College of Arts and Letters

Bachelor of Arts in English Language

CEL 19:
English Discourse

Dr. Jo Bartolata
Professor
5. Contributes to research on language acquisition,
DISCOURSE ANALYSIS that is, on how speakers acquire new competence
and what is it they are acquiring.
Discourse 6. Helps answer questions about the roles of language
- The subject matter of discourse analysis. in human cognition, art, and social life.
- To discourse analysts, it usually means actual 7. Helps understand why people tell stories, what the
instances of communicative action in the medium functions of “small talk” are, how people adapt
of language - Johnstone language to specialized situations like teaching,
- “Meaningful symbolic behavior”- Blommaert etc.
- “Language in use” – Brown and Yule 8. Useful in answering questions that are posed in
- “Utterances”- Schiffrin many fields that traditionally focus on human life
- “Verbal communication”- Renkema and communication, even in fields in which
- The “Father of Discourse Theory”, used the term discourse has not always been considered relevant.
“discourses” to mean ideas and ideologies is Michel 9. Helps answer questions about social relations, such
Foucault. as dominance and oppression or solidarity.
- A mass noun but can also be referred to in the plural 10. Useful in the study of personal identity and social
(discourses). identification as illustrated by works on discourse
Discourses and gender or discourse and ethnicity.
- Refer to ideas and ideologies (interrelated ideas).
Analysis FACETS OF DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
- “Taking things apart.”
- Dividing discourse into parts according to various How is discourse shaped by its context and how
criteria and then looking at the particular does discourse shapes its context?
characteristics of each part. 1. Discourse is shaped by the world and discourse
- Can also involve taking things apart less literally. shapes the world.
- It involves dissecting something into its functions, - The world outside of discourse consists of the
participants, settings, or processes to gain deeper creators and interpreters of the text.
insight. - Text and interpretations of texts are shaped by the
Discourse Analysis world, and they shape the world.
- The breaking-down into parts of language in use or - Discourse reflects the existing world; human worlds
in action. are shaped by discourse.
- Can be used in answering many kinds of questions 2. Discourse is shaped by language, and discourse
such as (1) linguistic structure, language change, shapes language.
language meaning, or language acquisition and - Discourse is shaped by the possibilities and
(2) social roles and relations, communication and limitations of language, and discourse shapes
identity. language.
- Not centrally focused on the language as an - Text and their interpretations are shaped by the
abstract system, but in what happens when people structural resources that are available and the
draw on the knowledge based on the things they structural choices text builders make; discourse
have heard, said, seen or written before. influences language.
3. Discourse is shaped by participants, and discourse
SOME USES OF DISCOURSE ANALYSIS shapes participants.
- Participants include the speakers/writers,
1. Sheds light on how meanings can be created via audience and overhearers represented in the text;
the arrangement of information in a series of also, the speakers/writers, audience and
sentences or via the details of how a overhearers involved in producing and
conversationalist takes up and responds to what has interpreting the text.
just been said. - Discourse is shaped by interpersonal relations
2. Sheds light on how speakers indicate their semantic among participants, and discourse helps to shape
intentions and how hearers interpret what they interpersonal relations.
hear, and on the cognitive abilities that underlie - Discourse is shaped by participants (e.g.
language use. participant in the text is represented as an adult
3. Contributes to the study of variation, as well as, persona); discourse shapes participants (e.g. the
internal and external change in language. text designs its readers or puts them in place, as a
4. Describes external social and material influences child for example)
that effect changes in patterns of language use, 4. Discourse is shaped by prior discourse, and
influences such as economic change, geographic discourse shapes the possibilities for future
mobility, and power relations. discourse.
- Discourse is shaped by expectations created by
familiar discourse, and new instances of discourse
help to shape our expectations about what future Linguistic Relativism or Sapir- Whorf Theory
discourse will be like and how it will be interpreted. - A theoretical postulate.
5. Discourse is shaped by its medium, and discourse - Developed by Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee
shapes the possibility of its medium. Whorf.
- Discourse is shaped by the limitations and - Claims that the ways in which people categorize
possibilities of its media, and the possibilities of things in the world are affected by the ways in which
communication media are shaped by their uses in their language categorizes things grammatically.
discourse. - A softer version of “language determinism.”
6. Discourse is shaped by purpose, and discourse Linguistic Determinism
shapes possible purposes. - Claims that categories of language determine
- Why a particular stretch of discourse is this way categories of perception, so that a person would
and not the other is attributed to its purpose. not be able to imagine things in any other than the
way dictated by their language.
DISCOURSE IMITATES & CREATES WORLD - A person would tend to categorize the way their
VIEW language did, but categorization systems, and
languages could change.
Take note: Example:
1. What you know is an idea that is created and o Bikolnons say that there is no “sibang” in the US because
contested as people name it and talk about it. there is no word for it in American English.
Example: - Incorrect but illustrative of the theory.
o Abortion o In Italian, nouns have grammatical gender, either
- Neutral Context: masculine (e.g., gatto for cat) or feminine (e.g., tazza for
Refers to termination of pregnancy. cup).
- Discourse: - This system is argued to reinforce binary views of
Has given rise to fighting definitions as pro-life gender, limiting perceptions of gender fluidity.
or pro-choice. o The Burmese classification system is complex, creating a
o Human Sexuality "linguistic image of nature" by emphasizing specific
- Biological POV: aspects of the noun's referent.
Refers to male or female. - For example, "a pair of" can be used with buffalos,
- Discourse: as they are yoked in pairs for agriculture, but not
As people began to question and debate over with horses, reflecting their different roles.
binary classification, human sexuality is now seen as
fluid, represented by LGBT+ labels. As a result, same- GRAMMAR FACTS
sex relationships in media are no longer alarming - It is related to habits of perception.
due to this broader understanding. Example:
Noun classifiers often begin with specific meanings,
Conclusion: but through repeated use, lose their original sense and
Interest groups that gain decision-making power on serve grammatical functions, linking phrases and
issues like abortion or gender rights shape the future. This showing relationships between words. This transformation
is why abortion is legal in some places and why, recently, is known as "grammaticalization."
a third restroom option has been introduced in response
to rejecting the male-female binary.

LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT

LANGUAGE, CULTURE, AND IDEOLOGY
Language
Take note: - Consists of syntactical rules and words that exists
❖ The possibility of human cognition and human before and outside of discourse which is accessed
experience might depend on the fact that humans by people in a similar way.
are language-users. - Autonomous and shared language is only found in
❖ Thoughts, language, and being human might all be dictionaries, grammar books, and incompletely.
aspects of a single activity. - Each individual’s knowledge is different, and each
❖ The existence of words might be responsible for our individual’s actual utterance is also different.
expectation that categories of things can be Thought
defined in term of features shared by all members - refers to a variety of processes (e.g., visual
of a set. perception, memory, or performance of logical
❖ Language and thought might be connected in ways operation). However, these processes are
which a specific language categorizes things might incomplete and inaccurate.
influence how speakers of that language are forced
to conceive things.

Sapir- Whorf’s “linguistic relativism” theory is one way

of explaining the relationship between language and
thought.
Take note: o Ideas are food – What he said left a bad taste in
the mouth.
❖ According to Whorf, certain levels of reality (e.g.,
o Life is a container – Her life is full of shit.
the world of Physics) are independent of language.
2. Patterned Parallelism
Relativists believe reality is relative. Solipsists argue
- When two words or phrases appear in similar
the external world outside the mind is unknown.
grammatical contexts, it prompts us to consider
❖ Due to incomplete and inaccurate definitions of
their relationship.
language, thought, and reality, the relationship
- Patterns of parallelism create and emphasize
between language and the world should be
relationships among the varying elements within
considered through discourse, not language.
the pattern (patterns and deviations).
❖ Avoid asking how language affects or is affected by
3. Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA)
the speaker’s worldview or ways of thinking.
- Texts are embedded in recurring discursive
❖ Focus on how a speaker's discourse (what they do practices, which are themselves part of
when they talk, sign, or write) is influenced by their broader social practices.
knowledge of language and their experience of the - Goal: To reveal how discourse and ideology are
world. intertwined.
❖ A speaker carefully makes choices about how they - Discursive Practices: Ways of talking shape and
create the world in their discourse. reproduce ways of thinking, and can be
Examples:
manipulated through choices in grammar,
o Choices on Noun Modifications
style, and wording.
- Describing things by size (e.g., "a whole big cart") or
- Ideologies are embedded in discourse, used by
color (e.g., "little gold ones") can portray a narrator
as a child, while classifying by period or style (e.g., dominant groups to make oppressive systems
"Louis XVI side chairs") can portray an adult narrator. appear natural, desirable, and to mask the
o Choices on Cohesion (how sentence connections are mechanisms of oppression.
signaled) ● Linguistic Choice
- Showing no logical relationships between - Every choice in producing and interpreting
sentences can make the discourse sound childlike. discourse shapes how the world is divided
Example: "The flowers came. And then, the chairs
and explained.
came"
o Choices on Agency
KEY LINGUISTIC CHOICES IN CDA:
- The inexplicitness of the agency (entity that is
1. Representation of Actions, Actors, and Events
responsible for the action that affects others) in “The
- Involves decisions about semantic roles
chairs came,” which creates the effect that the
and nominalizations.
narrator who is a child does not know or does not
2. Representation of Knowledge Roles
need to know.
- Includes epistemic/ evidential
❖ Fiction writers use language to create fictional adverbials (e.g., "clearly," "without a
words, which mirror one or more fictional realities. doubt").
Each choice made in writing highlights the possibility - Use of "be" in present tense to present
of that choice. Each use of a grammatical element universal truths, epistemic verbs (e.g.,
makes it more salient or available for future use or "know," "claim," "think").
variation in another text. Every time a world is - Syntactic claims to certainty (e.g., "We
hold this truth to be self-evident").
created in discourse, it becomes easier to recreate
3. Naming and Wording Choices
that world in subsequent discourse.
- Naming something constitutes a claim
❖ Particular choices can come to stand for whole about it.
ways of seeing things, whole ways of being, and Examples:
those ways of seeing things can come to seem o Euphemisms- e.g., "war on drugs"
natural, unchallengeable, and right. for extrajudicial killings.
Example: o Dysphemism- e.g., "ethnic
o Rape jokes by influential figures have become cleansing" for murder.
normalized, leading the unthinking masses to be less o Overwording & Metaphorical
offended. Representations.
4. Incorporating and Representing Other Voices
- Involves decisions about what is said,
3 APPROACHES TO DISCOURSE & WORLD
how it's said, and the use of "quotatives"
1. Cognitive Metaphor Theory (e.g., how others' words are
- Sees all language use as figurative. represented).
- The concepts are structured by complex
cognitive metaphors that are reflected in
everyday “literal” language.
- Elements of the source domain are mapped out
into the target domain.
Examples:
o Theories are buildings – The argument is shaky.
about what the parts are supposed to be as well as
LANGUAGE IDEOLOGY
UNITS AND SILENCE
OF DISCOURSE how they are to be arranged.

Language Ideologies LINES AND WORDS

- The units (building blocks) of discourse vary
- The cover term includes such aspects as beliefs
according to form. These linguistic units may be
about how language and reality are interrelated, delineated further grammatically, acoustically,
about how communication works, etc. semantically or via a combination.

