Transcript DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
Topics in Applied Linguistics
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M. Stubbs' textbook (Stubbs 1983:1),
discourse analysis is defined as
a) concerned with language use beyond the
boundaries of a sentence/utterance,
b) concerned with the interrelationships
between language and society and
c) as concerned with the interactive or
dialogic properties of everyday
communication.
Text or Discourse
Analysis?
Text analysis
• Needs linguistic analysis
• Interpretation is based on linguistic
evidence
• Text analysts need the right ‘knife’ to cut
the right ‘bread’
• Different ‘knives’ for different ‘bread’
Discourse analysis
• How texts relate to contexts of situation and context
of culture
• How texts are produced as a social practice
• What texts tell us about happenings, what people
think, believe etc.
• How texts represent ideology (power struggle etc.)
Text & Discourse Analyses
(Nunan, 1993)
• Text analysis is the study of formal linguistic devices
that distinguish a text from random sentences.
• Discourse analysts study these text-forming devices
with reference to the purposes and functions for which
the discourse was produced, and the context within
which the discourse was created. The ultimate goal is
to show how the linguistic elements enable language
users to communicate.
• The term discourse analysis is very ambiguous.
• I will use it in this book to refer mainly to the
linguistic analysis of naturally occurring
connected speech or written discourse.
• Roughly speaking, it refers to attempts to study
the organisation of language above the
sentence or above the clause, and therefore to
study larger linguistic units, such as
conversational exchanges or written texts.
• It follows that discourse analysis is also
concerned with language use in social contexts,
and in particular with interaction or dialogue
between speakers.
Definition of Discourse Analysis:
• The study of how stretches of language
used in communication assume
meaning, purpose and unity for their
users: the quality of COHERENCE
• A general consensus: COHERENCE
does not derive solely from the linguistic
forms and propositional content of a
text, though these may contribute to it.
• COHERENCE derives from an interaction
of text with given participants (context)
• Context: participants’ knowledge and
perception of paralanguage, other texts,
the situation, the culture, the world in
general and the role, intentions and
relationships of participants.
Approaches to DA
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Speech Act Theory
Interactional Sociolinguistics
Ethnography of Communication
Pragmatics
Conversational Analysis
Variation Analysis
SFL
Speech Act Theory
(Austin 1955, Searle 1969)
– A logico-philosophic perspective on conversational
organization focusing on interpretation rather than
the production of utterances in discourse.
– From the basic belief that language is used to perform
actions.
– Every utterance can be analyzed as the realization of
the speaker’s intent (illocutionary force) to achieve a
particular purpose.
– Neither Austin nor Searle were concerned with the
analysis of continuous discourse.
Speech Act Theory
– Unit of analysis: speech act (SA) or
illocutionary force (IF).
– Principal problems: the lack of a one-to-one
match up between discourse function (IF) and
the grammatical form.
– Provides the insight that the basic unit of
conversational analysis must be functionally
motivated rather than formally defined one.
– Systemic name : speech function (SF) –
central issue in discourse structure.
Interactional Sociolinguistics
(Gumperz 1982, Goffman 1959-1981)
– Grows out of the work of anthropologists.
– Centrally concerned with the importance of context in
the production and interpretation of discourse.
– Units of analysis: grammatical and prosodic features
in interactions.
– Gumperz demonstrated that interactants from
different socio-cultural backgrounds may “hear” and
understand discourse differently according to their
interpretation contextualisation cues in discourse. E.g.
intonation contours, ‘speaking for another’, alignment,
gender.
Interactional Sociolinguistics
– Schiffrin (1987): focused on quantitative
interactive sociolinguistic analysis, esp.
discourse markers (defined as ‘sequentially
dependent elements which bracket units of
talk).
– Schiffrin’s unit of analysis: turn.
– Basic concern: the accomplishment of
conversational coherence.
– She argues for the importance of both
qualitative and quantitative / distributional
analysis in order to determine the function of
the different discourse markers in
Ethnography of Communication
(Dell Hymes (1972b, 1974)
– Concerned with understanding the social
context of linguistic interactions: ‘who says
what to whom, when, where. Why, and how’.
– Prime unit of analysis: speech event.
– Definition: ‘The speech event is to what
analysis of verbal interaction what the
sentence is to grammar … It represents an
extension in the size of the basic analytical
unit from the single utterance to stretches of
utterances, as well as a shift in focus from …
text to … interaction’.
