DISCOURSE ANALYSIS AND PRAGMATICS

At the end of this unit, the students will be able to:

• appreciate discourse markers and grasp organization typical of most discourse types

• Identify the general features of discourse

• Characterize the different approaches of discourse
• Analyse different discourses using different approaches
• identify, discuss, and apply different features of discourse
• Practice analysing conversational strategies in English and their language
The Definition of Discourse and Discourse Analysis
The Discourse has many various definition according to some linguists. There are some
differences and there are also some similarities among them. Here are the definition of discourse
according to some linguists: Discourse can be defined as a stretch of language consisting of
several sentences which are perceived as being related in some ways. In another case, discourses
are ways with words, deeds and interactions, thoughts and feeling, object and tools,time and
place that allow us to enact and recognize different socially situated identities.

Discourse and pragmatics have much in common. They are: firstly, as mentioned above, is
context. Both pragmatics and discourse analyze the meaning of word in context that can be
explained by knowledge of the physical and social world, and the socio-psychological factors
influencing communication. Secondly, pragmatics and discourse have in common that they both
look at discourse or the use of language and text, or pieces of spoken or written discourse
concentrate on how stretches of language become meaningful and unified for their users. And the
last, pragmatics and discourse have in common the fact that they are both concern with function:
the speakers‟ short term purposes in speaking, long term goals in interacting verbally. So,
pragmatics and discourse have some in common and have relation each other.

What is Discourse Analysis?

DA involves the study of language in use. It means that the analysis of discourse involves the
analysis of language in use, compared with an analysis of the structural properties of language
divorced from their communicative functions. And Nunan also said that Discourse Analysts
study these text-forming devices. However, they do so with reference to the purposes and
functions for which the discourse was produced, as well as the context within which the
discourse was created. Their ultimate aim is to show how the linguistic elements enable language
users to communicate in context.
Discourse can simply be seen as language in use. It therefore follows that discourse analysis is
the analysis of language in use. By ‘language in use’, we mean the set of norms, preferences and
expectations which relate language to context.
Discourse analysis can also be seen as the organization of language above the sentence level. The
term ‘text’ is, sometimes, used in place of‘discourse’. The concern of discourse analysis is not
restricted to the study of formal properties of language; it also takes into consideration what
language is used for in social and cultural contexts. Discourse analysis, therefore, studies the
relationship between language (written, spoken – conversation, institutionalized forms of talk)
and the contexts in which it is used.
We affirm that what matters in the study of discourse, whether as language in use or as language
beyond the clause, is that language is organized in a coherent manner such that it communicates
something to its receivers.
Approaches to Discourse
The process of discourse analysis can be characterized (although it is being simplified now) in
terms of two approaches, and we might think of these as the ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ aspects
of analysis.

In the top-down approach, discourse analysts begin from an understanding or a conceptualization

(their own) of the context in which the discourse is taking place. This understanding of the
context informs and colors their analysis, and they look ‘down’ from this position into the
utterances produced and rehearsed, in the expectation of finding evidence – linguistic evidence –
of the assumptions, expectations and social constructs that create and define that context.

A top-down approach to political discourse, for example, will be informed by the analyst’s own
characterization of the political realities against which the discourse is happening. If the analyst
believes, or has reason to believe, that the electorate is being hoodwinked by a politician’s
manipulation of the meaning of certain political constructs, then it is evidence of this
manipulation that the analyst will be seeking and endeavoring to make apparent.

A bottom-up approach, by contrast, will tend to begin with an analysis of the language – the
sounds, words, utterances, interactional routines, and so forth – that are used in the discourse.
Here the analyst will look for evidence that discourse is being constructed in a particular way.
Rare words might be used especially frequently, for example, or words and phrases might
apparently be chosen more for their sound than for their meaning; constructions might seem to
be particularly complex; or certain phrases might appear to favour one set of ‘specialized’
meanings rather than another more ‘everyday’ set. An analysis of such distinctive language in the
discourse will lead the analyst to speculate as to its motivation, and thereby to arrive at some
understanding of a context that may account for it.

In reality, of course, the distinction between the two aspects, top-down and bottom-up, is not
even remotely as clear-cut as it have been dared to suggest. No analysis is ever entirely free of
the analyst’s own view of the context, and a totally bottom-up approach would certainly be an
oddly formal and mechanical affair; equally, a top-down approach will almost always want to
concern itself at some stage – and often in quite a detailed way – with the particular linguistic
items that seem to stand as evidence of the manipulation or other device that the analyst has set
out to expose.