Language Ideology Beliefs ● Grammatically- delineated units

- Relationship between language and reality. o Sentence
- How communication functions. - Consisting of S and V & expressing a complete
- Language correctness, goodness, badness, thought.
o Clause
articulateness, and inarticulateness.
- A unit consisting of subject, main verb and
- The role of language in a person's identity.
complements of the verb (objects and
- How languages are learned.
adverbials).
- The functions language should serve. o T-unit or Thematic Unit
- Language authorities. - Consisting of one main clause plus
- Whether language should be legislated or not. subordinate clause/s embedded in it or
Importance of Language Ideology dependent to it (Hunt 1966).
- Beliefs about language influence both the nature of o Noun Phrase
languages and social relations among speakers. - Noun plus modifiers/complements.
Silences o Verb phrase
- Verb plus modifiers/complements.
- Refers to things that are not present, such as
● Tone-delineated units
implicatures, suppositions, and translations.
o Tone group
Learning to Notice Silence - A stretch of speech consisting of one
- Involves "defamiliarizing" oneself, which means prominent pitch “nucleus” and one or more
imagining alternative worlds and different ways of syllables that trail off from it. (Crystal 1969)
being, thinking, and talking. ● Acoustic-semantic Combination
o Utterance
Grice’s Maxims of Communication - A stream of speech which has a single
o Maxim of Quantity (Informativity) intonation contour, is bounded by pauses, and
o Maxim of Quality (Truth) constitutes a single unit of meaning (Scollon
o Maxim of Relation (Relevance) 1976).
o Maxim of Manner (Clarity) ● Grammatical-acoustic Combination
o Intonation units
- A single grammatical phrase or clause and
LANGUAGE CONVENTIONS end with a slight rise or fall in intonation (Chafe
1994).
Language Conventions o Centers of Interest
- These are the accepted rules and ways of using a - Sentence-like form and end with sentence-
language like spelling, sentence construction, final falling intonation (Chafe 1994).
sentence construction, paragraph writing, etc.
Example: Del Hymes (1981) also discussed units of oral discourse
o We use the term “grammar” to refer to the sets of rules called verses, stanzas, scenes and acts.
for constructing phrases, clauses, and sentences that
are codified (written down or otherwise fixed in place PARAGRAPHS AND EPISODES
and time). - Structure does not only refer to smaller units like
- Created as people repeatedly use and interpret words and lines. It is also possible to make
words and structures in similar ways. Although there generalizations about paragraph structure and it is
are established conventions, each speaker has also possible that writers make use of such
different linguistic experiences about a language generalizations, which are formed unconsciously
and so makes somewhat different generalizations (internalized) or taught explicitly.
about them. ● Patterns of Expository Paragraphs
Example:
o TRI – Topic, Restriction, Illustration
o Although we all know the English language, we still
speak or write differently as individuals. o PS – Problem, Solution (which maybe in TRI
pattern)
What do we mean when we say discourse is ● Patterns in paragraph-size units in Oral Discourse
structured? (Van Dijk)
- It means that when we create and interpret o Episodes
discourse, we make use of generalizations (or rules) - Semantic units intermediate in size between
sentences and whole texts.
(You may want to analyze paragraphs using other
established patterns of development like: narration, ORGANIZATION OF SENTENCE
exemplification/classification, definition, description,
comparison/contrast, cause/effect, process, persuasion) HOW ARE SENTENCES ORGANIZED?
1. Old and New Information
NARRATIVE STRUCTURE - In many languages, grammatical subjects tend
- Generalizations can also be made about the to be used to express given information, and new
structure of larger units of discourse. This information appear as subjects of intransitive
macrostructure reflects and realizes the reader and verbs or as objects. Familiar information at the
writer’s cognitive schema (a set of expectations beginning and unfamiliar close to the end of the
about structure and content). sentence. (given-new; themes-rhemes; topics-
comments).
Example:
o Our cognitive schema for a conventional short story
is that it is made up of parts: exposition, rising action,
2. Cohesion
climax, falling action and ending with a resolution. - Cues that show how sentences are related. Best
- Oral narrative as a discourse genre has a recurring known treatment of cohesion is that of Halliday
set of structural/functional slots. (A narrative is a and Hasan (1976).
