Discourse

MEETING 7
 What is Discourse?
• Consider the following definitions of discourse:
1. Discourse is language above the sentence or above the
clause (Stubbs, 1983).
2. How we organize language into units that are larger than
sentences’ (Scheffrin, 1994).
3. a stretch of language perceived to be meaningful unified,
and purposive; language in use
4. Discourse serves to indicate not only the immediate context
of, e.g. a conversation, a job interview, etc., but also the
hidden conditions that govern such situations of language
use. That is, how people use their language in their social
contexts.
5. Discourse is ‘utterances’ (units of language production,
whether spoken or written) that are inherently contextualized.
A: Have you got a light?
B: Yes.
A: Have you got a light?
B: No, sorry. I don’t smoke.

6. A discourse is behavioral unit. It is a set of utterances

which constitute a recognizable speech event e.g. a
conversation, a joke, a sermon, an interview.
 So discourse can be defined as:

1. Language above the level of a sentence

2. Language use linked to social practices and
participants

• The focus is on the language as a means to an end,

an instrument at the service of communication.
 Text Vs. Discourse
Text:
• It refers to any passage (spoken or written) of
whatever length that forms a whole unit (Essays,
notices, road signs, a single proverb, a cry for help,
etc.
• It is a unit of language in use.
• It is a physical product of a communicative acts,
i.e. the record of some speaker’s or writer’s
discourse, uttered or written in some context and
for some purpose.
 Discourse Analysis

• The analysis of discourse is the analysis of language in use. As such,

it cannot be restricted to the description of linguistic forms without
looking at the purposes or functions which these forms are
designed to serve in human affairs (Brown & Yule, 1993).

Father: Is that your coat on the floor again?

Son: yes (goes on reading)
• Discourse analysis is an attempt to discover linguistic regularities in
discourse using grammatical, phonological and semantic criteria e.g.
cohesion, anaphora, coherence, etc. It is an effort to interpret what
the writer or speaker intended to convey within a sensitive social
context.

A: What does Ali do for a living?

B: Do you need to know?
A: Oh, this and that.
B: I’ve no idea.
A: What’s that got to do with it?
B: He doesn’t.
 What do we do in Discourse Analysis?

• Interested in the relationship between texts and the context.

• Always look at real texts.
• We analyze and investigate all those features that are part of
the total communicative act: context of utterance,
relationships, and so on.
• Conversational behavior is observed (turn-taking, repair,
how to begin and end a conversation, etc.)
• How different speech acts (e.g. politeness) are performed.
 Spoken vs. written Discourse
1. Evanescent (rapid 1. Permanent &
fading) transportable
2. Difference in tempo 2. Difference in tempo
(faster) (slower)
3. Spontaneous 3. Worked over, planned
4. Rich in prosody 4. Poor in prosody
5. More ‘natural’ 5. Less ‘natural’
6. Situated (co-constructed, 6. De-situated
interaction)
 What do we do in Discourse Analysis?

• Interested in the relationship between texts and the context.

• Always look at real texts.
• We analyze and investigate all those features that are part of
the total communicative act: context of utterance,
relationships, and so on.
• Conversational behavior is observed (turn-taking, repair,
how to begin and end a conversation, etc.)
• How different speech acts (e.g. politeness) are performed.
 Devices for Discourse Analysis

1. Cohesion
2. Coherence
3. Speech events
4. Background Knowledge
5. Conversational interaction
6. The cooperative Principle
 Approaches to Discourse Analysis

1. Speech Acts Theory

2. The Ethnography of Communication
3. Conversation Analysis
4. Pragmatics
5. Critical Discourse Analysis
What’s Next?

Speech Acts Theory

The ways in which language can be used.

