College of Arts/ Dept.

of English
Forth Stage/ General Linguistics
First Course- Sun. 6-12-2020
Asst. Instructor Hana'a Abass Suleiman
Chapter Eleven// Discourse Analysis
First Lecture

Discourse Analysis
What is meant by Discourse Analysis?
-Language beyond sentence and it concerned with the study of
language in texts and conversation.
- Reading a notice like this, no shoes, no service on shop
windows in summer means a conditional relationship between
the two parts (if you are wearing no shoes, you will receive no
service). So, we have the ability to create complex discourse
interpretation of fragmentary linguistic messages.
Interpreting Discourse
-Many of us can cope with texts which we did not produce
by ourselves . We can build interpretation.
-In many texts, they may contain set of errors yet they can
be understood.
e.g.,……it takes this name from people's carer. In my
childhood, I remember the people live. It was very simple.
Most people was farmer.
-This example about my town illustrates some
ungrammatical forms yet we can reach a reasonable
interpretation of what the writer intended to convey.
-To interpret something or to be interpreted are the key
elements investigated in the study of discourse.
Cohesion
-Texts must have structure that depends on factors different
from those required in the structure of a single sentence,
such factors are described in terms of cohesion.
-Cohesion refers to the ties and connections that exist within
texts.
-Among those types of cohesive ties are the following : he,
my, I .. as in the following example:
e.g. My father once bought a Lincoln convertible. He did it
by saving every penny he could. That car would be worth a
fortune nowadays. However, he …..
-In this regards, some words maintain reference to same
people and things such as he and my.
-There are also general connections that share a common
element of meaning such as 'money' (including saving and
penny) and time ( including time and nowadays).
-There are also connections such however to the opposite of
what has already been said before.
-Such cohesive ties gives us insight how writers structure
what they want to say.
-The conventions of cohesive ties structure differ from one
language to the next.
-Cohesion would not be enough to enable us to make sense of
what we read, e.g. Lincoln, the car, that color, her, she and
letter (these are a number of connections but is very difficult
to interpret)
-Yet, this sentence: My father bought a Lincoln convertible.
The car driven by the police was red. That color does not
suit her. She consists of three letters. Now, it becomes clear
from this sentence that 'connectedness' we experience in our
interpretation of normal texts is not simply based on
connections between words.
Coherence
-Coherence is another factor that helps us distinguish
connected texts that make sense from those that do not.
-It is concerned with everything fitting together well .
-It is something that exists in people not in words or
structures.
-Coherence is involved in creating meaningful connections
that are not actually expressed by the words and sentences.
-It is not only related to understanding odd texts but rather
involved in our interpretation of all discourse.
-It is present in the interpretation of casual conversation.
-for example,
Her: that is the telephone.
Him: I'm in the bath.
Her: ok.
-There are no cohesive ties within this fragment of discourse.
Yet, they do use the information contained in the sentences
expressed, but there must be something else involved in the
interpretation. It is suggested that exchanges of this type are
best understood in terms of the conventional actions
performed by the speakers in such interaction.
Speech Events
-It is concerned with exploring what it is we know about
taking part in conversation, or any other speech event.
-Part of discourse, we need to know what is taking part in
conversation, There is enormous variation in what people
say and do in different circumstances such as debates,
interviews, …. etc.
-In speech event, we have to specify the roles of speakers and
hearers and their relationships.
-A number of factors need to be considered during speech
such as whether they are friends, men, women, strangers
….etc.
-Such factors have an influence on what is said and how it is
said.
-Because of talking about the factors of how language is
used, we need to analyze the actual structure of the
conversation.
Conversation analysis
-Conversation is described as an activity in which two or
more people take turns at speaking.
-Typically, one person speaks at a time and there tends to be
an avoidance of silence between speaking turns.
- Speakers can mark turns as complete by asking questions
or by pausing at the end of a completed syntactic structure
like a phrase or sentence.
-Others can indicate that they want to take speaking turn by
making short sounds while the speaker is talking or making
some facial expressions.
Turn- taking
-There are different strategies of participation in conversation
which may result in different conventions of turn- taking.
-It is a common strategy used in discourse and conversation.
-One strategy, using connectors such as and, then, so, but,
…etc.in order to place your pauses at points where the message
is incomplete.
The Co- operative principle
-In conversation exchanges, it seems to be that the participants
are co-operating with each other.
-This principle, together with four maxims was 1st described by
Paul Grice , 1975 . Accordingly, the co-operative principle is
presented together with what is known as "Gricean maxims" .
-In our conversational contribution, there are four maxims
which can be considered as part of the co0operative principle.
-The quantity maxim: make your contribution as informative as
is required, but not more or less than is required.
-The quality maxim: Don’t 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 are saying is sufficiently
correct or complete.
-for example, sort of, kind of ….etc. to show accuracy of our
statements as in :
His hair was kind of long .
The book cover is sort of yellow .(quality maxim)
Implicatures
-When we try to analyze how hedges work, we usually talk
about speakers implying something that is not clear.
-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.
For example.
A: Are you coming to the party tonight?
B: I've got an exam tomorrow.
-In this example, B's statement is not an answer to A's question.
B does not say no to A. Yet A will interpret the statement as
meaning no. A will work out that 'exam tomorrow' involves
'study tonight' and 'study night' prevents 'party tonight'.
-B's answer is not simply a statement concerning tomorrow's
activities but rather contains an implicature (an additional
conveyed meaning).
BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE
 -To analyze the conversational implicature involved in B's
statement , we have to describe some background knowledge
(e.g. about exams) that must be shared by the conversational
participants.
For example,
John was on his way to school last Friday.
Most readers report that they think John is schoolboy . since this
information is not directly clear, it must be an inference
(understood from the text). Other references for other readers
are John is walking or that he is on a bus.
-In a different example,
Last week he had been unable to control the class.
Most readers decide that John must be a teacher and that he is
not very happy.
-we actually create what the text is about based on our
expectations of what normally happens . This phenomenon is
referred to as 'schema' or a 'script'.
Schema
-Is a general term for a conversational knowledge structure that
exists in memory.
-In the previous example, we were using our conversational
knowledge of what school classroom is like or a 'classroom
schema''
-We have many schemas or (schemata) that are used in the
interpretation of what we experience and what we hear or read
about.
-Supermarket schemata refer to food displayed on shelves and
shopping carts and baskets.
Script
-It is in many ways similar to a schema.
-A script is a dynamic, that is instead of the set of typical fixed
features in a schema, a script has a series of conventional actions
that take place. You have a script for 'going to the dentist' or
'eating in a restaurant' …etc.
Suzy went to the nearest place, sat down and ordered an
avocado sandwich . It was quite crowded , but the service was
fast .
-Based on our restaurant script, we would be able to say a
number of things about the scene and event briefly described in
the previous short text.
Conclusion about script
Our understanding of what we read does not directly come from
words and sentences on the page, but the interpretation we
create 'in our minds' of what we read.