Interactional Sociolinguistics
Interactional sociolinguistics views discourse as a social interaction in which the emergent
construction and negotiation of meaning is facilitated by the use of language. Language is
patterned in ways that reflect those contexts of use. As Schiffrin puts it, language and context co-
constitute one another: language contextualizes and is contextualized, such that language does
not just function “in” contexts, language also forms and provides context. Social interaction is
identified as an instance of context. Language, culture, and society are grounded in interaction:
they stand in a reflexive relationship with the self, the other, and the self-other relationship.
The Ethnography of Communication
Hymes argues that Chomsky’s definition of competence is too narrow, and that an adequate
approach must distinguish and investigate four aspects of competence.
The four aspects include (i) systematic potential (to what extent is something not yet realized),
(ii) appropriateness (to what extent is something suitable and effective in some context), (iii)
occurrence (the extent to which something is done), and (iv) feasibility (the extent to which
something is possible). In essence, therefore, this term is a critical expansion of Noam
Chomsky’s concept of competence which is only concerned with the linguistic capabilities of the
ideal speaker-hearer.
Hymes’ Ethnography of Communication is concerned with the analysis of language use in its
socio-cultural setting. This approach is based on the premise that the meaning of an utterance can
be understood only in relation to the ‘speech event’ or ‘communicative event,’ in which it is
embedded (Hymes 1962). The character of such speech events (for example, a sermon) is
culturally determined.
Ethnography of speaking relates to discourse analysis through the ethnographic approach where
conversational inferences play a key role: participants link the content of an utterance and other
verbal, vocal, and non-vocal cues with background knowledge.
Several speech events can occur successively or simultaneously in the same situation. One of the
ultimate aims of the ethnography of speaking is an exhaustive list of the speech acts and speech
events of a particular speech community. For every speech event, Hymes holds the view that the
ethnographer initially provides data which he reduced to the acronym, SPEAKING.
S setting: the time and space within which speech events occur –physical circumstances
P participants: the speaker and the listener (or the addresser and the addressee) in a speech
situation
E ends: the goal/ purpose of the speaker
A acts: the actual form and content of what is said by the speaker (i.e
message form and content)
K key: the tone/manner of the message
I instrumentalities: the channel (verbal, nonverbal, physical) through which the message is
passed across
N norms of interaction and interpretation: the tradition – specific properties attached to
speaking/interpretation of norms within cultural belief systems
G genre: the style (textual categories)
The emphasis of the ethnography of communication is based on the analysis of situated talk.
Hymes, therefore, places emphasis on the interpretation of verbal strategies.
Pragmatics as an approach to discourse
Pragmatics as an approach to discourse is chiefly concerned with three concepts (meaning,
context, communication) that are themselves extremely vast. The scope of pragmatics is so wide
that it faces definitional dilemmas similar to those faced by discourse analysis. Earlier studies on
pragmatics defined it as a branch of semiotics, the study of signs, but contemporary discussions
of pragmatics all take the relationship of sign to their user to be central to pragmatics.
Speaker meaning allows a distinction between semantic meaning and pragmatic meaning, and
also suggests a particular view of human communication that focuses on intentions.
While the former is said to be devoid of human intentionality the latter is roughly equivalent to
intentional communication. A critical feature of non natural meaning is that it is intended to be
recognized in a particular way by a recipient. Implicit in this understanding is a second intention
- the intention that a recipient recognize the speaker’s communicative intention.
The speaker meaning is relatively free of conventional meaning. It shows that what the speaker
intends to communicate need not be related to conventional meanings at all, and not
conventionally attached or related to the words being used. Logical and semantic criteria are not
sufficient to comprehend a speaker’s intention. Rather, knowledge of the persons involved in the
situation, their background and the context have to be taken into account. The Gricean
pragmatics, therefore, provides a way to analyze the inference of a speaker meaning: how hearers
infer the intentions underlying a speaker’s utterance.
Grice developed the cooperative principle on the assumption that conversation proceeds
according to a principle that is known and applied by all human beings. According to him, we
interpret language on the assumption that its sender is obeying four maxims which are : quality,
quantity, relation, and manner.
What the Gricean pragmatics, therefore, offers to discourse analysis is a view of how participant
assumptions about what comprises a cooperative context for communication ( a context that
includes knowledge, text, and situation) contribute to meaning, and how those assumptions help
to create sequential patterns in talk.
Conversation Analysis as an approach to discourse analysis
Conversation analysis is an approach to discourse which has been articulated by a group of
scholars known as ethnomethodologists. They are known as ethnomethodolgists because they set
out to discover what methods people use to participate in and make sense of interaction. The
ethnomethodologists examined what people did with their words, when they were not
consciously producing samples for linguists.
They felt that the examples produced by professional linguists were unnatural, since these
utterances were not embedded in actually occurring talk, because actual talk, by contrast, was
typically found in everyday conversation..
Variation Analysis
The approach is concerned with the study of variation and change in language. The theory
proceeds from the assumptions that linguistic variation is patterned both socially and
linguistically, and that such patterns can be discovered only through systematic investigation of a
speech community. Thus, variationists set out to discover patterns in the distribution of
alternative ways of saying the same thing, that is, the social and linguistic factors that are
responsible for variation. Thus, a variationist approach to discourse is a linguistically based
approach that adds social context to analyses of the use of language.
Discourse Rankscale
The concept of ‘rankscale’ is popular in grammar or linguistics. By ‘rank’, we mean the order of
progression on a ladder. By that, we may have something at the base (bottom) and another at the
apex (top). The grammatical rankscale in English grammar or linguistics has the morpheme at
the base, and the sentence at the apex. Therefore, the linguistic grammatical rankscale progresses
from morpheme-word-group/phrase-clause-sentence. In the same vein, Sinclair and Coulthard
(1975) proposed a five-unit rankscale for discourse. Also, from the lowest to the highest, we have
ACT-MOVE-EXCHANGE TRANSACTION-LESSON.
1. ACT: Act is the lowest unit on the discourse rankscale which is not divisible. It can be created
using grammatical units such as words, groups, clauses or sentences. For example, (i) She has
arrived (Act -Sentence), (ii) Over the bar (Act - Group), (iii) One (Act - word). An Act can be
informative, eliciting or directing. Therefore, there are three types of Act. These are informative,
elicitation and directive. (i) Informative: Informative act gives information which can either yield
a positive or a negative response. It gives information to discourse participants. Let us consider
the conversation between the following participants:
Speaker A: The food is ready
Speaker B: Thank you very much (Positive)
Speaker A: Mum, I need some money.
Speaker B: I don’t have (Negative)
(ii) Elicitation: Elicitation act comes in form of Question-Answer discourse pattern. The first
speaker here starts the discourse and invites the next speaker into the discourse. The response of
the next speaker can be immediate or delayed depending on his interest in the discourse.
Speaker A: What is your name?
Speaker B: Mary (Immediate)
(iii) Directive: Directive act calls for action. It is a situation where the discourse opener throws
the other participant into action.
Husband: Bring the food here
Wife: (Jumps into action) Yes dear.
2. MOVE: Move is the unit of discourse that is immediately next in rank to act. It consists of
one or more acts. It can be simple when the request is very straight to the point, for example,
‘give me the bag’. It can also be complex when there are too many demands in one, for example,
‘Dad, I need a school bag. Not only that, do endeavour to put some note books inside it. Don’t
also forget to add a pen and two or more pencils. It should also contain some of the relevant
textbooks. I think that is just fair enough or are my demands too much for you?’ There are
different types of move. They include the following:
(i) Opening and answering moves: An opening move is used to start a discourse. It can ask a
question, give information, request something, direct an action. The opening move is often
followed or accompanied by an answering move as an answer to the opening move.
Driver: Where do I drop you off? (Opening)
Driven: Just keep moving. I’ll stop you when I get there. (Answering)
(ii) Focusing and framing moves: Focusing and framing moves are more commonly found in
the classroom situation. It can also be useful in a religious setting, for instance in the church
where a sermon is to be preached. Focusing often comes before framing.
Preacher: The topic of our sermon today is the end-time Christians (Focusing). However,
before we go into that, we need to explain who a Christian is (Framing).
(iii) Follow-up or feedback move: the follow-up move serves as a verdict on the answering
move. It is also very useful in the classroom situation. It is a situation where the teacher asks a
question and comes back to assess to the correctness or otherwise of the question. In other words,
the teacher gives judgment. For example:
Teacher: How many semesters make a session?
Student: Two semesters: Harmattan and Rain.
Teacher: Good of you. (follow-up move)
3. EXCHANGE: An exchange is formed by a set of moves. It involves a situation where
discourse participants engage in series of moves. An exchange can consist of a question, an
answer, a comment or more, depending on the given situation. For instance, when the first
speaker asks the next speaker a question and he responds and the first comes back to give a
follow-up, an exchange can be said to have taken place. Consider the following example:
Speaker A: What time is it?
Speaker B: Twelve thirty.
Speaker A: Thanks.
Speaker A: Let's come tomorrow.
Speaker B: Oh yeah.
Speaker A: Yes.
Each of these exchanges consists of three moves. The first move ('What time is it?') functions as
a question. The first move in (2) is heard as making a request. Types of exchange include free
exchanges, bound exchanges, opening exchanges, medical exchanges and closing exchanges.
However, it should be noted that exchanges can still be as many as the discourses of different
fields of study or profession.
4. TRANSACTION: A transaction is made up of, at least, an exchange. In other words,
therefore, a transaction can be called a set of exchanges. Some framing words such as right, well,
good, now serve as transaction boundaries. They are used to indicate the end of a transaction and
the beginning of another one.
5. LESSON: A lesson is made up by many transactions. In other words, therefore, a lesson can
be called a set of exchanges.
Discourse Features/Structure
Conversation takes place when, at least, two speakers are talking. In such a situation, both
speakers are expected to contribute, either by talking and responding or listening. Discourse can
be seen as the issue being discussed by two or more participants. Discourse opening is the
preliminary exchange between participants. It is expected to open or start off a discussion or
conversation. Discourse closing is the closing exchange between participants, which is expected
to terminate the discussion. Discourse participants are the people who are involved in a
conversation or discussion. Discourse interruption occurs when a speaker has the floor, and
another makes a move to take over and successfully paves a way for himself/herself by taking
over the discussion.
Speaker is the person that has the floor to speak. Current speaker is the person that currently has
the floor to speak. Next speaker is the person that takes over the floor from the current speaker.
Speaker change occurs when the current speaker stops speaking and allows the next speaker to
step in, a change has occurred. There is also a situation in which depending on the age, status and
qualification of different speakers, they are assigned different roles in speech communication.
This is known as Role sharing.
Adjacency pairs often feature as reciprocal exchanges. In other words, they are exchange
structures in pairs. They often take the form of Speaker A asking question and speaker B
responding (Question Response), or Speaker A challenging speaker B and speaker B reacting to
speaker A’s challenge. Speech errors are errors made when a turn is going on. It may include
hesitations or slot fillers such as: ‘er’, ‘em’ ‘I mean’, ‘you know’, ‘as in’, etc. Again, in speech,
when errors or mistakes (speech errors) are made by a speaker, he can quickly seek re-adress by
withdrawing the earlier statement, by restating the intended. This is known as Repair
Mechanism.
Turn is the current opportunity that is given to a particular speaker to speak. When the turn of a
speaker expires and another takes over, the other has taken his turn, which is known as Turn-
taking. Speakers may also be involved in a topic which is uninteresting to one of the discourse
participants and the dissatisfied participant may wish to bring in another topic for discussion, all
he has to do in the situation is just to negotiate the topic by creeping into the discussion. This is
known as Topic negotiation. Talk initiation is the process involved when a speaker tries to start
off a talk with other participants. Situations also occur in which the current speaker seemingly
forces the interlocutor to talk, probably, by asking question or demanding a response. This is
known as Elicitation in talk. Summon is a deliberate and conscious invitation to talk. It is a
situation where the speaker uses an attention-catching device like calling the name of the current
or next speaker in order to establish a (facial) contact before a newspeaker or discourse is
introduced.
Discourse Analysis and Grammar
We mentioned that the notion of ‘coherence’ is important in the study of discourse. We also noted
that discourse does not have to be composed of well-formed sentences or conform to
grammatical rules. Cook (1989:14) however notes that both formal and contextual links enable
us to account for discourse. They enable us to see or have a feeling of how a particular stretch of
language (whether written or spoken) hangs together or has unity. The contextual links are
features outside the language such as the situation, the people involved, what they know and
what they are doing. These features enable us to construct stretches of language as discourse; as
having meaning and a unity for us. However, there is a kind of formal link that connects one
sentence with another in discourse to create unity and meaning for the reader/hearer. The features
of formal links refer to facts inside the language unlike those of contextual links that refer to
facts outside the language. Cook observes that stretches of language treated only formally are
referred to as text.
While mainstream linguistics have traditionally concentrated on formal features which operate
within sentences, discourse analysis goes beyond that by looking at the formal features which
operate across sentences. The formal links between sentences and clauses are known as cohesive
devices. By cohesion, we mean a linguistic unit by which a text functions as a single unit. It
refers to the relations of meaning that exist within the text. In cohesion, the interpretation in
discourse is dependent on another.
In this situation, the one presupposes the other and cannot be fully understood without recourse
to it. Cohesion therefore refers to the semantic relation that exists within the text. It exists where
the interpretation of some element of a discourse is dependent on that of another. That is, the
meaning of a given presupposition cannot be effectively interpreted without recourse or
reference to another. The “cohesive resources make it possible to link items of any size, whether
below or above the clause.
Grammatical connections are displayed in both spoken and written discourses between
individual clauses and utterances. These grammatical links can be classified under reference,
ellipsis, substitution and conjunction.
1. Reference
Reference has to do with the relations between language and extra linguistic reality. It has to do
with retrieving information for referential meaning. Reference can also be seen as a relationship
between an expression and what it stands for in the outside world. Basically, there are two types
of co-reference relations. These are endophoric and exophoric references. The interpretation of
endophoric reference lies within a text. In other words, cohesive ties are formed within the text.
It can be further divided into anaphoric and cataphoric references. Exophoric reference, on the
other hand, refers to a reference which plays no part in textual cohesion. The interpretation here
lies outside the text.
A simpler way of putting them is to say:
Exophoric Reference: Looking Outside
Endophoric Reference: Looking Inside
Anaphoric Reference: Looking Backward
Cataphoric Reference: Looking Forward
Exophoric Reference (Looking Outside) – This has to do with a situation where the meaning
of an expression is extratextual. In other words, the referential meaning cannot be located in the
given text. The reader or analyst may have to think outside the particular text for full realization
of meaning. For instance, if in the body of a text, a politician says, ‘I will only allow that after
May 29’, the full understanding of the meaning here requires that the reader or analyst knows
that May 29 stands for democracy day in Nigeria.
It is the official day that political office holders hand over power to their successors after a four
year tenure. Therefore, it is expected that the analyst here looks outside the text for the full
meaning of the date in reference. Hence, exophoric reference is often used to refer to a world
shared by sender and receiver of the linguistic message, regardless of cultural background, but
equally often, references will be culture-bound and outside the experiences of the language
learner (McCarthy 1991).
Another example can be seen in the following sentence: ‘Since the government has placed
embargo on employment, we have to go for private employment’. In this example, the reader
does not need to look forward or backward in the text. It is expected that by shared beliefs or
knowledge between the writer and the reader, the reader should look outside the text to know that
the government refers to the people in power in that particular country.
Endophoric Reference (Looking Inside) – This has to do with a situation where the meaning of
an expression is intratexual. In other words, the referential meaning can be located in the given
text. The reader or analyst may only have to look forward or backward to locate what it refers to.
Examples of endophoric reference are given under the anaphoric and cataphoric references
below.
Anaphoric Reference (Looking Backward)
This is a kind of reference which is backward looking. Here, the analyst has to look backward to
get the desired meaning. Basically, the personal pronouns – he, she, it, they function typically
with anaphoric reference. Beyond the personal pronouns, the definite article – the, and
demonstratives like – that can also be used to make anaphoric reference.
Some other words such as one, did, aforementioned, aforesaid, the formeretc, can also be used.
Consider the following example: If the president is thinking of re-election, he should better
impress his followers in his first term.
Cataphoric Reference (Looking Forward)
This is a kind of reference which is forward looking. Here, the analyst has to look forward to get
the desired meaning. Basically, the personal pronouns – he, she, it, they and other pro-forms,
which anticipate the noun phrases with which they co-occur, are used. The withholding of
referents in cataphoric reference is a classic device for engaging the reader's attention. This can,
sometimes, be done for quite long stretches of text. For example, He should better impress his
followers in his first term if the president is thinking of re-election.
In the examples above, while in the first (anaphoric reference), the analyst has to look backward
to know who the he and his refer to; in the second (cataphoric reference), he has to look forward
to know who the he and his refer to. In both examples, the he and his refer to the president.
2. Substitution
Substitution has to do with the relation between linguistic items, such as words and phrases.
Substitution is similar to ellipsis, in that, in English, it operates either at the nominal, verbal or
clausal level. The items commonly used for substitution in English are: One/ones, do, the entire
clause
Nominal Substitution: One(s): I offered her a drink. She said she didn't want one.
Verbal Substitution: Do: Did Ayo inform the School of the changes? He might have done. John
reads now more than Sade is doing.
Clausal Substitution: I asked him if they were all invited to the party, he said he thought so.
3. Ellipsis
Ellipsis simply has to do with deletion. It is the omission of elements which are normally
required by the grammar of a language, but which the speaker or writer assumes are obvious
from the context of the text. To the speaker or writer, therefore, the deletion of such items will
not bring about any serious change. The essence of such a deletion is to make room for
grammatical cohesion in discourse. There are broadly three types of ellipses which include
nominal ellipsis, verbal ellipsis and clausal ellipsis.
Nominal Ellipsis: At this level, emphasis is placed on a nominal element. In other words, a noun
item may be deliberately deleted. Nominal ellipsis often involves omission of a noun headword.
For example, David liked the blue car but Daniel preferred the white.
Verbal Ellipsis: At this level, emphasis is placed on a verbal element. In other words, a verb
item may be deliberately deleted.
For example, A: Will anyone be waiting?
B: Jude will.
Clausal Ellipsis: At this level, emphasis is placed on clausal element. With clausal ellipsis in
English, individual clause elements may be omitted; especially the subject-operator omissions.
A: What do you have to do tomorrow?
B: Play and sleep.
4. Conjunction
Conjunction is also a grammatical device which is used to achieve cohesion. It includes the use
of conjuncts such as and, yet, although, but etc. A conjunction presupposes a textual sequence
and signals a relationship between segments of the discourse. There are many conjunctive items.
In fact, they are almost not exhaustive, except when considered from the natural data, especially
spoken, a few conjunctions (and, but, so and then) will be identified. Some of the types of
conjunction include additive, adversative, causal, continuative and temporal meanings.
Let us consider the following examples. Joshua is good. And he's very reliable (additive). I've
travelled all over the world but I've never seen a place as underdeveloped as this (adversative).
He fell from the hill and got his bones broken (causal). She has to love you, after all you fulfilled
all the marriage requirements (continuative). I got up early and was the first to get to school.
(temporal sequence).
4.7 Discourse analysis and Vocabulary
This aspect can also be called lexical cohesion. When the word ‘vocabulary’ is used, what readily
comes to mind is lexis. Lexical cohesion involves the use of lexical devices to achieve cohesion.
Cohesion refers to the relations of meaning that words keep. This has to do with the
consideration of related vocabulary items which occur across clause and sentence boundaries in
written texts and across act, move and turn boundaries in speech. The two principal kinds of
lexical cohesion are: reiteration and collocation.
1. Reiteration: Reiteration has to do with saying or doing something repeatedly or several times.
Reiteration means either restating an item in a later part of the discourse by direct repetition or
reasserting its meaning by exploiting lexical relations. It manifests in different ways: repetition
(for instance, a word can be repeated between two sentences to show emphasis), hyponym (when
a super-ordinate term is used in place of a word, for example, rose and flower. Rose is a
hyponym of flower) and synonym (when two different but similar words are used
interchangeably).
2. Collocation: Collocation is a term used for words that appear to move very closely together in
a given discourse. They are words that move in company of each other. The mention of one
immediately brings to mind the other. Such words are regarded as collocates. There are different
types of collocation. They include complementaries (brother and sister), converse (wining and
dining), antonyms (coming and going these several seasons), part and whole (building and door),
part and part (driver’s seat and passenger’s seat), co-hyponyms (fork and knife) and links
(teachers and students). The role of certain words in organizing discourses to signal discourse
structure cannot be backgrounded. Vocabulary, therefore, plays an important role in the analysis
of discourse.
Discourse Analysis and Phonology
Phonology, as a branch of linguistics, also has a vital role to play in discourse. The aspect of
phonology that is most significant in this regard is intonation. This is not far-fetched from the
belief that the most exciting developments in the analysis of discourse have been in the study of
the suprasegmental (with emphasis on intonation) rather than at the segmental level (the study of
phonemes and their articulation) and partly because the teaching of intonation in phonology is
open to challenges from a discourse analyst's viewpoint.
At the segmental level, emphasis is placed on phonemes. In other words, it is the angle where
we give consideration to pronunciation. To do the teaching-learning of such phonemes
appropriately, beyond the production of sounds, similar sounds are contrasted with other words,
for example, the phonemes /p/ and /b/ in English contrast in the words pill and bill. However, at
the suprasegmental level, attention is shifted to longer stretches. For instance, in the
consideration of a stretch of spoken English discourse, the rhythmic pattern of utterances is
measured by the occurrence of stressed syllables. Rhythm is an important element in the
teaching of phonology.
Likewise in spoken discourse, rhythmicality is seen in varying degrees in long stretches of
speech. It also points attention to the speaker, whether he is a native speaker or second learner of
the language. It brings to fore how careful a speaker is in the consideration of deliveries such as
(news) broadcast, talks, teaching, reading speeches and citations, as well as some ordinary
conversation.
Discourse analysis and context
Discourse analysis covers an extremely wide range of activities; from the narrowly focused
investigation of how words such as ‘oh’ or ‘well’ are used in casual talk to the study of the
dominant ideology in a culture as represented, for example, in its education or political practices.
When it is restricted to linguistic issues, discourse analysis focuses on the record (spoken or
written) of the process by which language is used in some context to express intention.
Naturally there is a great deal of interest in the structure of discourse, with particular attention
being paid to what makes a well-formed text. Within this structural perspective, the focus is on
topics such as the explicit connections between sentences in a text that create cohesion, or on
elements of textual organization that are characteristic of storytelling, for example, as distinct
from opinion expressing and other text types.
However, within the study of discourse, the pragmatic perspective is more specialized. It tends to
focus specifically on aspects of what is unsaid or unwritten (yet communicated) within the
discourse being analyzed. In order to do the pragmatics of discourse, we have to go beyond the
primarily social concerns of interaction and conversation analysis, look behind the forms and
structures present in the text, and pay much more attention to the psychological concepts such as
background knowledge, beliefs, and expectations. In the pragmatics of discourse, we inevitably
explore what the speaker or the writer has in mind.
Discourse and text
It can be seen that there is disagreement about the meaning of these two terms. For some writers,
the terms seem to be used almost interchangeably; for others, discourse refers to language in
context. All, however, seem to agree that both text and discourse and text need to be defined in
terms of meaning, and that coherent texts/pieces of discourse are those that form a meaningful
whole.
Discourse: stretches of language perceived to be meaningful, unified, and purposive. It is
communicative events involving language in context.
Text: the written record of communicative event which conveys a complete message. Texts may
vary from single words to books running to hundreds of pages. It is a stretch of language
interpreted formally, without context.
Discourse analysis then involves the study of language in use. The analysis of discourse involves
the analysis of language in use - as compared with an analysis of the structural properties of
language divorced from their communicative functions (which is referred to as text analysis). All
linguists are concerned with identifying regularities and patterns in language.
Context: it is obvious that context is an important concept in discourse analysis. Context refers
to the situation giving rise to the discourse and within which the discourse is embedded.
Context is an important thing in pragmatics because to figure the ambiguities in spoken or
written language. Context is dynamic not a static concept. It means that all of event need context,
as Chomsky gave an example, as quoted by Mey “The presence of food in the mouth while
speaking may be part of some context, yet it is not a linguistic factor, and may be not even
pragmatic one”.