 Speech Acts
• Austin (1962)
o An utterance in dialogue is an ACTION
o Speech acts
• Performative sentences uttered by an authority (they change
the state of the world)
o Any sentence in real speech contains
• Locutionary act – utterance with particular
meaning
• Illocutionary act – asking, answering, promising,
etc.
• Perlocutionary act – effect upon feelings, thoughts,
etc.
 Speech Acts
• Searle (1975)
o All speech acts classified as
• Assertives – suggesting, boasting, concluding, etc.
• Directives – asking, ordering, inviting, etc.
• Commissives – promising, planning, vowing, etc.
• Expressives – thanking, apologizing, deploring, etc.
• Declarations – performatives (state-changing)
 Speech act theory
• Differentiation between performatives and
constatives: adverb “hereby”
Example 2
I hereby apologize.
I hereby declare the meeting open.
• Examples of performative verbs in English:

to say to withdraw
to protest to declare
to object to plead
to apologize to vote
to deny to thank, etc.
to promise
 Speech act theory
• Constatives can be true or false; performatives can't be true
or false. But performatives can go wrong;
• Conditions for performative sentences, which make them
successful ("felicitous“ conditions):
• Condition 1:
 There must be a conventional procedure following a
conventional effect;
 The circumstances and the persons must be appropriate.
• Condition 2:
• The procedure must be executed:
 Correctly;
 Completely.
 Speech act theory
• Condition 3:
• Often
The person must have the requisite thoughts,
feelings and intentions, as specified in the
procedure;
If consequent conduct is specified, then the
relevant parties must do so.

Favorite examples: marriages

 Speech act theory
• Types of speech acts:
 Verdictives (e.g. estimating, assessing, describing);
 Exercitives (ordering, appointing, advising);
 Commissives (promising, betting);
 Behabitives (apologizing, congratulating, thanking);
 Expositives (arguing, insisting).
 Speech act theory
• Performatives: explicit and implicit;
• Performatives and constatives are just two
subclasses of illocutionary acts;
• Illocutionary acts consist of other classes of speech
acts.
 Speech act theory
Each speech act consists of 3 components:
• Locutionary act (the actual words which the
speaker is saying);
• Illocutionary act (the intention of the speaker);
• Perlocutionary act (the effect of the utterance on
the hearer).

Example 3
(From "Sense and Sensibility")

Wait, he is kneeling down.

 Speech act theory
• Compare Austin‟s classification with other classification of
speech acts
Conclusions for DA:
• speech act theory is concerned with what people do with
language or it is concerned with the function of language.;
• a piece of discourse (what is said) is chunked/segmented into
units that have communicative functions,;
• these function are identified and labelled;
• different speech acts initiate and respond to other acts. Acts
to a certain degree specify what kind of response is expected;
• they create options for a next utterance each time they are
performed;
• An utterance can perform more than one speech act at a
time ;
• there is more than one option of responses for a next
utterance;
• Deborah Schiffrin: „this flexibility has an important analytical
consequence: it means that a single sequence of utterances
may actually be the outcome of a fairly wide range of
different underlying functional relations.‟
What’s Next?

PRAGMATICS

The ways language is tied to the contexts in which it is

used
 Pragmatics
• Based primarily on the ideas of Paul Grice:
People interact having minimal assumptions
(implicatures) about one another;

• Two types of implicatures:

1. Conventional implicatures do not require any
particular context in order to be understood (or
inferred);
2. Conversational implicatures are context –
dependant. What is implied varies according to
the context of an utterance.
 Pragmatics
• To explain HOW we interpret implicatures Grice
introduced the Cooperative Principal:

Make your contribution such as required, at the

stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose
or direction of the talk exchange in which you are
engaged.
 Pragmatics
• There are four conversational maxims which help us
to realize the implicit meaning if an utterance:
1. Maxim of Quantity:
Make your contributions as informative as required
(for the current purposes of the exchange). Do not
make your contribution more informative than
required.

2. Maxim of Quality:
Do not say what you believe to be false. Do not say
something if you lack adequate evidence.
 Pragmatics
3. Maxim of Relation:
Be relative.

4. Maxim of Manner:
Be perspicuous (or express your ideas clearly)
Avoid obscurity of expressions (= do not use
expressions which are not clear or easy to
understand);
Avoid ambiguity (= presence of more than one
meaning);
Be brief (avoid unnecessary usage of too many
words);
Be orderly.
 Pragmatics
• The contribution of Gricean pragmatics to DA is a
set of principles that constrains speakers‟ sequential
choices in a text and allows hearers to recognize
speaker‟s intentions.
THANK YOU