Chapter 7 Discourse Analysis

Chapter Seven Discourse Analysis

Discourse / text Paragraph Sentence Clause Phrase Word Morpheme

Discourse and discourse analysis

Discourse analysis and other relevant termsIn everyday life, we do not produce one sentence at a time, rarely in speech, much less in writing. On the contrary, we often produce several sentences at a time, which form a larger coherent whole. Apart from some slogans or warning notices, language below and just at the sentence level seldom occurs in real life.

For example, when you accept a request for interview from the manager of a company, you may reply like this: “I will be happy to attend for an interview on Monday next at 10 a.m. I will bring with me the full details of my testimonials as you suggest…” Here, you have used two connected sentences at least to answer the manager. Connected sentences like these are usually called discourse.

The term discourse has become common currency in a variety of disciplines so much so that it is frequently left undefined, as if its usage were simply common knowledge.

1. Classic definition: Discourse is “language above the sentence or above the clause” (Stubbs, 1983: 1). 2. Discourse: a stretch of language longer than an inpidual sentence (structural definition) 3. Discourse: a stretch of language realizing a complete communicative event. (functional / pragmatic definition)

Oral production 1. Discourse 2. Discourse 3. Discourse 4. Text

Written production = Text vs. Text Oral discourse Written discourse (i.e. text) Oral text (i.e. discourse) Written text

Discourse analysis vs. pragmaticsDiscourse analysis is also called discourse linguistics and discourse studies, or text analysis. It is an area of linguistics which, like pragmatics, is concerned with language in use, although the distinction can be arguably made that while pragmatics is more concerned with meaning, discourse is more concerned with the formal and information structure. It is widely recognized as one of the vastest, but also one of the least defined, areas in linguistics.

Defining discourse analysisDiscourse analysis is the study of how sentences in spoken and written language form larger meaningful units such as paragraphs, conversations, interviews, etc.

Discourse: grammaticality vs. coherence

Examples (1) a. Pick up a handful of soil in your garden. Ordinary, unexciting earth. Yet it is one of Nature’s miracles, and one of her most complex products. Your success as a gardener will largely depend upon its condition, so take the first bold step in gardening—get to know your soil. b. Fertilizers put back what the rain and plants take away. Plastic pots are not just substitutes for clay ones. Pears are a little more temperamental than apples. Supporting and training are not quite the same thing.

The goal of discourse analysisIn discourse ana

lysis one of the primary tasks is to explore the linguistic features which characterize discourses. Discourses have structure, just as single sentences have structure. The goal of discourse analysis is to examine how the reader or user of a discourse recognizes that the words/phrases/sentences in a discourse must be co-interpreted—that parts of a discourse are dependent on others. One of the most important features of discourse is that they have cohesion.

Besides cohesion, some other topics of discourse analysis include information structure, coherence, discourse markers, conversational analysis, etc. which will be taken up one by one in the following parts.

Information structure

In this section, we will consider how information is packaged within discourse, and particularly, what resources are available to speakers or writers for indicating to their hearers or readers the status of information which is introduced into discourse.

Given and new information

(2) Alice: Who ate the bread? Tom: Mary ate the bread.The noun phrase Mary in Tom’s answer is the message or information that Alice wants to know; the bread in the reply, in contrast, is the information shared by both Alice and Tom. In other words, Mary is new information to Alice because it is just being introduced into the discourse there, but the bread is given or old information to Alice because it can be presumed to be in the mind of Alice, who has just introduced it into the discourse in the previous turn.

Given information is the information that the addressor believes is known to the addressee. New information is the information that he addressor believes is not known to the addressee.

Features of given/new information

Given information: 1) coded in condensed form or simply left out of a sentence altogether Alice: Who ate the bread? Tom: Mary ate it /did. (3) A: Who’s at the door? B: The mailman (at the door). 2) introduced previously (4) A man called while you were on your break. He said he’d call back later. 3) having close association with something that has just been mentioned in the discourse (5) Kent returned my car last night after borrowing it for the day. One of the wheels was about to fall off and the dashboard was missing. (The italicized parts are the subparts of the car.) New information: Noun phrases carrying new information usually receive more stress than those carrying given information, and they are commonly expressed in a more elaborate fashion. (6) When I entered the room, there was a tall man with an oldfashioned hat on, quite elegantly dressed.

Topic and comment Another distinction—related to the one mentioned above, although it should not be confused with it—is that between topic and comment. The topic represents what …… 此处隐藏：3891字，全部文档内容请下载后查看。喜欢就下载吧 ……