The context is more than reference. Context is action, it is about understanding what things are
for; it is also what gives our utterances their true pragmatic meaning and allows them to be
counted as a true pragmatics acts. And according to Kridalaksana in kamus linguistik context is
physical environment aspects which related to certain statement or knowledge which is had
between speaker and listener so that listener understands what speaker means. So, context is
vitally important not only in assigning the proper values to reference and implicature, but also in
dealing with other pragmatic issues.

Types of context
Here are two types of context. The first of these is the linguistic context- the language that
surrounds or accompanies the piece of discourse under analysis. The second is the non-linguistic
experiential context within which the discourse takes place: non-linguistic context include: the
type of communicative event(for example joke, story, lecture, greeting, conversation); the topic ;
the purpose of the event; the setting including location, time of day, season of year and physical
aspects of the situation (for example size of room, arrangement of furniture); the participants and
the relationship between them; and the background knowledge and assumptions underlying the
communicative event.
Discourse Analysis and Social Context
Discourse analysis takes into account how the formal and situational features of language confer
cohesion and coherence on text. The two main approaches to language identified by Cook
(1989: 12) are sentence linguistics and discourse analysis. The former is mainly concerned with
the study of the formal linguistic properties of language, especially the well-formedness of a
sentence.
This approach to language believes that contextual features, that is, the knowledge of the world
outside language, which enable us to interpret and make meaning in our communication
activities, should be excluded in the analysis of language. To them, the analysis of language
should be based on the system of rules that govern such language, and not on any external
circumstances. Sentence linguists, therefore, restrict their inquiries to what happens within the
sentence. Sentence linguists perceive discourse as a particular unit of language above the
sentence or above the clause.
The other perspective to discourse which recognizes the crucial place of context of situation and
context of culture in the analysis of language has been described as the functionalist.
Discourse in the functionalist perspective is ‘viewed as a system (socially and culturally
organized way of speaking) through which particular functions are realized. The functional
definitions of discourse assume an interrelationship between language and context. This
approach explores the interconnectedness between language, culture and social context. The
functionalists believe that ‘As people construct discourse, they draw on the resources provided
by culture […] Each instance of discourse is another instance of the laying out of a grammatical
pattern or expression of a belief, so each instance of discourse reinforces the patterns of language
and the beliefs associated with the culture.

Furthermore, people do things in discourse in new ways, which suggests new patterns, new ways
of thinking about the world.’ Discourse analysis therefore takes into account non-linguistic issues
like the speaker’s race, sex, age, class, occupation/profession, nationality, religion, location and
so on in the analysis of data. Those who approach discourse from the functional perspective
believe that the formal properties of language alone are not sufficient for a comprehensive
understanding of discourse or text.
Coherence
Generally, what language users have most in mind is an assumption of coherence, that what is
said or written will make sense in terms of their normal experience of things. That normal
experience will be locally interpreted by each individual and hence will be tied to the familiar
and the expected. The following are two different notices.

[1] a. plant sale

b. garage sale

The notice in [1a] means that someone is selling plants, but the notice in [1b] does not mean that
someone is selling garages.

Although these notices have the same structure, they are interpreted differently. Indeed, the
interpretation of [1b], that someone is selling house hold items from the garage, is one that
requires some familiarity with suburban life.

Background knowledge
Our ability to arrive automatically at interpretations of the unwritten and the unsaid must be
based on pre-existing knowledge structures. These structures function like familiar patterns from
previous experience that we use to interpret new experiences. The most general term for this type
is a schema. A schema is a pre-existing knowledge structure in memory. If there is a fixed, static
pattern to the schema, it is sometimes called a frame. A frame shared by everyone within a social
group would be something like a prototypical version. For example, within a frame for
apartment, there would be assumed components such as kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom. The
assumed elements of a frame are generally not stated as in the following advertisement.
Apartment for rent. $ 500
Where more dynamic types of schemata are considered, they are more often described as scripts.
A script is a preexisting knowledge structure involving event sequences. We use scripts to build
interpretations of accounts of what happened. For example, we have scripts for what normally
happens in all kinds of events, such as going to a doctor’s office, a movie theater, a restaurant or
a grocery store.
Cultural schemata
Everyone has had the experience of surprise when some assumed component of an event is
unexpectedly missing. It is almost inevitable that our background knowledge structures, our
schema for making sense of the world, will be culturally determined. We develop our cultural
schemata in the contexts of our basic experiences.
For some obvious differences, we can readily modify the details of the cultural schema. For
many other subtle differences, however, we often don’t recognize that there may be
misinterpretation based on different schemata. For example, an Australian factory supervisor
clearly assumed that other factory workers would know that Easter was close and hence they all
would had a holiday. He asked another worker, originally from Vietnam, about her plans, as
follows.
You have five days off. What are you going to do?
The Vietnamese worker immediately interpreted the utterance in terms of being laid off (rather
than having a holiday). Something good in some person’s schema can sound something bad in
another’s.
Cross- cultural pragmatics
The study of differences in expectations based on cultural schemata is part of a broad area of
investigation generally known as cross cultural pragmatics. The study of different cultural ways
of speaking is sometimes called contrastive pragmatics. When the investigation focuses more
specifically on the communicative behavior of non-native speakers, attempting to communicate
in their second language, it is described as inter-language pragmatics. Such studies increasingly
reveal that we all speak with what might be called a pragmatic accent, that is, aspects of our talk
that indicate what we assume is communicated with.
Language, meaning, and context
Language is integral to the fabric of our daily life: we talk, we listen, we read and we write. We
learn – at school, at home, in our work and our leisure time – and this learning is achieved
largely through language. In our jobs or professions and in our everyday experience we deal with
people: we may have to manage them, teach them, heal them, defend them or bargain with them;
we may have to convince them, counsel them, reassure them, dissuade them, break bad news to
them or justify our actions to them.