clause that cannot be moved without changing the FIVE STRATEGIES OF COHESION
order of the events). 1. Reference through the use of pronouns.
● Narrative Structure by William Labov 2. Substitute
o Abstract 3. Ellipsis
- Announces that the narrator has a story to tell 4. Conjunction
and makes a claim to the right to tell it. 5. Lexical cohesion
o Orientation
- Introduces characters, temporal and physical STRUCTURES AND RULES
setting, and situation.
o Complicating Action Relationship between discourse and language
- Are narrative clauses that recapitulate a conventions (a classic chicken and egg case):
sequence of events leading up to their 1. Rules are Generative
climax. - One way of imagining the relationship between
o Result or Resolution rules and discourse is to see rules as descriptions
- Releases the tension and tells what finally or models of actual cognitive processes.
happened. - Discourse is generated when speakers apply pre-
o Evaluation existing rules to create utterances and when
- States or underscores what is interesting about interpreters apply the same rules to interpret
the story (just before the resolution or meanings (application of “a priori” rules).
throughout the narrative). 2. Rules are Emergent
o Coda - Rules are not descriptions of how discourse is
- Announces the end of the story or provides a produced, but rather, statistical generalizations
summary. about already-uttered discourse
CONVERSATION (generalizations made after studying the facts).
- Conversation is a good place to look at how people 3. Rules are Prescriptive
evoke and create structure in the interaction - It is prescriptive in the sense that they describe a
(although there are no rules in conversations, it is not target like fluency in foreign language or correct
chaotic). speech or writing.
- Speakers and writers also generate discourse via
The Linguistic Units for Conversation: a mental process involving these rules. But
1. Conversation Turns following rules is paralyzing, it is more useful in
- begins when one speaker starts to speak and ends
such tasks as editing or monitoring one's output,
when she or he stops.
2. Conversation Moves (Goffman)
but not so much in spontaneous production.
- consists of the amount of talk required to perform
one action like an apology, response to an (Generalizations made here are but statements of what
apology, a question, an answer to a question. A generally happens, to encourage language learners to
move may contain more than one sentence. maybe do retrospective analyses of discourse to see if the
3. Exchange (Coulthard) same is true in another context.)
- consists of initiation, response, and feedback.
4. Adjacency Pairs
- a one-turn move followed by a corresponding
PARTICIPANT ROLES AND RELATIONSHIPS
move (a question requires an answer, a complaint
requires a response or a greeting requires a return Discourse Participants
greeting) - Producers of the text (as principal, author, or
animator)
- Audience
- Over-hearers/Eavesdroppers
Power o Use of terms such as “discourse,” “syntax,”
- People’s position in the world are their positions in “transitivity” and other sophisticated linguistic
jargon can index your program affiliation.
discourse, since the power to shape the world is, to
o A teacher’s occasional use of “churva,” “anek,”
a large degree, the power to shape how people and other gay lingo also indexes alignment with
talk about the world. the group.
- People without a voice are often people without a
shaping role in the world. Stance and Style
● Stance or Stancetaking
Power and Community - has to do with the linguistic and other
● Power methods by which interactants create and
- Power has to do with the respects in which signal relationships with the propositions they
relationships are asymmetrical, with some give voice to and the people they interact
participants more able than others to shape with.
what occurs or how it is interpreted. Stancetaking to Index Powerlessness:
- Power comes with social status. o Evidential (knowledge-related) stance -
Example: such as uncertainty deployed through the
o CHED has the power to declare abolishment of use of the modals could or might and
Christmas breaks in the context of Work-from-
hedges like apparently or in my opinion.
Home and online learning.
o Interpersonal stance - such as friendliness
- Power is institutionally defined.
Example:
deployed through the use of tag questions
o The Catholic Church has the power to decide to avoid challenging the authority of
against same-sex marriage. another.
- Power can also be situationally negotiated. Examples:
Example: o Isn’t it? Do they?
o Family members decide where to dine on a o Terms of endearment like “beh” or “baks.”
Sunday family day. Here power is not 1. Style
