than that.
COHESION

• We know, for example, that texts must have a certain structure that depends on factors quite different
from those required in the structure of a single sentence. Some of those factors are described in terms
of cohesion, or the ties and connections that exist within texts.
• My father once bought a Lincoln convertible. He did it by saving every penny he [Link] car would be
worth a fortune nowadays. However, he sold it to help pay for my college education. Sometimes I think
I’d rather have the convertible.
• Analysis of these cohesive ties within a text gives us some insight into how writers structure what they
want to say. An appropriate number of cohesive ties may be a crucial factor in our judgments
on whether something is well written or not. It has also been noted that the conventions of
cohesive structure differ from one language to the next and may be one of the sources of difficulty
encountered in translating texts.
• My father bought a Lincoln [Link] car driven by the police was red. That color
doesn’t suit her. She consists of three letters. However, a letter isn’t as fast as a telephone
call.

• Cohesion would not be sufficient to enable us to make sense of what we read. It

is quite easy to create a highly cohesive text that has a lot of connections between the
sentences, but is very difficult to interpret.
COHERENCE

• The key to the concept of coherence (“everything fitting together well”) is not something that
exists in words or structures, but something that exists in people. It is people who “make
sense” of what they read and hear. They try to arrive at an interpretation that is in line with their
experience of the way the world is. Indeed, our ability to make sense of what we read is probably only a
small part of that general ability we have to make sense of what we perceive or experience in the world.
HER:That’s the telephone.
HIM: I’m in the bath.
HER: O.K.
She makes a request of him to perform action.
He states reason why he cannot comply with request.
She undertakes to perform action.
SPEECH EVENTS

• In exploring what it is we know about taking part in conversation , or any other speech
event (e.g . debate , interview , various types of discussions), we quickly realize that there
is enormous variation in what people say and do in different circumstances . In order to
begin to describe the sources of that variation, we would have to take account of a
number of criteria. For example, we would have to specify the roles of speaker and
hearer (or hearers) and their relationship(s), whether they were friends, strangers,
men, women , young, old, of equal or unequal status, and many other [Link] of these
factors will have an influence on what is said and how it is said. We would have to
describe what the topic of conversation was and in what setting it took place.
CONVERSATION ANALYSIS

• In simple terms, English conversation can be described as an activity in which, for the most
part, two or more people take turns at speaking. Typically, only one person speaks at a time and
there tends to be an avoidance of silence between speaking turns. (This is not true in all situations or
societies.) If more than one participant tries to talk at the same time, one of them usually
stops, as in the following example, where A stops until B has finished.
• A: Didn’t you [ know wh-
• B: [ But he must’ve been there by two
• A: Yes but you knew where he was going
• For the most part, participants wait until one speaker indicates that he or she has finished, usually by
signalling a completion point.
TURN-TAKING

• There are different expectations of conversational style and different strategies of participation in conversation. Some of these
strategies seem to be the source of what is sometimes described by participants as “rudeness” (if one speaker cuts in on
another speaker) or “shyness” (if one speaker keeps waiting for an opportunity to take a turn and none seems to occur).The
participants characterized as “rude” or “shy” in this way may simply be adhering to slightly different conventions of turn-
taking.
• A: that’s their favorite restaurant because they … enjoy French food and when they were … in France they couldn’t believe it
that … you know that they had … that they had had better meals back home

• X: well that film really was … [ wasn’t what he was good at

• Y: [ when di-
• X: I mean his other … em his later films were much more … er really more in the romantic style and that was more what
what he was…you know…em best at doing Y: so when did he make that one
THE CO-OPERATIVE PRINCIPLE