In our human relationships, invariably, we all need to explain things to people, tell them our
stories, consult with them about a problem, make plans either with them or on their behalf, or
complain to them of unfair or unjust treatment. We make friends, try to please them, entertain
them and amuse them. Alternatively, we may want to exert power over people or grant power to
them; we may want to negotiate our position with them or renegotiate it at some later stage. All
these activities, these social relations of ours, involve language; most of them, in fact, are more
or less wholly circumscribed by linguistic communication.

For language is a social practice – and many would want to say that it is the defining social
practice, our social relationships are almost wholly realized in language; language leads us to act
and behave in certain ways, and it is a powerful shaping force in how we think about and
construct the world we live in. It would certainly be a mistake to believe that our social practices
consist of nothing but language; but it is equally certain that the way we use language is an
essential part of our human experience. It may even be largely through the social practice of
language that we actually ‘construct’ ourselves as we negotiate our way through life.

Our language has different levels of structure: sounds, words, grammar, and so forth. But just as
language does not exist in a social void, so the elements of language do not exist in a vacuum
either. Words do not ‘contain’ meaning in themselves and meaning is not ‘discovered’ in them:
meaning is something we construct, as social beings, in our own minds. We all have different
minds, personalities and individualities, and so we also construct different meanings, for
ourselves and for each other, in our use of language. And if it is through our social and linguistic
relationships with the rest of the world that we construct meaning, then without the context of
those relationships our language is essentially meaningless.

Since meaning is constructed – negotiated, if you prefer – in our social practice of language,
rather than simply contained in words, then it follows that the relationship between the forms and
functions of our language is necessarily flexible. No linguistic form – be it a word, a phrase or a
sentence – can simply be associated with one particular function or meaning. Our utterances
mean what we intend them to mean, and the essentially cooperative practice of our social
behavior ensures that our linguistic intentions are, for the most part, understood by those with
whom we interact – regardless of their syntactic form or their dictionary definitions.

Thus, while the utterance, ‘It’s getting late’, may be classified as declarative in its syntactic
structure, it may not necessarily perform a simple informing function. If uttered by a speaker
waiting for a lift at the end of a long night, it will quite reasonably be understood as a request to
be taken home. The speaker is (syntactically) declaring something to be the case, yes, but the
intention of this linguistic item of social behavior – the meaning negotiated in this context – is to
ask for something to be done.

By the same token, any particular communicative function, whether informing, questioning or
commanding, may be fulfilled by a variety of linguistic forms. A teacher who wishes to maintain
order in her class may exclaim, ‘Who’s talking?’, using an interrogative form to perform the
function of ordering someone to stop talking. Her intended meaning will be understood perfectly
– in the context.

Indeed, the reason that this complex and fluid arrangement actually works in practice lies in the
crucial concept of context. We understand that ‘Who’s talking?’ functions as a command, but
only when we know the context in which it is uttered: in this case, by a schoolteacher in a
classroom. If the same expression is articulated (even by the same teacher) in a different context
– perhaps apprehensively asking a friend in the kitchen if her dinner party guests are getting on
with each other – then the function and meaning of the interrogative form, ‘Who’s talking?’, will
be correspondingly different, and yet will be understood just as readily. Similarly, if the same
expression is used in a classroom, but not by a teacher, then different functions and meanings
again will be associated with the utterance.

The ability to communicate competently requires us to learn and understand the dynamic and
shifting system of communication in context, and we learn it by becoming familiar with patterns
and routines of language usage. Without necessarily realizing it at a conscious level, we follow
socially and culturally constructed communicative conventions. Even a simple task such as
buying a newspaper will involve us in a complex and carefully observed routine of
communicative etiquette; handling relationships with our intimates entails correspondingly more
intricate patterns of interaction.

How easy is it, for example, to finish a conversation with a friend? There is often much more
involved than a simple exchange of farewells. In order to close the conversation without giving
offence we may have to make excuses: ‘Anyhow, I have to run now, I’m late’; or make an excuse
on our friend’s behalf: ‘I won’t stop here chatting; I know you need to get on’. We may adopt the
strategy of arranging the time for our next meeting: ‘I’ve got to go now, but I’ll see you at Sue’s
next week’; or choose to leave the arrangement merely implied, as in ‘See you later’ – a form of
farewell that has now become so conventional that we sometimes say it to people we are unlikely
ever to meet again, in spite of what the words suggest that it ought to mean.

Our use of language, then, depends on an ability to negotiate our way through a complex
network of conventions, assumptions and expectations. If an interaction departs from the patterns
that our expectations lead us to predict, it can be an uncomfortable experience. Our first instinct,
in fact, is to try to find some explanation for this departure from usual custom; for example, we
will wonder if we have misunderstood the context in some way, or whether perhaps the person
we are speaking to is ‘suggesting’, in an indirect manner, something that we would normally
expect them to express more directly. If no explanation can be found (that is to say, if nothing in
the context of our assumptions and expectations can reasonably be shifted to accommodate the
departure from conversational convention), we conclude that communication has broken down
and we adopt whatever language strategy we consider appropriate to deal with this. The
importance of context, and its effect on our interpretation of discourse, will be a central theme in
this course.

Discourse, language and context

The relatively recent adoption by linguists of the term ‘discourse’ for the subject we study when
we examine ‘language in use’ – the real language that real people use in the real world – is at
least partly a recognition of the fact that language is very much more than just the sum of the
linguistic elements that compose it. Discourse is, at the very least, language plus context – by
which we mean the context that we bring with us when we use language; the context that
includes our experience, assumptions and expectations; the context we change (and which is
itself changed) in our relationships with others, as we both construct and negotiate our way
through the social practices of the world we live in.

Even if you are approaching discourse analysis for the first time, it may be that you have come
across definitions of discourse already: you may have brought your own meaning with you to
this course. You may already have certain assumptions and expectations of what the study of
discourse involves. But discourse analysis is practiced and studied by people working in a
variety of academic fields – including linguistics, philosophy, anthropology and sociology – as
well as by many working within related professions. This wide diversity in both practice and
practitioners has led to an equally wide diversity of aims and approaches to discourse analysis,
and it is generally recognized that there is neither a single coherent theory nor a single definition
of discourse.

Here, we have just characterized discourse, rather figuratively, as language plus context. In this
course we will examine discourse in its broadest sense, as real language in use. Discourse
analysts examine spoken, signed and written language, and may focus on any aspect of linguistic
behaviour, from the study of particular patterns of pronunciation, through word choice, sentence
structure and semantic representation, to the pragmatic analysis of how we organize speech
encounters.

Discourse as Action
Speech Act Theory and Politeness
‘Actions speak louder than words’ is a well-known proverb. But we will show in this unit that the
alleged distinction between acts and speech is a misleading oversimplification. We will show
how, to a large extent, speech is action, and that language can actually be used to do things.
When a speaker, in appropriate circumstances, makes an utterance containing a referring
expression, he carries out a certain act, an act of referring.

Referring is typically a linguistic act, but we shall see that it is possible to carry out all sorts of
other acts using language. We will start with another obviously linguistic act, that of stating or
asserting.

An ACT of ASSERTION is carried out when a speaker utters a declarative sentence (which can
be either true or false), and undertakes a certain responsibility, or commitment, to the hearer, that
a particular state of affairs, or situation, exists in the world.
Example If I say, ‘Simon is in the kitchen’, I assert to my hearer that in the real world a situation
exists in which a person named Simon is in a room identified by the referring expression the
kitchen.

Felicity Conditions
So far, we have outlined a way of looking at speech as action. Utterances can be seen as
significant acts on a social level, e.g. accusations, confessions, denials, greetings, etc. The
question we now pose is: by what system do speakers know when such social moves are
appropriate? That is, in what circumstances are illocutions used? A further technical notion that
of felicity condition needs to be introduced in order to give a plausible answer to this question.

The felicity conditions of an illocutionary act are conditions that must be fulfilled in the situation
in which the act is carried out if the act is to be said to be carried out properly, or felicitously.
Examples One of the felicity conditions for the illocutionary act of ordering is that the speaker
must be superior to, or in authority over, the hearer. Thus, if a servant says to the Queen ‘Open
the window’, there is a certain incongruity, or anomalousness, or infelicity in the act (of
ordering) carried out, but if the Queen says ‘Open the window’ to the servant, there is no
infelicity.

A felicity condition for the illocutionary act of accusing is that the deed or property attributed to
the accused is wrong in some way. Thus, one can felicitously accuse someone of theft or murder,
but normally only infelicitously of, say, being a nice guy, or of helping an old lady to cross the
road.

Exercise
Given below are illocutionary acts, and for each act there are four suggested felicity conditions.
In each case only two of the felicity conditions are actually correct. Indicate the correct felicity
conditions by circling your choices.

(1) Promising:
(a) The speaker must intend to carry out the thing promised.
(b) The speaker must be inferior in status to the hearer.
(c) The thing promised must be something that the hearer wants to happen.
(d) The thing promised must be morally wrong.
(2) Apologizing:
(a) The speaker must be responsible for the thing apologized for.
(b) The thing apologized for must be (or must have been) unavoidable.
(c) The thing apologized for must be morally wrong.
(d) The hearer must not want the thing apologized for to happen (or to have happened).
(3) Greeting:
(a) The speaker and the hearer must be of different sex.
(b) The speaker and the hearer must not be in the middle of a conversation.
(c) The speaker must believe the hearer to have recently suffered a loss.
(d) The speaker feels some respect and/or sense of community (however slight) with the hearer.
(4) Naming:
(a) The thing or person named must not already have a recognized name known to the speaker.
(b) The speaker must be recognized by his community as having authority to name.
(c) The thing or person named must belong to the speaker.
(d) The thing or person named must be held in considerable respect by the community.
(5) Protesting:
(a) The speaker and the hearer must have recently been in conflict with each other.
(b) The speaker must disapprove of the state of affairs protested at.
(c) The state of affairs protested at must be disapproved of by the community generally.
(d) The hearer must be held to be responsible (by the speaker) for the state of affairs protested at.
Truth conditions are conditions that must be satisfied by the world if an utterance (of a
declarative sentence) is true. For example, the utterance ‘There is a cat on the table’ is only true
if in the world at the time of the utterance there actually is a table with a cat on it.
Correspondingly, felicity conditions are conditions that must be satisfied by the world if an
illocutionary act is felicitous (or ‘appropriate’).

Cooperation and Implicature

Consider the following scenario. There is a woman sitting on a park bench and a large dog lying
on the ground in front of the bench. A man comes alone and sits down on the bench.
[1] Man: does your dog bite?
Woman: no.
(The man reaches down to pet the dog. The dog bites the man’s hand.)
Man: Ouch! Hey! You said your dog doesn’t bite.
Woman: He doesn’t. But that is not my dog.

What do you think in this scenario (in 1 above) is the problem?