dominance but agency: the ability to shape - Repeated sets of stancetaking moves
the activity at hand). that become relatively stabilized; style is
● Community often identifiable and some have names.
2. Registers
o Speech community
- Styles associated with a particular set of
- A community defined spatially or contexts.
physically, also by a language variety. Example: formal, neutral, and informal.
Example: Rural Barangay 3. Footing (Goffman) or Framing (Tannen)
o Discourse community - Associated with participant roles or
- Consists of people who regularly talk subject position.
about a particular topic or in a particular Example: as close friend, leader, teacher.
selection. 4. Dialect or Variety
Example: Academe - Associated with socio-demographic
identity category
o Community of practice
Example: Daragueño, Oasnon, Tiwi variety.
- Made up of people who use language in
the same way or who can index – create
Social Roles and Participant Structure
and affirm – social meaning.
● People form and renegotiate relationships
Example: The gay community using gay lingo.
- In some situations, social roles are pre-set,
Basically, these are communities seen through the lens
leading to expected discourse patterns.
of discourse or settings where people interact. Examples:
o Teacher- Student
Indexicality o Server- Client
● Indexicality ● Forms of address
- The cover term for specific strategies by - Index social identities and roles, helping to
which people create new sets of alignment. create, change, or reaffirm relationships and
● Indexical Forms (indexes/indices/indexical) conventional expectations.
- The strategies/linguistic forms or actions, Example:
o Dr. Jo, sir/ma’am
which point to a pre-existing social meaning
● Choice of Address
or help establish social meaning.
Examples of Indexing:
- A strategic move and a response to a
o Speaking with an exaggerated American accent is situation, signaling how one wants their
often associated with call center affiliation. relationship to be perceived
o Small choices in the use of words like “sana oil,” Examples:
can index that one is orienting to today’s youth. o Addressing Madam Jo as Dr. Jo reflects her desired
student-teacher relationship.
● “Complementary Schismogenesis” Ervin Goffman’s notion of face
- Refers to a process where people create - Negative face or the desire to be unimpeded in
roles for one another, reinforcing their one’s actions and positive face or the desire to be
differences. approved of.
Example:
o A leader’s control increases others’ dependency, Brown and Levinson’s Linguistic Politeness Theory
further strengthening the leader’s control. - Suggests that whenever Face Threatening Acts
● Footing must be performed, speakers must employ
- Refers to changes in one’s alignment with strategies that mitigate or redress the threat.
themselves and others, affecting how
utterances are produced or received. Basically, these theories on politeness suggest that
Example:
speakers have pre-existing selves that they bring into the
o Teachers shifting from “sage on the stage” to
“guide on the side.”
interaction, and that they adapt their discourse to the
● Multiple Roles of a Speaker: expectations about human needs and behavior.
o Principal (responsible for the message)
o Author (planning the words) Accommodation Theory by Giles and Audience
o Animator (speaking or writing the words). Design by Bell
● Shifts in linguistic style can index shifts in footing (like
that of shift in dressing or physical stance). - People likewise adapt their behavior to the actual
Basically, social roles and participant structures linguistic behavior of the people they are talking to, or
influence how discourse is created, interpreted, and to the image of the people for whom they are
managed, with elements like forms of address, footing, designing the discourse. Theories on this include
and linguistic style playing key roles in shaping and 1. Accommodation Theory - shows that styles of
reaffirming relationships and social identities. speaking often “converge” toward the styles of
interlocutors with whom the speaker identifies with
and “diverge” from those with whom they do not
PARTICIPANT SOCIAL AND PERSONAL identify with.
IDENTITIES 2. Audience Design Theory - suggests that discourse
is designed with both actual addressees and
Audience, Politeness, and Accommodation potential “referees” (non-present reference) in
● Audience mind.
- A collection of actual people or an image in
the mind of the speaker or writer. Social Identity and Identification
- May be passive listeners or active participants - Identity refers to the outcome of processes
in the making of meaning. (identification) by which people index their similarity
