What is discourse?

Module 2
2008-9

Lesson 4
 Why analyse discourse?

Some (many?) things happen primarily (only?) in language

From (say) promising to come to dinner

To (say) telling someone you love them

(Or indeed: talking to the dog)

 Definitions of Discourse (1)

A particular unit of language (above the

sentence), or discourse in structure;
A particular focus on language use,
discourse as function.
 Discourse as structure ?
Problem:you can have a unit which looks like a sentence
but doesn’t mean anything
e.g. Colourless green ideas sleep furiously
… but on the other hand the units in which people speak
do not always look like sentences.
e.g. You can run a hou- whatcha- now whatcha you can
run a house-you can run a house a- and do the job,
which is important, y’ can’t y- a man can’t do it
himself, and a woman can’t do it himself w- if y’ want
it to be successful. In most cases.

How do you analyse something which is not a

sentence?
 Discourse as a System of
functions ?
e.g. “what’s the time?”
Phatic function (opens a contact)
Emotive function (conveys the need of the speaker)
Conative function (asks something of the addressee)
Referential function (makes reference to the world
outside the language)
PROBLEM:
Discourse analysis may turn into a more general and
broader analysis of language functions.
 Definition of Discourse (2)

Discourse – written and spoken

Speaker/ Hearer/ reader

writer
Discourse

Context
 Objects of discourse

‘Discourse’ refers to any utterance which is

meaningful. These texts can be:
- written texts
- oral texts (‘speech’/’talk’)
- mixed written/oral texts (e.g. Internet chat)
Discourse does not depend on the size of a text
(“P” and “Ladies” can both be analysed as
discourse)
 Definitions of ‘discourse’ (3)

(a) A set of terms, metaphors, allusions, ways of talking, references and

so on, which constitute an object

(b) A to-and-fro of exchanges in talk (or text) that performs social

actions
 Doing discourse analysis

Scope
Influences
Approaches
 The scope of discourse analysis
Discourse analysis is not a discipline which exists on its
own. It is influenced by other disciplines and
influences them as well. It is a two-way process …
For this reason discourse analysis examines spoken and
written texts from all sorts of different areas
(medical, legal, advertising) and from all sorts of
perspectives (race, gender, power)
Discourse analysis has a number of practical applications
- for example in analysing communication problems in
medicine, psychotherapy, education, in analysing
written style etc.
 Influences on discourse analysis

sociolinguistics psycholinguistics

other non- other linguistic

linguistic Discourse Analysis
disciplines
disciplines

computational
linguistics pragmatics
 Approaches to Discourse
Deborah Schiffrin “Approaches to Discourse”
(1994) singles out 6 major approaches to
discourse:
the speech act approach;
interactional sociolinguistics;
the ethnography of communication;
pragmatic approach;
conversation analysis;
variationist approach.
 Approaches to Discourse (1)
The Speech Act Approach

Founders of the speech act theory: John Austin & John

Searle.
There are different types of speech acts:
e.g. “speak louder” (directive)
“Oxford Street is a shopper’s paradise“ (assertive)

Although speech act theory was not first developed as a

means of analyzing discourse, particular issues in speech
act theory (indirect speech acts, multiple functions of
utterances) led to discourse analysis
 Approaches to Discourse (2)
Interactional sociolinguistics

Represents the combination of three disciplines:

anthropology, sociology, and linguistics.
Focuses on how people from different cultures may share
grammatical knowledge of a language but
contextualize what is said differently to produce
different messages.

e.g. “yeah, bring them down here. I’ll flog them for you”
(Australian English)
 Approaches to Discourse (3)
The ethnography of communication
The way we communicate
depends a lot on the culture we
come from. Some stereotypes:
Finnish people: the hardest
nation for communication,
quiet and serious?
Turkish people: very talkative
and friendly?
Ethnography investigates
speaker culture
 Approaches to Discourse (4)
Pragmatics

H. P. Grice: the cooperative principle

and conversational maxims.
People interact by using minimal
assumptions about one another.
 Approaches to Discourse (5)
Conversation analysis

e.g. A: This is Mr. Smith may I help you

B: I can’t hear you
A: This is Mr. Smith
B: Smith.