______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________
One of the problems in this scenario has to do with communication. Specifically, it seems to be a
problem caused by the man’s assumption that more was communicated than was said. It is not a
problem with presupposition because the assumption in your dog (i.e. the woman has dog) is true
for both speakers. The problem is the man’s assumption that his question ‘does your dog bite?’
and the woman’s answer ‘no’ both refer to the dog in front of them. From the man’s perspective,
the woman’s answer provides less information than expected.

How can you solve the problem?

______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________
She might be expected to provide the information stated in the last line.
The concept of there being expected amount of information provided in the conversation is just
one aspect of the more general idea that people involved in a conversation will cooperate with
each other. In most circumstances, the assumption of cooperation is so pervasive that it can be
stated as a cooperative principle of conversation and elaborated in four principles called maxims,
as shown below.

The maxims
Quantity
1. Make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current purposes of the
exchange)
2. Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.
Quality Try to make your contribution one that is true.
1. Don’t say what you believe to be false.
2. Don’t say that for which you lack adequate evidence.
Relation be relevant.
Manner be perspicuous (clear and comprehensible).
1. Avoid obscurity of expression.
2. Avoid ambiguity.
3. be brief (avoid unnecessary).
4. be orderly.
Hedges
The importance of the maxim of quality for cooperative interaction in English may be best
measured by the number of expressions we use to indicate that what we are saying may not be
totally accurate. The initial phrases in [1a-c] and the final phrase in [1d] are notes to the listener
regarding the accuracy of the main statement.
[1] a. as far as I know, they are married.
b. I may be mistaken, but I thought I saw a wedding ring in her finger.
c. I am not sure if this is right, but I heard it was a secret ceremony in Hawaii.
d. He couldn’t live without her, I guess.
The conversational context for the examples in [1] might be a recent rumor involving a couple
known to the speakers.
Cautious note or hedges of this type can also be used to show that the speaker is conscious of the
quantity maxim, as in the initial phrases in [2a-c] produced in the course of a speaker’s account
of her recent vacation.

[2] a. as you probably know, I am terrified of bugs.

b. so, to cut a long story short, we grabbed our stuff and ran.
c. I won’t bore you with all the details, but it was an exciting trip.

Markers tied to the expectation of relevance (from the maxim of relation) can be found in the
middle of speakers’ talk when they say things like ‘Oh, by the way’ and ‘go on’ to mention some
potentially unconnected information during a conversation. Speakers also seem to use expression
like ‘any way’, or ‘well, any way’ to indicate that they may have drifted into a discussion of
some possibly non-relevant material and want to stop. Some expressions which may at as hedges
on the expectation of relevance are shown at the initial phrases in [3a-c], from an office meeting.
[3] a. I don’t know if this is important, but some of the files are missing.
b. this may sound like a dumb question, but whose handwriting is this?
c. not to change the subject, but is this related to the budget?
The awareness of the expectations of manner may also lead speakers to produce hedges of the
type shown in the initial phrases in [4a-c] heard during an account of a crash.
[4] a. this may be a bit confused, but I remember being in a car.
b. I am not sure if this makes sense, but the car had no lights.
c. I don’t know if this is clear at all, but I think the other car was reversing.
All of the examples of the hedges are good indications that the speakers are not only aware of the
maxims, but that they want to show that they are trying to observe them. Perhaps also
communicate the speakers’ concern that their listeners judge them to be cooperative
conversational partners.
Implicature
Conversational implicature
The basic assumption in conversation is that, unless otherwise indicated, the participants are
adhering to the cooperative principle and the maxims. In example [1] below Alexander may
appear to be violating the requirements of the quantity maxim.
[1] John: I hope you brought the bread and the cheese.
Alexander: Ah, I brought the bread.
After hearing Alexander’s response in [1], john has to assume that Alexander is cooperating and
not totally unaware of the quantity maxim. But he didn’t mention the cheese. If he had brought
the cheese, he wouldn’t say so, because he would be adhering to the quantity maxim. He must
intend that john infer that what is not mentioned was not brought. In this case Alexander has
conveyed more than he said via a conversational implicature. We can represent the structure of
what was said with b (=bread) and c (=cheese) as in [2]. Using the symbol +>for an implicature,
we can also represent the additional conveyed meaning.
[2] John: b & c?
Alexander: b (+>NOT c)
It is important to note that it is speakers who communicate meaning via impicatures and it is
listeners who recognize those communicated meanings via inference. The inferences selected are
those which will preserve the assumption of cooperation.

Scalar implicature
Certain information is always communicated by choosing a word which expresses one value
from scale of values. This is particularly obvious in terms for expressing quantity as shown in the
scales in [1] below, where terms are listed from the highest to lowest value.
[1] < all, most, many, some, few>
< always, often, sometimes>
When producing an utterance, a speaker selects the word from the scale which is the most
informative and truthful (quantity and quality) in the circumstances, as in [2] below.
[2] I am studying linguistics and I have completed some of the required courses.
By choosing ‘some’ in [2], the speaker creates an implicature (+>not all). This one is scalar
implicature of uttering [2]. The basis of scalar implicature is that, when any form in a scale is
asserted, the negative of all forms higher on the scale is implicated. The first scale in [2] had
‘all’, ‘most’ and ‘many’ higher than ‘some’. Given the definition of scalar implicature, it should
follow that, in saying ‘some of the required courses’, the speaker also creates other implicatures
(for example, +>not most, +>not many).

Conventional implicature
Conventional implicatures are associated with specific words and result in additional conveyed
meanings when they are used. The conjunction ‘but’ is one of these words. The interpretation of
any utterance of the type p but q will be based on the conjunction p & q plus an implicature of
‘contrast’ between the information in p and the information in q. in [1] below, the fact that ‘marry
suggest black’(=p) is contrasted, via the conventional implicature of ‘but’, with my choosing
white (=q).
[1] a. Marry suggested black, but I chose white.
b. p & q (+> p is in contrast to q)

Politeness and Interaction

Politeness
It is possible to treat politeness as a fixed concept, as in the idea of ‘polite social behavior’ or
etiquette, within a culture. It is also possible to specify a number of different general principles
for being polite in social interaction within a particular culture. Some of this might include being
tactful, generous, modest, and sympathetic towards others. Let as assume that participants in an
interaction are generally aware that such principles and norms exist in the society at large. Within
an interaction, however, there is a more narrowly specified type of politeness at work. In order to
describe it, we need the concept of face.
Face
As a technical term, face means the public self-image of a person. It refers to that emotional and
social sense of self that everyone has and expects everyone else to recognize. Politeness, in an
interaction, then can be defined as the means employed to show awareness of another persons
face. In this sense, politeness can be accomplished in a situation of social distance and closeness.
Showing awareness for another person’s face when that other seems socially distant is often
described in terms of respect or deference.
Face wants
In this discussion, let us assume that the participants involved in interactions are not living in a
context which has created rigidly fixed social relationships. Within their everyday social
interaction, people generally behave as if their expectation concerning their public self-image,
their face wants will be respected. If a speaker says something that represents a threat to another
individual’s expectations regarding self-image, it is described as a face threatening act.
Alternatively, given the possibility that some action might be interpreted as a threat to another’s
face, the speaker can say something to lessen the possible threat.

Negative and positive face

A person’s negative face is the need to be independent, to have freedom of action, and not to be
imposed on by others. The word ‘negative’ here doesn’t mean ‘bad’, it is just the opposite pole
from ‘positive’. A person’s positive face is the need to be accepted, even liked, by others, to be
treated as a member of the same group, and to know that his or her wants are shared by others. In
simple terms, negative face is the need to be independent and positive face is the need to be
connected.

In everyday speech encounters we often have to ask for favors, issue demands and make
promises, as well as carry out an array of other communicative tasks which involve making
‘face-threatening acts’. For example, the act of borrowing something from a friend may threaten
both our own face (we do not wish to appear to be in need) and also that of our friend (who may
not wish to part with the object we want to borrow). Brown and Levinson distinguish between
two types of ‘face wants’: negative face, relating to our need to act without impediment, and
positive face, relating to our need to be approved of by (at least some) others.

In order to soften the blow of face-threatening acts we employ particular linguistic strategies. For
example, when making a request to a friend, we may use politeness strategies that pay attention
to their positive face: ‘Please can I borrow your beautiful red dress? You have such good taste in
clothes.’ Alternatively, we may employ negative politeness strategies by, for example, making a
request in a deferential way that seeks to mitigate the threat that a request entails: ‘I know it’s an
imposition, but could I possibly borrow your red dress?’ And, as we have seen, indirect speech
itself is also a useful politeness strategy: ‘I’d love to go to the party, but I’ve got absolutely
nothing to wear.’

Discourse Analysis in Communication

Introduction
Communication refers to many things: it is the process through which individuals as well as
institutions exchange information; it is the name for the everyday activity in which people build,
but sometimes blast apart, their intimate, work, and public relationships; it is a routinely offered
solution to the problems in societies in which people need to live and work with others who
differ from themselves.

Communication’s central way of dividing scholars is by contexts of focal interest (face-to-face,

commonly called interpersonal communication, organizational communication, mass
communications, and rhetorical studies (study of public, civic life).

Key Features of a Communication on Discourse Analysis

Discourse analysis provides communication researchers with a compelling way to study how
people present themselves, manage their relationships, assign responsibility and blame, create
organizations, enact culture, persuade others, make sense of social members’ ongoing
interactional practices, and so on. Stated a bit differently, taking talk seriously has enabled
communication researchers to reframe and address long-standing disciplinary concerns in
powerful, persuasive new ways. By now, it should be obvious how ideas from intellectual
traditions outside Communication have shaped discourse work within Communication. What
may be less obvious is what Communication offers the interdisciplinary discourse community.

1. A preference for talk over written texts

That discourse analysts within communication privilege oral over written texts is not surprising
given the history of the field. This does not mean there is no interest in written texts but it does
mean that analyses of written discourse are the exception rather than the rule. Most notable is the
way studying talk increases the visibility of people as part of what is being studied – there is no
way to study talk apart from persons speaking and being spoken to. Discourse analysis in
Communication is the study of people talking with each other.

2. Audience design and strategy as key notions

That talk is produced in particular situations for specific aims addressed to particular others is
taken for granted as important to consider in Communication studies. Put a bit differently, taking
account of audience – whether the audience be a single conversational partner, a small working
group, or an ambiguously bounded public – is regarded as crucial for understanding people’s
discourse practices. Moreover, many of Communication’s questions concern how an audience
shapes what gets said. Communicators are choice-making, planning actors confronting uncertain
situations.

Conversation Analysis
1 The definition of Conversation Analysis
Conversation Analysis (CA) is an approach which is used for analysis of spoken interaction. CA
is a minimalist approach, which allows only so much hypothesizing as is strictly required to
explain the phenomena at hand. On the other hand, Reay said that CA is a technique developed
relatively recently for examining and exploring spoken language. In other word, CA is fairly
approach to analysing spoken language which is possible to find common observable rules and
procedures by which participants organize and manage their conversation behavior such as who
gets to speak next, when and how they get to speak. And a set of basic features which constitute
the machinery of conversation such as turn-taking, interruption and simple overlapping talk.

2 Turn-Taking
In conversation, there are two people or more communicate each other. Only one of them speaks
in one time. So that, to make conversation flows well, the participants of conversation have to
know when they speak and when they listen.Turn is a shift in the direction of the speaking flow
which is characteristic of normal conversation.
Turn is having the control of conversation or floor and attempt to get the turn is called turn-
taking. Turns occur normally at certain well-defined junctures in conversation such points are
called Transition Relevant Place‟ (TRPs). TRPs can be exploited by the speaker holding the
floor. Floor is defined as the right to speak.

