Find assignment 2 and answer all the questions clearly.
Chapter 11: Discourse Analysis
Week 10
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Learning Outcomes
Upon completion of this week’s class, you will be able to:
Exhibit a general understanding of discourse studies.
Apply a number of common approaches to analyze images and written and verbal semantics.
Summarize the differences between cohesion and coherence.
Explain the hedges in discourse.
Analyze discourse to identify intertextuality and its significance.
Summarize the difference between preferred and dispreferred responses.
Determine whether specific situations adhere to the Co-operative Principle and the four quality
maxims.
Readings:
Chapter 11 in Yule (2014)
Videos:
1. What is Discourse Analysis 2- Discourse Analysis
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Contents
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intro
-Discourse: Interpreting Discourse using: Cohesion, Coherence and Speech Events 3- Conversation analysis and Turn-talking
4- The co-operative principle: Hedges and Implicatures
5- Background knowledge: Schemas and scripts
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Intro
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What did you learn about discourse analysis from the Cultural Studies course?
What do you know about the following terms:
Discourse.
Cohesion and Coherence
Turn-taking
Gricean maxims
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Discourse
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Discourse: is the study of language beyond sentences.
Text and conversation.
As language users, we are capable of more than simply recognizing correct versus incorrect forms and structures. We also can make sense of notices.
E.g. a headline in newspaper "trains collide, two die”..
E.g. *no shoes, no service
*Fragmentary linguistics message
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Interpreting Discourse
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Read the example p. 140 (My Town).
My Town
My natal was in a small town, very close to Riyadh capital of Saudi Arabia. The
distant between my town and Riyadh 7 miles exactly. The name of this Almasani
that means in English Factories. It takes this name from the peopl’s carrer. In my
childhood I remmeber the people live. It was very simple. Most the people was farmer.
It is ungrammatical text but, we still can make sense of it and we attempt to arrive at a reasonable interpretation of what the writer intended to convey.
Interpreting discourse: is the effort to interpret (or to be interpreted) and how we accomplish it, that are the key elements investigated in the study of discourse.
As language users, we have more knowledge than what we know about linguistic form and structure.
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Cohesion
Cohesion: the ties and connections between words that exist within texts.
Cohesive ties: read the example p. 141.
My father once bought a Lincoln convertible. He did it by saving every penny he could. That car would be worth a fortune nowadays. However, he sold it to help pay for my college education. Sometimes I think I’d rather have the convertible.
1- reference: father, he, he, he, my, my, I, Lincoln, it.
2- connections between phrases: a Lincoln, that car, the convertible.
3- general connections (a term that shares a common element of meaning): “money” bought, saving, penny, sold, pay... .
4- connectors: however
5- verb tense: past and present
A number of cohesive devices is crucial factor in our judgment on weather something on well written or not “but is different from a language to another”
Cohesion , connectedness, would not be sufficient to enable us to make sense of what we
read e.g. p.141
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However, by itself, cohesion would not be sufficient to enable us to make sense of what we read. It is quite easy to create a highly cohesive text that has a lot of connections between the sentences but is very difficult to interpret. Note that the following text has a series of connections in Lincoln – the car, red – that color, her – she, and letters – a letter E.g. My father bought a Lincoln convertible. The car driven by the police was red. That color doesn’t suit her. She consists of three letters. However, a letter isn’t as fast as a telephone call. There must be another factor that helps us distinguish connected texts that make sense from those that do not. This factor is usually described as “coherence.”
Coherence (it means everything fitting together well)
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Coherence: the connections that readers and listeners create in their minds to arrive at a
meaningful interpretation of texts.
It exits in people, because people who make sense of what they read.
Think about the previous example and try to make sense of it.
You are probably trying to fill in a lot of gaps and make connections that are not expressed
by the words and sentences.
In our interpretation of casual conversation, we continually take part in conversational
interactions where a great deal of what is meant is not actually present in what is said “anticipate each other’s intentions”
Her: That’s the telephone
Him: I’m in the bath
Her: O.K.
*No cohesive ties- fragment discourse - used speech acts and conversational actions.
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Speech Events
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Speech events such as debate, interview, various types of discussions.
There is enormous variation in what people say and do in different circumstances.
Criteria:
1. the role of speaker and hearer.
2- their relationship(s).
3- topic.
4- setting.
Those factors influence on what is said and how it is said.
We have a sophisticated knowledge of how conversation works.
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Conversation Analysis
Conversations can be described as an activity in which for the most part, two or more
people take turns in speaking.
One speaker speaks at a time and there tend to be a avoidance of silence between speaking turns.
If more than one participant tries to talk at the same time, one of them usually stops.
A: didn’t you
B:
[ know wh-
[but he must’ve been there by two overlapping
A: yes but you knew where he was going
Marking turns by completion point: asking question, for example, pausing at the end of a completed syntactic structure like a phrase or a sentence.