One influential line of research about how discourse is to and difference from others, sometimes self-
shaped by the audience has to do with linguistic consciously and strategically, and sometimes as a
politeness. matter of habit.
● Linguistic Politeness - Identities are often associated with race, gender,
- Refers to the ways in which speakers adapt or ethnicity and nationality but also arises from other
fail to adapt to the fact that others have social sources like participant roles (author? Audience?
needs like their own. Over-hearer?), situation roles (teacher, student) or
categorization schemes in local contexts (cliques in
Theories on Linguistic Politeness HS).
Robin Lakoff’s Three Rules of Politeness - Everyday interaction requires “performances” of
1. Formality selves (self-presentation) strategically geared to the
- Demands that one does not impose on the interactional demands at hand. These discursive
addressee so be sufficiently aloof. performances of identity can serve various purposes
2. Hesitancy and have various effects. Thus, such performances
- Demands that one allows the addressee can be carefully planned and deployed.
options whether or not to respond and about - To think of identity as performance highlights the
how to respond. ways in which people decide who to be and how
3. Equality to act, and the extent for which they are responsible
- Demands that one act as if the speaker and for such choices.
the addressee are equal and that the speaker - It is however unrealistic to suggest that any identity
makes the addressee feel good. is available for anyone who chooses to adopt it.
Thus, social identity is neither completely a choice
nor completely a social construction of individuals
and the world. It has to be both.
Basically, identity is shaped by both individual choices HORIZONTAL VERTICAL INTERTEXTUALITY
and societal influences, with people often performing their INTERTEXTUALITY (PARADIGMATIC)
identities based on situational demands, but within the (SYNTAGMATIC)
constraints of available social categories. shows a sequential shows a categorical
relationship, meaning, the relationship in various
Personal Identity: Discourse and the Self text builds on the one it ways, meaning, the text
follows. builds on texts that are
- The selves we present to others are changeable,
from the same category.
strategic and jointly constructed. Language
resources are used to perform a variety of social
Intertextuality’s Strategies:
identities, depending on the situation and how we
are socially “positioned” by others.
How can intertextuality be traced from a prior text to the
- We can also use language to construct and project
newer text? There are several ways:
a more coherent, more durable personal identity –
the experience of being the same person from day
• Direct quote from another text - using exact words
to day and from situation to situation, despite the
from prior text.
inevitable need to adapt. How? By adopting a
consistent personal style and by shaping a coherent
• Paraphrase - reinterpreting a meaning using the
own words of a new speaker.
life story.
• Rewording by presupposition (“preconstructeds”
● Through the sequencing of events in narrative according to Pecheux, 1982) - using the article
and the causal connections of events – to “the” to introduce a presupposition from prior
represent continuity of the self over time. discourse.
● Through markers of persons like I, you, s/he – • Negation - saying what something is not
to represent the relationship of self to others. presupposes those prior texts made the opposite
● Through the retrospective process of creating claim.
narratives and highlighting what’s important • Metadiscursive strategies – ways of making a
in their stories – to represent the experience discourse be about discourse, in which the
of one’s own life as a meaningful whole. speaker situates himself outside his words, pointing
to others words instead.
The Linguistic Individual in Discourse
- Participants in discourse are individual human Interdiscursivity
beings that is why discourse is fundamentally • the way in which discourses draw on previous
creative. discourses.
- No matter how much is known about the social • text-producers refer and reuse already existing
context of discourse, we cannot predict what a text-types and text-producing activities
person will say in a given instance because: (1) no (discursive practices).
two people speak the same language, that is, they
differ in “lingual memories,” and (2) humans are Appropriation
individual agents, that is, they experience the world - used to describe intertextuality and interdiscursivity; it
differently. means that language learners first borrow words,
structures, and ways of talking from others, mimic
them and eventually make them their own.