So the people who have a floor, they have a control of conversation.The natural breaks occurring
in every conversation, it is called Transition Relevant Place (TRPs) as mentioned above. A
speaker has to pause for breath, or runs out of things to say or simply declares his or her
contribution to be finished: all those points in the conversation are places where a natural
transition, a relay of the right to speak to the next speakers may occur. On the other hand, there
are the formal rules of next speaker selection (turn allocation) that regulate the turn taking.

3 Procedure for turn Allocation

The turn allocation procedures for conversation are distributed into two groups:
First, the current speaker selects the next speakers.
Second, the next speakers are self-selected. So, the initial transition relevant place of a turn, the
following options are relevant: 1) If the current speaker has identified, or selected, a particular
next speaker, that the next speaker should take a turn at that place.
For example :
(3) Piers Morgan : Bruno Mars, welcome.
Bruno Mars : Good to be here.
In this case, Piers Morgan uses person‟s name to identify the appropriate next speaker.
2) If no such selection has been made, then any next speaker may (but need not) self-selection
occur, then first speaker has the right to the turn.
For example :
(4) A : John‟s lost on our scale, about fourteen pounds.
B : Oh [ no]
C : [twelve pounds I think, wasn‟t it?]
In the example (4), A‟s announcement is not directed to a specific recipient, and thus two people
select themselves as the next speaker at the transition relevant place at the end of “Pounds”.
3) If no next speaker has been selected, then alternatively the current speaker may, but need not,
continue talking with another turn constructional unit, unless another speaker has self-selected, in
which case that speaker gains the right to the turn. For example :
(5) Ava : He, He and Joe were like on the outs, you know?
[So uh,]
Bee : [They always are.]
In the example (5), after Ava‟s observation, no next speaker has self selected up to nearly a
second into the onset of transition relevance place. Then Ava attempts to continue her turn. At the
same time that Bee self selects. Ava abandons her turn.
4) Whichever option has operated, then rules 1-3 come into play again
for the next transition relevance place.
The discussion of the principles above reflects that it is designed to account the smooth turn
transition which can be found in conversation. In other words, turn taking consists of a set of
rules which enacted through the use of signals. Those signals indicate to take, to hold or yield the
turn at talk.

4 The Turn Taking Mechanisms

The turn taking system involves three basic strategies: taking the floor, holding the floor, and
yielding the floor.

Taking the floor

When conversation occurs, it means that the participants have initiative to begin speak or bring
the topic to be discussed in the conversation. Of course, it must be cooperative among
participants as speaker and listener. So, it makes conversation flows well. The response from the
listener to give comment or to answer the current speaker‟s question are called taking the floor
which has been done by the listener. In the other word, taking the floor is when the participants
take a turn to speak. Kinds of taking the floor :
a. Starting up means that the beginning of conversation. It can be done by hesitent start and
clean start. For example :
(6). PM : I switch to the rather more glamorous Avalon Club in Hollywood. I found
somebody even more glamorous than Rob
Lowe. And that is Bruno Mars.
Bruno, welcome
BM : (.) Good to be here.
In the example (6), Piers Morgan is as a first speaker who takes the floor with clear start. Piers
Morgan is a nice host because in the beginning of conversation with his guest, he made a praise
so the guest felt proud and happy to be in that event. Piers Morgan gave the turn to Bruno Mars
with greeting such as welcome. And Bruno Mars answered with hesitent start, it is signified with
pause or silent (.) for a moment before answering because Bruno Mars seems nervous when he
spoke in TV talkshow. In this case, the beginning of conversation above is simple one of talk
show category. Piers Morgan just gave a praise and asking by saying „ Bruno Welcome‟
followed by smile and good mannered.
b. Taking over means take a turn to speak. Can be done by using conjunction.
c. Interruption means when speaker do not want to wait until the TRP. next speaker cannot be
sure that the current speaker‟s turn is complete, but they usually take the end of a sentence to
indicate that the turn is possibly complete. It can be said that take a turn to speak while the
current speaker haven‟t finished his speaking yet.
The next speaker think the current speaker‟s talk is enough. For example : (7). Bruno Mars : I
definitely don't plead guilty to being a heartthrob. I don't think my friends will ever let me say
that I'm a //Piers Morgan : // Some mornings you look in the mirror.
Bruno Mars : And I say, yeah, you are the most beautiful man I've ever seen. But that's just me,
Piers.
In the example (7), strategy which is used by Piers Morgan to take the floor is Interruption which
is signed by “//”. Bruno Mars told about facing the heartthrob, Bruno Mars didn‟t finish the
speaking then Piers Morgan directly took the turn before Bruno Mars takes on TRP. When Bruno
Mars said „That I‟m a...‟ it means that Bruno Mars is still thinking to continue the speaking but
Piers Morgan takes the floor without waiting TRP‟s. Interruption was done by Piers Morgan
when Bruno Mars was speaking and looking for the words to say. Because of interruption, Bruno
Mars can‟t take on the TRP then the words are missing. But after PM speaks, BM continues the
speaking and it makes the conversation is still informative.
d. Overlaps means that the participants talk in a time

5 Basic Concepts of Turn-Taking System

Turn-taking is one of the basic facts of conversation: speakers and listeners change their roles in
order to begin their speech. The turn-taking mechanism may actually vary between cultures and
between languages. In ordinary conversation, it is very rare to see any allocation of turns in
advance. The interactants naturally take turns. However, some account can be offered of what
actually occurs there. There is a set of rules that govern the turn-taking system, which is
independent of various social contexts:
(a) when the current speaker selects the next speaker, the next speaker has the right and, at the
same time, is obliged to take the next turn;
(b) if the current speaker does not select the next speaker, any one of the participants has the
right to become the next speaker.
This could be regarded as self-selection; and
(c) if neither the current speaker selects the next speaker nor any of the participants become the
next speaker, the current speaker may resume his/her turn. Oreström (1983: 29), however, claims
that there is a limitation in their system that all speaking-turns are given the same status. He
suggests that more attention should be paid to how participants design their turns to make them
compatible with the rules. A speaking turn and a back-channel utterance should be kept apart.
That is, a back-channel utterance should not be treated as a turn, based on the notion that a
speaking turn conveys message and expands the topic. On the other hand, a back-channel has a
relatively low level in content but has a relatively high level for a smooth communication. Back-
channel utterances signal the listener’s continued attention, agreement, and various emotional
reactions to show that s/he is on line.
Signals in Turn-Taking
1 Turn-Eliciting Signals
In the turn-taking system, the transfer occurs at a transition relevance place (TRP) for any turn.
TRP is regarded as the possible structural completion spot of a one-word lexicon, phrase, clause,
or full sentence.

In natural conversation, interactants often ignore the rule of the turn construction unit. The
mental strategy the participants adopt when they negotiate and exchange a turn should be
investigated. In another discussion, a set of six specific and discrete cues is suggested as a turn-
eliciting signal: intonation, drawl, body motion, sociocentric sequences such as but uh, or
something, you know, pitch or loudness accompanied with sociecentric sequences, and syntax.

Other turn-eliciting cues include: adjacency pairs, in which the first part uttered by a speaker
demands the second part to be uttered by the next speaker so that they form a pair; a silent pause
after a grammatically complete utterance which signals completion of a turn and a question
which is generally followed by some kind of response. Eye contact also signals turn-taking,
especially in British culture, the speaker looks away during his/her turn and looks back to the
listener in his/her eye at the turn-end.

2 Intonation as a Cue in Turn-Taking in Brazil’s Intonation System

Intonation also contributes to turn-taking. In Brazil’s intonation system, termination choice, a
dominant referring tone, interrogative function of tones, and phatic questions serve a role in turn-
taking.

(a) Termination Choice

Brazil (1997: 118ff) supposes that the termination choice is related to a stretch of speech:
speaker’s termination choice may be overridden in what the next speaker actually does. The
speaker’s choice of termination projects an expectation of a certain kind of reaction from the
listener. With a high termination, the speaker expects the listener’s adjudication or requests the
listener to make a decision. Mid termination invites the listener’s concurrence.
Therefore, when a high or a mid termination is chosen, the listener should give a straight answer
using a particular key; that is, high key and mid key respectively. On the other hand, the choice
of low termination projects no expectation of any kind on the listener’s response. The listener or
the next speaker has freedom in choosing among the range of possibilities of high, mid, or low
key to start a new sentence. That means low termination signals the end of a stretch of speech.
He does not suggest that the termination choice is necessarily coterminous with sentences or
exchanges though.

(b) Dominant Referring Tone

Besides the termination choice, a dominant tone affects turn transfer. The speaker might use a
rising tone rather than a fall-rise tone in ending a sentence to hold his turn by underlining his/her
present status as the dominant speaker. It is a signal of ‘wait’. With continuative use of a rising
tone, especially in telling stories, the teller first establishes his/her position, and s/he continues
expecting to be allowed to go on uninterrupted until the end (Brazil 1997: 93). The same
mechanism works in the role of the chairperson at meetings.

(c) Interrogative Function of Tones

There are utterances that take a declarative form but have an interrogative implication. The
discourse function of such utterances can only be characterized in terms of the existential
paradigm between the speaker and the listener (Brazil 1997: 99ff). The implication of an
utterance is situationally-conditioned. For example, there are at least two different interpretations
for this utterance // ! JOHN prefers THAT one // with a proclaiming tone: the speaker is telling
information that is new to the listener; or the speaker is asking for information that the listener
knows but the speaker does not have or asking if there is something else.

(d) Phatic Questions

Other elicitations made in social intercourse are instances such as ‘How are you?’ or ‘Nice day,
isn’t it?’, which seldom require any kind of information response. Phatic expressions have social
function of establishing or maintaining social contact.

3 Listener Activity: Back-Channel Signals

While the speaker is talking, the listener does not remain as a passive listener, but provides
verbal and non-verbal reactions without actually having an intention to take over the turn. Back-
channels function as ‘supports’, ‘exclamations’, ‘exclamatory questions’, ‘sentence
completions’, and ‘restatements’. Oreström’s study revealed that the most common type was m
(supporting back-channel), most of which was generally accompanied with a falling tone.

Turn-Taking Behavior and Role-Relationships Between Participants

The relation between turn-taking behavior and gender differences in terms of dominance is
discussed by Talbot (1998: 112ff). She refers to a comparative study of two broadcast interviews
by Joanne Winter about the interviewers’ management of turn-taking and their questioning
strategies, and draws attention to the finding that turn-shifts were more frequent when the
interviewer was a male. In the interview with a male interviewer and a male interviewee, turns
were very short and featured fasttempo and loudness.
Also the male interviewer competed for turns, using interruptions as a way of seizing turns, and
dominated the talk. On the other hand, in the other interview with a female interviewer and a
male interviewee, the male interviewee interrupted. Regarding the questioning strategies, it
seems to be natural for the interviewer to elicit a quantity of talk using wh- questions; however,
in both interviews, there were not many of them. Instead, the male interviewer used declarative
statements as questioning strategies, whose effect was abrupt and challenging. On the other hand,
the female interviewer did not use any challenging declaratives.

Discourse Markers(DMs)
1. The definitions of DMs
DMs are a kind of linguistic items which appear both in spoken and written language and are
those items which can help the reader/listeners organize, interpret and evaluate the information.