Conversational analysis is particularly

interested in the sequencing of utterances,
i.e. not in what people say but in how they
say it
 Summary of approaches to discourse

Approaches to Studying Discourse Focus of Research Research Question

Structural CA Sequences of talk Why say that at that

moment?
Variationist Structural categories Why that form?
within texts

Functional Speech Acts Communicative acts How to do things

with words?
Ethnography of Communication as cultural How does discourse
Communication behaviour reflect culture?
Interactional Social and linguistic What are they doing?
Sociolinguistics meanings created during
communication
Pragmatics Meaning in interaction What does the
speaker mean?
How do you analyse discourse?

Various ways. Depends on what sort of discourse you’re interested in.

Constituting an object vs realising a social action

Constituting an object

Usually some cultural object (marriage, crime, obesity etc)

Data:
Media texts (eg news reports, magazine articles, newspaper features)
Personal accounts (eg in interviews, diaries)
From The Sun online 21 June 2006
ENGLAND’S next clash will be against a nation of GUINEA
PIG eaters.We avoided a showdown with old enemy
Germany — for now — and will play Ecuador on Sunday.

Here’s your Sun guide to the South American team’s

dangermen — plus a few facts about the country where
their national dish is a roasted pet.
It would be easy to underestimate them. But Ecuador beat
mighty Brazil and Argentina in the South American
qualifying rounds.

[continues]
ENGLAND’S next clash will be against a The whole nation?
nation of GUINEA PIG eaters.We avoided
a showdown with old enemy Germany — Nothing else?
for now — and will play Ecuador on Why old enemy?
Sunday.

Here’s your Sun guide to the South American

team’s dangermen — plus a few facts about
the country where their national dish is a Facts?
roasted pet.
Whose pet?
Ecuador’s capital Quito is 9,300ft above sea level,
giving their footballers a home advantage when Other facts
they play in the thin air. not chosen?
They were a Spanish colony until they seized their
independence in 1822. Out of a population of 14
million, 3,000 Ecuador fans are in Germany.
Football is the No1 sport but they also love
basketball and bullfights.
The main exports are coffee and bananas.
The language is Spanish. But let’s hope their fans
get no chance to shout Olé against England in
Stuttgart on Sunday. Who’s ‘us’?

Inevitable Spanish-
speaker behaviour?
The Times online 22 June 2006
PRESIDENT BUSH sought to Assumes it is
repair his tattered reputation in tattered
Europe yesterday, talking of his
“deep desire” to close the
Compare
Guantanamo Bay prison camp
expressing his
and conceding that his response
deep desire
to the 9/11 terrorist attacks had
not been understood by much of Assumes
the continent. (someone) has
made an
accusation
Discourse as language-in-interaction

Language in interaction comes through in a sequence,

in turns. Each turn has an implication for the next.

An example analysis: doctors delivering diagnoses.

Do they tell the patient immediately?
Dr. is telling mother about son

Notice that Dr. describes test results first

Dr. moves from test to treatment without explicit diagnosis
What does this results-first practice achieve?

(a) Gives patient the sight of the evidence first

(b) Shows that the diagnosis when given is well-founded
(c) Allows the patient to guess or predict what is to come
(d) Allows them to voice it themselves
Some worries & objections

It’s not quantitative, so is it ‘subjective’?

- not particularly; argument still has to convince readers,
editors etc., by appeal to established findings & theory

Is it useful?
- reveals how objects get constituted & unmasks the
interests that serves (and perhaps could be resisted)
- shows how mundane interaction achieves its business
(and perhaps could be improved)
Why you shouldn’t do Discourse Analysis

- recording the data (other than media texts) isn’t always

easy
- transcribing the data is laborious
- mastering the craft of explicating what’s going on, without
overinterpreting it or merely describing it, is hard
- you won’t come away with a demonstration that X caused
Y
- or a survey of the incidence of A is X in Y population
etcetera
Why you might do Discourse Analysis

- you get close to the data

- the data (eg video recordings) are of life as it’s
lived
- you uncover the subtle organisation of language,
the prime medium of our social lives (and selves)
- You plug in to social practices that - at the
grandest - constitute reality and our place in it
Other reasons why discourse analysis might
interest you

- it might be connected to your life (job, family,

friends and so on)
- it can go on your cv
- if you get interested in the subject you might want
to take it further (tesi, specialistica)

so it’s worth starting to think about what you

are interested in (linguistically)