Faculty of Linguistics and Cultures of

English speaking countries/ ULIS_VNU

Lecture 3: Discourse analysis

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Main issues
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1. What is Discourse ?
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2. What is Discourse Analysis?

3. How is DA different from Pragmatics?

4. Some key concepts in DA?

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English speaking countries/ ULIS_VNU

1. What is Discourse?
I found
myself
discourse useless.

hated
enjoying
sentence
hated,
I actually felt tired of phrase enjoying

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sitting doing nothing.
And I hated enjoying

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the unemployment enjoy,
benefit. I found myself word -ing

eo
useless. Then I decided
to look for a job.
us morpheme
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ern

Example: Is this a discourse?

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ri

• A: The grass needs cutting.

fo

• B: It’s nearly 10 o’clock.

• A: He’ll wait.
• B: Like last week and the week before.
• A: The Robinsons are coming tomorrow.
• B: It’s starting to rain anyway. (R.Bolitho)

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In short,
• Discourse is language in use (Brown and Yule,
1983)
• Discourse is language above the sentence or
above the clause (Stubbs, 1983),

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nt
ri

• DISCOURSE: a general term for examples of

fo

language use, i.e. language which has been

produced as a result of an act of communication.
• Discourse refers to units of language larger than
sentence such as paragraph, conversation, and
interview.
=> Discourse is language above the sentence or above
the clause (Stubbs, 1983)

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2. What is DA?
• Discourse analysis is an approach to the
analysis of language that examines
patterns of language across texts and
considers the relationship between
language and the social and cultural

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contexts in which it is used.

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• DA studies both spoken and written
discourse
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Discussion
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• Given a letter of recommendation, what can

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you study using discourse analysis?

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• Think of another discourse that you are

interested in. Think of some topics of research
to analyze your discourse using DA

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3. How is DA different from

Pragmatics?
Discourse analysis Pragmatics
Both DA and Pragmatics study the same language phenomena,
but from a different perspective.

DA emphasizes the language Pragmatics emphasizes the

phenomena at and above the impact of users, context and
sentence level as they are sociological factors on meaning

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influenced by co-text and

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sociological phenomena
DA is closer to linguistics Pragmatics is closer to

eo
sociolinguistics and sociology.
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4. Some key concepts in DA

nt

• Cohesion
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• Coherence
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Faculty of Linguistics and Cultures of
English speaking countries/ ULIS_VNU

Example: Do these texts have cohesion and

coherence?

- Can you give me a lift?

- Sorry, I’m visiting my sister now.

- My father bought a Lincoln convertible.

The car driven by the police was red. That color

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nl
doesn’t suit her. She consists of three letters.
However, a letter isn’t as fast as a telephone
call.
eo
us
al
ern

Cohesion and Coherence

nt

Cohesion Coherence
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Cohesion is concerned with Coherence is concerned with

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formal surface structures the sequencing of the

(syntax and lexis) to interact configuration of the concepts
with underlying semantic and relation of the textual
relations or underlying world which underlie and are
functional coherence to realised by the surface text
create textual unity

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How is coherence created?

• Cohesion.
• The way discourse is structured.
• Relevance.
• Context.
• Use of resources, determined by
– 1. speaker’s purposes
– 2. cultural, discourse strategies

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– 3. social context
–

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4.charateristics of conventionalized types of discourse
– 5. cultural framework, values.

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How is cohesion created?

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Cohesive devices
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Reference
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Substitution

Ellipsis

Conjunctive cohesion

Lexical cohesion

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Reference
• Reference: The principle of reference
within texts is that the reader / listener can
only make complete sense of the word or
structure they are looking at if they look
elsewhere in the text to get a fuller

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picture.

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us
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nt

REFERENCE
ri
fo

EXOPHORIC ENDOPHORIC
REFERENCE REFERENCE

ANAPHORIC CATAPHORIC
REFERENCE REFERENCE

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Reference

• exophoric reference: Where a reference

item moves us outside a text so that we
can only make full sense of the text by
referring to its context.
Eg: The government are to blame for

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nl
unemployment.

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us
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Reference
nt

• anaphoric reference: If a reference is

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referring back to something

fo

• E.g.:
Some people think that they can become
rich without working hard. That’s a big
mistake.

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Reference

• cataphoric reference: if it is referring to

something coming later.
• E.g.:
They pressed round him to take their

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money. Andy, Dave, Bob, Phil and

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Stephen.

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us
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Ellipsis
nt
ri

• ellipsis: the omission of elements

normally required by the grammar which
fo

the speaker / writer assumes are obvious

from the context and therefore need not
be raised. So the structure has a “missing”
element which is supplied by the context.

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Ellipsis

• Eg:
You label and I’ll stack
(two people labelling and stacking documents)

- How much does it cost you?

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nl
- 60 dollars

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Substitution
nt
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• substitution: the device to show the

relationship between sentences and at the
fo

same time avoids repetition.

• Substitution is similar to ellipsis in that
there is also a missing element. But here,
the deleted element is replaced by
another item.

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Substitution

• Eg:
1. I don’t like this vase. Give me the black
one.
2. - John does smoke?
- I’m sure he does.

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nl
3. - I want to go home

eo
- Me too. us
al
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Conjunction
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• conjunctions: powerful sentence

fo

connectors. They demonstrate the logical

relationships holding between sentences,
thus creating or expressing cohesion.

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Conjunction
Find instances of conjunctions in the following
texts:
Tourism creates employment. It is
estimated that in the Lake District, for
instance, 30 percent of jobs can be directly

y
attributed to tourism. But the fact that

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visitors spent their money in a variety of

eo
ways affect other things, too.
us
al
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Conjunction
nt

There are also many problems concerning

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tourism in the Lake District. Many roads in

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the region are extremely narrow.

Moreover, because car park fills up during
busy periods, many visitors park across
gateways. The result is inevitable
congestion.

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Lexical cohesion

• reiteration: the repetition of a lexical item

in order for a lexical item to be recognized
as repeated.
Eg: The White House insists that North Korea
disarm its nuclear program. However, North

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nl
Korea says they will only do so if their conditions
are to be observed by the White House.

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Lexical cohesion
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• synonymy: Lexical cohesion results from

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the use of synonyms or near synonyms to

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avoid repetition.
Eg: The US began dropping out of the
program in 1977. France shut down its
commercial Phoenix breeder in 1990. Germany
abandoned its completed reactor in 1991. Last
week, Britain cancelled its fast breeder program.

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Lexical cohesion
• antonymy: Cohesion may also result from
the use of antonyms, especially when
there is a contrast between two subjects in
a discourse.
Eg: Today’s men complaint about the

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absence of women in the home. Women, on the

nl
other hand, are enjoying more freedom to take

eo
part in social work. us
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ern

Lexical cohesion
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• association: refers to instances of lexical

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cohesion which exist between two or more

words of one and the same semantic field,
fo

possessing some common semantic

properties.
Eg: Military conflicts in Middle East are
nothing new. Armed forces are present
everywhere. Civilians sometimes cannot
distinguish different units in the streets.

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