PRIOR TEXT, PRIOR DISCOURSE Speakers repeat their own and other’s sounds, words,
structures, phrases, and meanings in every context.
Repetition in conversation serves various purposes, such
• Prior texts and prior discourses indeed influence as:
our ways of seeing and talking about the world.
• Speakers repeat aspects of discourse such as • To “back channel” or to indicate that interlocutors
sounds, words and phrases, sentence structures, are listening, understanding or agreeing.
styles, communicative situations and activities,
• To signal problems in the conversation and help to
text types and narrative plots, which are also then
repair them
reused as scaffolds by others in building new
• To signal coherent relationships among utterances
meanings.
or sentences
Intertextuality
• To aid in the production of talk and minimize fillers
• the ways in which texts and ways of talking refer • To create rapport
to and build on other texts and discourses. • To mock another by showing that one is listening
only superficially or does not care
• this building on process is either horizontal
(syntagmatic) or vertical (paradigmatic). • To call attention to the need for implicature or to
figure out what the extra meaning is.
Repetition can serve varied functions from one culture to
another, but its use is universal.

Interdiscursivity’s Strategies:

• Register
o Register is the set of lexical (vocabulary) and
grammatical features that accompany and
help to identify discourse that occurs in a
recurrent fashion.
o The use of the same register helps identify a
person as an insider to the situation, help
create rapport with other insiders, help define
the situation, exclude others from
participation, and put outsiders in a weaker
position.

• Genre
o Genre is French for “kind,” which in discourse,
refers to the relatively fixed-types that are
associated with particular recurrent purposes
for writing of a speech in a community.

• Plot
o Frames or frameworks are the schemata of
interpretation we use as we decide, from
moment to moment in daily life, what is going
on.
o Plots like frames are also semantic scaffolds for
creating worlds in discourse; we use plots to fit
experience into coherent ways of
understanding the world. How a plot works
seems natural, as if it were the way the world
works.

Intertextuality then refers to the ways in which all discourse

draws on familiar formats and texts, previously used styles
and ways of acting, and familiar plots.

Additional Information:
• Agency - the “entity that is responsible for the
action that affects others.”
• Implicature – in pragmatics, the term means
“implied meaning” that is made deliberate by
the speaker.
• Grice’s Maxims of Communication
o Maxim of Quantity (Informativity)
o Maxim of Quality (Truth)
o Maxim of Relation (Relevance)
o Maxim of Manner (Clarity)