2. Types of Meanings encoded by DMs

Discourse Markers encode different meanings when viewed from different perspectives. The first
type of meaning/function is cohesive and their argument is that in English there are some
linguistic items for example, conjunctions, adverbs and pronouns that function cohesively by
linking two separate parts in a given text. They further sub-divide these linguistic items into
grammatical cohesion, achieved through conjunction (DMs) like, but, now, and, etc. The second
set is lexical cohesion which occurs in the form of reiteration and collocation. Cohesion,
therefore, is a linguistic device that focuses on sentences and their relatedness to each other
leading to coherence realized through a process that is syntactic in nature by interlinking
different sentences in a given discourse.

When these conjunctions function in this sense, they are viewed as DMs. The conjunction, in this
case, presumes a sequence which is textual in nature resulting to a relationship of various parts in
the discourse. This leads to coherence through the syntactic means of interconnecting the
sentences in a text making them cohesive. The DMs in this perspective are grouped into four
functional categories namely; additive, adversative, causal and temporal.

4.13.2.4 Role of DMs in speech

Everyday speech discourse markers are used to help in thought development and relate them to
each another. DMs connect an utterance to what comes before or after, indicates the speaker’s
feelings to what he/she says. To the hearer, DMs facilitate their task of understanding the
speaker’s utterances. DMs function as a means of guiding the hearer to get the right
interpretation. Therefore, the role played by these markers in speech cannot be underestimated.

4.13.3 Discourse Markers in English spoken Language

English, like any other language, has a number of such discourse markers including well, yes,
surely, on the contrary, so and nevertheless. They are lexical items or grammatical forms
typically serve to relate one utterance to another in discourse.

Discourse markers are considered as cues or signals for the reader or the hearer that make
cohesion and coherence, In fact, these markers are found in various grammatical forms such as
interjections, linking adverbials, greetings and farewells….etc. Discourse markers play a very
important role, not only in conversation, but in written text as well.
Types of Discourse Markers
Various Suggestions have been made for classifying discourse markers, However, different
classifications are possible because each study focuses on certain aspects of these markers.
Biber et al.s' (1999:1095) classification is adopted as it proves to be typical and comprehensive.
They offer the following types of discourse markers .
1- Interjections
This type of discourse markers has been described in most books of grammars. Interjections are
words or set of sounds used as a sudden remark to express feelings .
English interjections which are used to express emotions:
Oh [ ] Surprise:
1- oh what a beautiful present!
Ah [ ] satisfaction, recognition
2- Ah that's just what I want.
Aha [ ] Jubilant satisfaction, recognition.
3- Aha these books are exactly what I was looking for.
Wow [ ] great Surprise.
4- wow what a fantastic goal!
Yippee [ ] excitement, delight
5- yippee this is fun!
Ouch [ ]
6- Ouch, my foot.
Ow [ ] pain
7- Ow what hurt!
2- Greeting and Farewells Expressions.
Greetings and Farewells occur in special discourse situations and constitute conventionalized
responses to these situations, despite their phatic use, these markers can be used as an instrument
to maintain a link among people.
In general, greeting can vary in formality, hi and hello are used in informal situations. They are
less formal than "good"
forms: good morning, good afternoon and good evening
8- Good morning, Gary Tones speaking, can I help you ?
9- A- Goodbye.
B- Goodbye.
3- Linking Adverbials.
There are words and phrases in English, and in most languages, are used to indicate the
relationship between an utterance and the prior discourse such as the initial position of therefore,
in conclusion, to the contrary, still, however, well, besides and after all.
10- A- Layla has gone home.
B- After all, she was sick .
4- Stance Adverbials
This type of discourse markers is defined as a lexical item that behaves semantically as an
operator upon the entire sentence, to express modality, illocutionary force and evaluation. Stance
adverbials are called sentence adverbials or disjuncts.
In this respect, Halliday (1985: 82) Suggests four- Categories for Sentence –initial adverbs:
Probability: maybe, perhaps, certainly, surely.
Presumption: of course, obviously, clearly, evidently.
Usuality: usually, typically, occasionally.
Desirability: un(fortunately), luckily,hopefully, regrettably.
Stance adverbials; appear in different grammatical structures single adverb like honestly, or
fortunately, or prepositional phrase like of course or noun like the fact is, adjective such as
it is likely to or modal verbs such as may be and perhaps and the large number of these
adverbials are comment clauses like you know, you see etc. to express the speakers attitude,
opinion and even feelings. Stubbs (1983:70) explains that if the adverb occurs in initial position
possibly separated by a pause and / or uttered a separate tone, group, for example:
11- Admittedly / frankly / fortunately, I can't see anything.
5- Vocatives
Generally speaking, Vocatives are viewed by Levinson (1983:71) as noun phrases that refer to
the addressee, but are not syntactically or semantically incorporated as the argument of
prosodically, they are separated from the body of a sentence pro-stoically.
Vocatives can be divided into two types.
a- calls or summons.
b- Addresses.
12- Hey you, you just scratched my car with your Frisbee.
(calls or summons)
13- The truth is, Madam, nothing is as good nowadays.
(addresses)
6- Response Elicitors
These markers are characterized as generalized question tags, such as huh? ,(eh? Which is
usually pronounced [ei], alright? and okay? These markers are called "appealers" that are used by
the speaker to get or elicit agreement from the hearer. They serve important communicative
functions.
7- Response Forms
These markers are brief and routinized responses to a previous remark classified in to:
i- response to questions as yes, no and their Variants.
ii- Response to directives as ok.
iii- Response to assertions as backchannels yes, yah, I see
this type is called "uptakers" That are used on the part of the hearer to indicate the active
listening in communication.
8- Hesitators
Er, erm and uh are discourse markers that are used to fill hesitation pauses in speech. Such
markers tend to be condemned by people who do not understand why they are used, but they are
very important. they allow the addressee to catch up, and they help the speaker to plan what to
say next (Knowles, 1987:185).
Stubbs (1983: ) supports Knowlesُstatement that these markers are normal non-fluency
phenomenon occurs in unplanned discourse like repetition, false start and the like.
9- Various Polite Speech- Act formulae.
Biber et al. (1999: 1093) refer to discourse markers like sorry, pardon, thank you and please that
are used in respectful language, they add that these markers have speech act function in thanking,
apologizing and regretting. And they have, in fact, a respective role in the interactive nature of
speaker's conversation.
10- Expletives
These markers are words or phrases that does not contribute any meaning to the text. Some of
them are taboo expressions like swearwords or "semi- taboo expression" that are used as
exclamations especially in strong negative experience (Biber et al, 1999: 1095)
A- Taboo expletives: these markers are used to express something bad and not in polite use,such
as:
Blast!
Damn!
Oh hell!!
Bloody hell !!!
B- moderated expletives : these markers are socially
acceptable in many situations, such as:
my goodness !
My God!
Good heavens !
Good God! Biber et al (ibid) (Leech. 1989: 14)