Taking turns by: making short sounds, repeating, or using body shifts or facial expressions.
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Turn-taking
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Turn-taking: is the way in which each speaker takes turn in conversation.
Long-winded or holding the floor strategies:
Don’t pause at the end of sentence, make sentence run by using connectors, place pauses at points where the message is clearly incomplete (e.g. before or after verbs), and fill the pause with a hesitation marker such as: er, em, uh, ah.
Read the examples p.144
Those examples should not be considered undesirable or domineering. They are part
of what makes conversations work.
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In the following example, note how the pauses (marked by . . .) are placed before and after verbs rather than at the end of sentences, making it difficult to get a clear sense of what this person is saying until we hear the part after each pause.
A: that’s their favorite restaurant because they . . . enjoy French food and when they were . . . in France they couldn’t believe it that . . . you know that they had . . . that
they had had better meals back home
In the next example, speaker X produces filled pauses (with em, er, you know) after having almost lost the turn at his first brief hesitation.
X:well that film really was …. {wasn’t what he was good at
Y: {what di-
X: I mean his other . . . em his later films were much more . . . er really more in the
romantic style and that was more what what he was . . . you know . . . em best at
doing
Y: so when did he make that one
The Co-operative Principle
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Co-operative principle: an underlying assumption of conversation that you will “make
your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purposes or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged”
Gricean maxims:
1- The quantity maxim: make your contribution as informative as required “no more no
less”
2- The quality maxim: don’t say that which you believe to be false or for which you lack adequate evidence (tell the truth!).
3- The relation maxim: be relevant.
4- The manner maxim: be clear, brief and orderly.
E.g. during a lunch break, one woman asks her friend how she likes the sandwich and the friend said:
Oh, A sandwich is a sandwich (what maxims she violates here? And how can you infer an information here? *tautology.
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Hedges
Hedges: are words or phrases used to indicate that you are not really sure that what
you are saying is correct or complete.
E.g. sort of, kind of – her hair was kind of long, the book cover is sort of yellow.
Hedges on the quality maxim.
E.g. as far as I know.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but …
I’m not absolutely sure, but …
I think , I feel (not know)
Possible, or likely (not certain)
May or could (not must)
Jackson is guilty vs. I think it’s possible that Jackson may be guilty.
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Implicatures
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Implicature: an additional meaning conveyed by a speaker or adhering to the co-
operative principle.
A sandwich is a sandwich with the co-operative principle and the maxims as guides, we decide that she was implying that the sandwich was not worth talking about.
E.g.
Carol: are you coming to the party tonight?
Lara: I’ve got an exam tomorrow. (she will be buys studying tonight)
Lara doesn’t say yes or no, but Carol inferred that Lara means “no, or probably not”
We are assuming that Lara is relevant and informative (maxims 1 and 3).
It contains Implicature (an additional conveyed meaning) concerting tonight’s activities.
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Background Knowledge
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Background knowledge: information that is not in a text, but is used from memory by a
reader to understand the text.
E.g. Carol: are you coming to the party tonight?
Lara: I’ve got an exam tomorrow. (studying vs. partying)
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Background Knowledge
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The process involved in using background knowledge can be illustrated in the following:
E.g. John was on his way to school last Friday.
He was really worried about the math lesson.
What does john do?
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Last week he had been unable to control the class.
It was unfair of the math teacher to leave him in charge.
After all, it is not a normal part of janitor’s duties.
We actually create what the text is about based on our expectations of what normally happens.
Schemas and Scripts
A schema: is a general term for a conventional knowledge structure that exists in
memory.
E.g. “classroom schema”, “supermarket schema”
A script: is essentially a dynamic schema. Instead of the set of typical fixed features in schema, a script has a series of conventional actions that take place.
E.g. a script for going to the dentist, to the movies, eating in a restaurant
E.g. on a bottle of cough syrup:
Fill measure cup to line and repeat every 2 to 3 hours
E.g. p.148
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A Final Note
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Our understanding of what we read is not only based on what we see on the pages “language structure” but also on other things we have
in mind “knowledge structure” as we go about making sense of discourse.
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Source
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Yule, G. (2014). The study of language (5th ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=we6uSVf4qss
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The Co-operative Principle
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(i)HE: How about going for some coffee?
(What type of speech act is this
a. Request b. thanking c. suggesting d. apolgyizing
(ii) SHE: Oh … eh … I’d love to … but you see … I … I’m supposed to get this
thing finished … you know.
What is the linguistic term for the words in red?
What is the function of the words and phrases in sentence (ii)?
(iii) HE: I think she’s really sexy.
(iv) SHE: Well … er … I’m not sure … you may be right … but you see … other
people probably don’t go for all that … you know … all that makeup
… so em sorry but I don’t think so.
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