Ethnography of Communication
– Speech event refers to ‘activities … that are directly
governed by rules or norms for the use of speech’
(Hymes 1972:56)
– Speech event comprises components (Hymes
SPEAKING grid).
– Analysis of these components of a speech event is
central to what became known as ethnography of
communication or ethnography of speaking, with the
ethnographer’s aim being to discover rules of
appropriateness in speech events.
– Genres often coincides with speech events
Ethnography of Communication
– The ethnographic framework has led to
broader notions of communicative
competence.
– Problem: Lack of explicitness in Hymes’
account on the relationship between genre
and other components of the speaking grid
and their expression in language and
– Recognition of the close relationship between
speech events and their social/cultural
contexts.
Pragmatics
(Grice 1975, Leech 1983, Levinson 1983)
– Formulates conversational behaviour in terms of general
“principles” rather than rules.
– At the base of pragmatic approach is to conversation analysis is
Gricean’s co-operative principle (CP).
– This principle seeks to account for not only how participants
decide what to DO next in conversation, but also how
interlocutors go about interpreting what the previous speaker
has just done.
– This principle is the broken down into specific maxims: Quantity
(say only as much as necessary), Quality (try to make your
contribution one that is true), Relation (be relevant), and manner
(be brief and avoid ambiguity).
Pragmatics
– Provides useful means of characterizing
different varieties of conversation, e.g. in
interactions, one can deliberately try to be
provocative or consensual.
– Significant problem: it implies that
conversations occur co-operatively, between
equals where power is equally distributed etc.
– In reality: conversations involve levels of
disagreement and resistance; power is
constantly under contestation.
Conversation Analysis (CA)
(Harold Garfinkel 1960s-1970s)
– Garfinkel (sociologist) concern: to understand how
social members make sense of everyday life.
– Sack, Schegloff, Jefferson (1973)tried to explain
how conversation can happen at all.
– CA is a branch of ethnomethodology.
– Two grossly apparent facts: a) only one person
speaks at a time, and b) speakers change recurs.
Thus conversation is a ‘turn taking’ activity.
– Speakers recognize points of potential speekar
change – turn constructional unit (TCU).
Conversation Analysis (CA)
– CA identified TCU as the critical units of
conversation, it has not specified exactly how
a TCU boundary can be recognized in any
situation.
– Models conversation as infinitely generative
turn-taking machine, where interactants try to
avoid lapse: the possibility that no one is
speaking.
– Contribution: the identification of ‘adjacency
pairs’: conversational relatedness operating
between adjacent utterances.
Conversation Analysis (CA)
– Adjacency pair: first and second pair parts.
– Major problems: a) lack of systematicity- thus
quantitative analysis is impossible; 2) limited I
its ability to deal comprehensively with
complete, sustained interactions; 3) though
offers a powerful interpretation of
conversation as dynamic interactive
achievement, it is unable to say just what kind
of achievement it is.
Variation Analysis
(Labov 1972a, Labov and Waletzky1967)
– L & W argue that fundamental narrative
structures are evident in spoken narratives of
personal experience.
– The overall structure of fully formed narrative
of personal experience involves six stages: 1)
Abstract, 2) Orientation, 3) Complication, 4)
Evaluation, 5) Resolution, 6) Coda where 1)
and 6) are optional.
– Strength: its clarity and applicability.
Variation Analysis
– Problems: data was obtained from interviews.
– Variationists’ approach to discourse stems
from quantitative of linguistic change and
variation.
– Although typically focused on social and
linguistic constraints on semantically
equivalent variants, the approach has also
been extended to texts.
Functional approach to discourse
• Roman Jakobson: language performs six
functions:
Addressor(emotive);
Context (referential)
Addressee (conative);
Contact (phatic);
Message (poetic);
Code (metalinguistic).
Functional approach to discourse
• Utterances may have multiple functions;
• The major concern: discourse analysis can
turn out into a more general and broader
analysis of language functions. Or it will
fail to make a special place for the
analysis of relationships between
utterances.
Structural-Functional Approaches to
Spoken Discourse
• Refers to two major approaches to discourse
analysis which have relevance to the analysis of
casual conversation
• They are the Birmingham School and Systemic
Functional Linguistics.
Structural-Functional Approaches
• Major question: What is conversational structure?
• Attempt to relate the description of conversational
structure to that of other units, levels, and structures of
language.
• Draw on semantic theory (Firth 1957) and Palmer (1968)
• Seek to offer functional interpretations of discourse
structure as the expression and dimensions of the
social and cultural context.