4.14 Critical Discourse Analysis(CDA)

4.14.1 (CDA) Definition
Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is an innovative, multidisciplinary approach, which tackles a
number of important social issues. It draws on many of the methodological tools of more
traditional fields such as critical linguistics, text linguistics and sociolinguistics (Osisanwo,
2011).
Different analysts, especially discourse analysts and critical discourse analysts, have tried to
examine what CDA is all about and sets out to achieve. Most of them mainly considered this
from the angle of its concern. There have been divergences in their opinions since the discipline
itself is multidisciplinary. According to van Dijk (2000:353) CDA is ‘a type of discourse
analytical research that primarily studies the way social power abuse, dominance and inequality
are enacted, reproduced and resisted by text and talk in the social and political context’. Van
Dijk’s position here shows that, for CDA to actually become realistic, society must be in place,
since it is concerned with the social issues, especially political issues. His definition also reveals
that CDA sets out to resist social inequality and expose the social ills, which possibly pervade or
seemingly affect the human psyche. CDA is a type of discourse analytical study that primarily
focuses on ‘opaque as well as transparent structural relationships of dominance, discrimination,
power and control as manifested in language’ (Wodak, 1995:204). It takes into account how
issues are manifested through language. It studies the way texts and talks are used in enacting,
reproducing and resisting social power abuse, dominance and inequality (van Dijk, 2000). Its
domain of concern mainly centres on social and political issues. Wodak (2001:2) also says CDA
is mainly concerned with analyzing people as well as transparent structural relations of
dominance, discrimination, power and control as manifested in language.
Another very useful definition of CDA that encapsulates most of the other definitions is the one
given by Fairclough (1995b). According to him, CDA is the study of often-opaque relationships
of causality and determinism between: (a) discursive practices, events and texts, and (b) wider
social and cultural structures. Fairclough and Wodak (1997:271-80) give a summary of the main
tenets of CDA to include:
(i) CDA addresses social problems
(ii) Power relations are discursive
(iii) Discourse constitutes society and culture
(iv) Discourse works ideologically
(v) Discourse is historical
(vi) The link between text and society is mediated
(vii) Discourse analysis is interpretive and explanatory, and
(viii) Discourse is a form of social action.
While Fairclough (1989:24-6) identifies and describes three stages which are salient in CDA
practice, O’Halloran (2003:2) identifies two stages.
Fairclough identifies description stage, interpretation stage, and explanation stage. At the
description stage, the formal properties of a text are considered. At the interpretation stage, the
relationship between text and interaction is the central concern, that is, getting to see the text as a
very useful resource in the process of interpretation.
The explanation
stage looks into the relationship between interaction and social context, with emphasis on the
processes involved in production and interpretation vis-à-vis their social effects. O’Halloran
(2003:2) claims that at the interpretation stage, CDA focuses on the cognition of texts, thereby
unveiling how text can mystify the events being described for the understanding of the reader. At
the explanation stage, according to him, CDA focuses on the connections between texts and
socio-cultural context.
The focus in this regard is on the relation between linguistic analysis and the socio-cultural
context (O’Halloran, 2003:2). However, a major observable defect in this regard is CDA’s
concentration on the explanation stage than the interpretation. A good analysis within the
framework, therefore, requires a concise understanding and application of the two stages of
interpretation and explanation.
The three stages and two stages of CDA which were identified by both Fairclough (1989:24-6)
and O’Halloran (2003:2) respectively try to ask; How is a text produced? What are the properties
put together in producing it? What informs its production? Does it have any affinity with the
socio-cultural setting in which it is produced? In relation to social theory, CDA sees discourse as
a social phenomenon (Blommaert, 2005) and works in two distinct directions. First, it has
interest in the theories of power and ideology, hence, it borrows from the ideas of Michael
Foucault (1975, 1982), Antonio Gramsci (1971), with bias for hegemony.
Second, it has interest in making attempt to overcome structuralist determinism, hence it borrows
mainly from Anthony Gidden’s (1984) theory of stucturation. Certain notions are central to the
whole idea of CDA. Some of them are: dominance, hegemony, ideology, class, gender, race,
discrimination, interests, reproduction, institutions, ‘social structure and social order’ (van Dijk
2000:354). CDA focuses primarily on social problems and political issues and the way issues
relating to power and dominance in society are enacted, confirmed, challenged or reproduced by
language, or more specifically discourse structures. Van Dijk (1993:249) asserts that CDA tries
to answer questions on the relations between discourse and power, dominance, social inequality
and the discourse analysts’ position in the relationships.
14.2. Introduction to critical discourse analysis and intertextuality
Critical discourse analysis (CDA) regards discourse as ‘a form as social practice and takes
consideration of the context of language use to be crucial to discourse. It takes particular interest
in the relation between language and power.
General principles of CDA
The first principle is that CDA addresses social problems. CDA not only focuses on language and
language use, but also on the linguistic characteristics of social and cultural processes. CDA
follows a critical approach to social problems in its endeavors to make explicit power
relationships which are frequently hidden. It aims to derive results which are of practical
relevance to the social, cultural, political and even economic contexts.The second principle is
that power relations are discursive. That is CDA explains how social relations of power are
exercised and negotiated in and through discourse.
The next principle is that discourse constitutes society and culture. This means that every
instance of language use makes its own contribution to reproducing and transforming society and
culture, including relations of power. Discourse also does ideological work. In other words,
ideologies are often produced through discourse. To understand how ideologies are produced, it
is not enough to analyze texts; the discursive practice (how the texts are interpreted and received
and what social effects they have) must also be considered.
Another important principle is that discourse is history. Thus, discourses can only be understood
with reference to their historical context. In accordance with this CDA refers to extralinguistic
factors such as culture, society and ideology in historical terms. Another important principle is
that the link between text and society is mediated. CDA, thus, is concerned with making
connections between sociocultural processes and structures on the one hand, and properties of
texts on the other. CDA does not take this relationship to be simply deterministic but invokes an
idea of mediation.
The next principle is that CDA is interpretative and explanatory. CDA goes beyond textual
analysis. It is not only interpretative, but also explanatory in intent. These interpretations and
explanations are dynamic and open, and may be affected by new readings and new contextual
information. Meyer (2001) calls this process a hermeneutic process and maintains that compared
with the analytical-inductive process employed in some other fields, hermeneutics can be
understood as a method of grasping and producing meaning relations by understanding the
meaning of one part in the context of the whole. He further argues that hermeneutic
interpretation in particular requires detailed documentation such as an explicit linguistic analysis
of texts.
Discourse from the point of view of CDA, then, is a form of social action. The principle aim of
CDA is to uncover opaqueness and power relationships. CDA is a socially committed scientific
paradigm. It attempts to bring about change in communicative and socio-political practices.
Methodology of CDA
CDA involves a principled and transparent shunting back and forth between the microanalysis of
texts using varied tools of linguistics, semiotic, and literary analysis and the macroanalysis of
social formations, institutions, and power relations that these texts index and construct (Luke
2002, p. 100).
Consequently, attempts to systematize CDA draw from theories and models of text analysis on
one hand, and from contemporary political and sociocultural theories on the other. Van Dijk’s
(1997) approach is based on four categories: action, context, power and ideology, while Gee’s
(1999, 2005) methodological heuristics is based on six categories: semiotic building, world
building, activity building, identity and relationship building, political building, connection
building.
Outline of Fairclough’s CDA
The first term that is crucial in understanding of CDA is text, which in Fairclough’s words refers
to “the written or spoken language produced in a discursive event”. Fairclough emphasizes the
multi-semiotic character of texts and adds visual images and sound –using the example of
television language – as other semiotic forms which may be simultaneously present in texts.
The key term is genre, which, for Fairclough, is “the use of language associated with a particular
social activity”. For him, “different genres are different means of production of a specifically
textual sort, different resources for texturing”. Genre is also a means of textual structuring and a
set of relatively stable conventions, which are both creative and conservative. That means that
genre is both relatively stable and at the same time open to change.
A discursive event is an instance of language use, analyzed as text, discursive practice, social
practice. Discursive event, thus, refers to text, discursive practice (production and interpretation
of the text), and social practice (including situational, institutional and societal practice).
Orders of discourse concern the totality of discursive practices of an institution and relationship
between them. They are usually associated with particular institutions or domains of social life.
For example, there are particular orders of discourse associated with schools. In describing
orders of discourse, one is concerned with specifying what discourse types are used in the
domain, and the relationships between each discursive practice (production and interpretation of
discourse).
CDA sees the relationship between language and society being dialectical. This means that the
relationship between language and society is two-way: on the one hand, language is influenced
by society; on the other hand, society is shaped by language. Describing discourse as social
practice implies that language and society bears a kind of dialectical relationship. This means
that discourse constitutes situations, objects of knowledge and the identities of people. Discourse
constitutes the social status quo and at the same time it is shaped by the situation.
CDA for Fairclough is concerned with the investigation of the relation between two assumptions
about language use: that language use is both socially shaped and socially shaping.
Through the notion of multifunctionality of language in texts, the theoretical assumption that
texts and discourses are socially constitutive is operationalized: “Language use is always
simultaneously constitutive of (i) social identities, (ii) social relations and (iii) systems of
knowledge and beliefs”.
The ideational function of language constitutes systems of knowledge; the interpersonal function
creates social subjects or identity and the relationship between them; and the textual function
creates discourse. This implies that every text contributes to the constitution of these three
aspects of society and culture. Fairclough claims that these three aspects are always present
simultaneously and one may take precedence over the others.
The term ‘mediation’ has been widely employed to describe the relation between language use
and society, which means that the relationship of language and society is not direct, and language
or discourse is just the medium to bring out values, beliefs, conventions and norms of society.
Critical discourse analysis considers the relationship between language use and wider social and
cultural structures. In Fairclough’s term this means the relationships between a specific
communicative event, such as newspaper coverage of an event, and the total structure of an order
of discourse, as well as modifications to the order of discourse and its constituents, genres and
discourses.
Wodak’s discourse-historical model of CDA
The exact description of individual texts and the analysis of larger corpora of data allow
statements to be made at both micro and macro levels. The general principles of the discourse-
historical approach may be summarized as follows.
First, setting and context should be recorded as accurately as possible, since discourse can only
be described, understood and interpreted in its specific context. Second, the content of an
utterance must be confronted with historical events and facts. Third, texts must be described as
precisely as possible at all linguistic levels.
Wodak (2001) summarizes the procedures of the discourse-historic approach to CDA:
• Gather information about the co- and context of the text (social, political,
historical, psychological, and so on).
• Establish the genre and discourse to which the text belongs, then sample more
ethnographic information; locate texts on similar topics, texts with similar arguments,
macro-topics, field of action, and genres.
• Formulate precise research questions and explore neighboring fields for
explanatory theories and other aspects that need to be considered.
• Operationalize the research questions into researchable linguistic categories.
• Apply these categories sequentially to the text using theoretical approaches to
interpret the findings that result from the research questions.
• Draw up the context diagram for the specific text and the fields of actions.
• Make an extensive interpretation of the data, returning to the original research
questions and the problem under investigation.

This methodology aims to be pragmatic since the categories of analysis are developed in line
with the research questions, with a constant movement back and forth between theory and
empirical data. The historical context is always analysed and integrated into the interpretation,
although there exists no stringent procedure for this task.
4.14.3. Intertextuality
The notion of intertextuality offers a perspective of both reading and writing texts as a way of
looking at a text’s interactions with prior texts, writers, readers, and conventions.
a given text is a permutation of texts, an intertextuality: in the space of a given text, several
utterances, taken from other texts, intersect and neutralize one other. Kristeva’s use of the term
aims to describe the complex and heterogeneous nature of discursive materials which intersect in
particular textual production. For her, text is a kind of ‘productivity’ in which various semiotic
codes, genres, and meaning relations are both combined and transformed. Kristeva refers to texts
in terms of two axes: a horizontal axis connecting the author and reader of a text, and a vertical
axis, which connects the text to other texts.
Scholars in different fields consider the notion of ‘intertextuality’ from different perspectives for
different purposes. These scholars could be roughly categorized into two groups.
The first group is the scholars from semiotics, mainly from so-called literary semiotics. These
scholars concern themselves with exploring the complex and heterogenous nature of literary
works by appropriating the concept of intertextuality. Their studies range from the search for
influences or antecedents for a particular literary work to the analysis of literary conventions and
codes as prerequisites for literary communication. This work has recently been extended from
literary writing to studies of mass media communication, such as advertisements, TV dramas and
web pages.
The second group are from the area of discourse analysis and critical discourse analysis. For this
group of scholars, their major concern is with non-literary works. Many scholars perceive
intertextuality not only as a form through which texts are interrelated, but also as a social
practice that involves particular socially regulated ways of producing and interpreting discourse.
intertextuality “points to how texts can transform prior texts and restructure existing conventions
(genres, discourses) to generate new ones. It is concerned with how texts are produced in relation
to prior texts and how texts help to construct the existing conventions in producing new texts.
In his 1995 book Media Discourse, Fairclough puts forward a three-dimension framework for
analysing intertextuality in media discourse. This is the analysis of ‘discourse representation’,
generic analysis of discourse types, and an analysis of discourses in texts (Fairclough, 1995b).
discourse representation’ is a form of intertextuality in which parts of specific texts are
incorporated into a text and are usually, but not always, explicitly marked with devices such as
quotation marks and reporting clauses. In media discourse, discourse representation accounts for
a major part of what news is: representations of what newsworthy people have said. Fairclough
also introduces the concept of ‘discourse type’ for configurations of genres and discourses.
Fairclough suggests that analysing discourse types may involve complex configurations of
several genres and several discourses.
Discourse, in Fairclough’s words (1995b, p.76), is “a particular way of constructing a particular
(domain of) social practice”, and genre is “a way of using language which corresponds to the
nature of the social practice that is being engaged in”. By analysing intertextuality, researchers
aim to specify which fields (topics, subject-matters) are associated with a genre, and which
discourses are drawn upon to construct these fields. Fairclough further argues that intertextual
analysis is an interpretative activity, which depends highly on the researcher’s personal
judgement and experience.
In his 2004 article, Bazerman puts forward basic concepts and a procedure of analyzing
intertextuality. The basic concepts he describes include levels of intertextuality, techniques of
intertextual representation, intertextual distance or reach, and translation across
contexts/recontextualization. The basic procedure Bazerman (2004) outlines can be briefly
summarized as follows.
Identify your purpose for doing intertextual analysis and what questions you hope to answer by
doing it;
• Identify the specific texts you want to examine; in other words, identify your
corpus;
• Identify the traces of other texts by examining explicit overt references to other
authors;
• Start making observations and interpretations by considering the reference in
relation to the context of what the author is saying;
• Look for more subtle clues to cater for your analytical purpose;
• Start looking for a pattern from which you can start developing a conclusion.

Bazerman (2004, p. 94) states further that “intertextuality is not just a matter of which other texts
you refer to, but how you use them, what you use them for, and ultimately how you position
yourself as a writer to them to make your own statement”.
The study of intertextuality, for Lemke, is “concerned with the recurrent discourse and activity
patterns of the community and how they are constituted by, instanced in, and interconnected or
disjoined through, particular texts” (Lemke, 1995a, p.86). That is, by exploring intertextuality,
the relationship between a specific text and a genre could be revealed, or, the relationship
between a text and its cultural context could be partially understood.
4.15 Professional discourse
Every profession has its own way of speaking and writing: its own particular styles of language
(its register) and its own conventions for the construction of discourse – the professional
discourse analyst, for example, uses language in a way that the vast majority of ordinary people
would find more or less impenetrable. It is clear that when a professional speaks to a non-
professional, their use of language can be a barrier: there is an asymmetry between the
knowledge, experience and understanding of the participants in the field; and since the speech
exchange (if it is a speech exchange) is so circumscribed by language, a differential of power and
authority is created and maintained. political discourse, advertizing discourse, educational
discourse, legal discourse e.t.c... are examples of professional discourse.