• An underlying assumption in most conversational exchanges seems to be that

the participants are co-operating with each [Link] principle, together with
four maxims that we expect our conversational partners to obey, was first described by
the philosopher Paul [Link] co-operative principle is stated in the following way:
“Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at
which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in
which you are engaged” (Grice, 1975: 45). Supporting this principle are four maxims,
often called the “Gricean maxims.”
• The Quantity maxim: Make your contribution as informative as is required, but not more,
or less, than is required.
• The Quality maxim: Do not say that which you believe to be false or for which you lack
adequate evidence.
• The Relation maxim: Be relevant.
• The Manner maxim: Be clear, brief and orderly.
HEDGES

• Hedges can be defined as words or phrases used to indicate that we’re not really sure that
what we’re saying is sufficiently correct or [Link] can use sort of or kind of as hedges on
the accuracy of our statements, as in descriptions such as His hair was kind of long or The book
cover is sort of yellow (rather than It is yellow).These are examples of hedges on the Quality
maxim. Other examples would include the expressions listed below that people sometimes put at the
beginning of their conversational contributions.
• As far as I know …, Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but … I’m not absolutely sure, but ….
• We also take care to indicate that what we report is something we think or feel (not know), is possible
or likely (not certain), and may or could (not must) happen. Hence the difference between saying
Jackson is guilty and I think it’s possible that Jackson may be guilty. In the first version, we will
be assumed to have very good evidence for the statement.
IMPLICATURES

• When we try to analyse how hedges work, we usually talk about speakers implying something that is not said.
Similarly, in considering what the woman meant by a sandwich is a sandwich, we decided that she was implying
that the sandwich wasn’t worth talking about. With the co-operative principle and the maxims as guides, we can
start to work out how people actually decide that someone is “implying” something in conversation.
• CAROL: Are you coming to the party tonight?
• LARA: I’ve got an exam tomorrow.
• On the face of it, Lara’s statement is not an answer to Carol’s question. Lara doesn’t say Yes or No. Yet Carol
will immediately interpret the statement as meaning “No” or “Probably not.” How can we account for this
ability to grasp one meaning from a sentence that, in a literal sense, means something else? It seems to depend,
at least partially, on the assumption that Lara is being relevant and informative, adhering to the maxims of
Relation and Quantity.
BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE

• John was on his way to school last Friday.

• He was really worried about the math lesson.
• John is probably a schoolboy. Since this piece of information is not directly stated in the text, it must be
an inference. Other inferences, for different readers, are that John is walking or that he is on a [Link]
inferences are clearly derived from our conventional knowledge, in our culture, about “going to school,”
• Last week he had been unable to control the class.
• It was unfair of the math teacher to leave him in charge
• the ways in which we “build” interpretations of what we read by using a lot more information than is
presented in the words on the page.
SCHEMAS AND SCRIPTS

• A schema is a general term for a conventional knowledge structure that exists in memory.
We were using our conventional knowledge of what a school classroom is like, or a “classroom schema,”
as we tried to make sense of the previous [Link] have many schemas (or schemata) that are used
in the interpretation of what we experience and what we hear or read about. If you hear someone
describe what happened during a visit to a supermarket, you don’t have to be told what is normally
found in a [Link] already have a “supermarket schema” (food displayed on shelves, arranged in
aisles, shopping carts and baskets, check-out counter, and other conventional features) as part of your
background knowledge.
• Similar in many ways to a schema is a script. A script is essentially a dynamic [Link] is,
instead of the set of typical fixed features in a schema, a script has a series of conventional actions
that take [Link] have a script for “Going to the dentist” and another script for “Going to the
movies.”
• Trying not to be out of the office for long, Suzy went into the nearest place, sat down and
ordered an avocado sandwich. It was quite crowded, but the service was fast, so she left a
good tip. Back in the office, things were not going well.
• “Eating in a restaurant” script,
• On the basis of our restaurant script, we would be able to say a number of things about
the scene and events briefly described in this short text. For example, although the text
doesn’t have this information, we would assume that Suzy opened a door to get into the
restaurant, that there were tables there, that she ate the sandwich, then she paid for it,
and so on.
• Fill measure cup to line
and repeat every 2 to 3 hours.