discourse analysis discourse analysis danang october 2009 obiect of study here are two pieces of language this box contains on average 100 large plain paper clips applied linguistics is therefore n

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OBIECT OF STUDY

 Here are two pieces of language:

 This box contains, on average, 100

Large Plain Paper Clips. Applied

Linguistics is therefore not the same as
Linguistics. The tea’s hot as it could be.
This is Willie Worm. Just send 12

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 Playback. Raymond Chandler. Penguin Books

in association with Hamish Hamilton. To Jean
and Helga, without whom this book could

never have been written. One. The voice on
the telephone seemed to be sharp and

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Questions for Discussion

1. Which part of these two stretches of

language is part of a unified whole?

2. What sort of text is it?
3. What is the other one?

4. How do you distinguish between

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 1<sub>st</sub> piece:

• 5 correct sentences
• doesn’t make sense
• no feeing of unity
• not meaningful and

unified

• gobbledegook

• randomly assembled

without reason

 2<sub>nd</sub> piece:

• only 1 complete

sentence

• does make sense
• is meaningful and

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 In the 2nd piece, we could restore the

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Coherence

 The quality of being meaningful and unified

(which the 2nd passage has but the 1st lacks).

 Necessary for communication and for foreign

language learning but cannot be explained by
concentrating on the internal grammar of

sentences.

 There is more to producing and understanding

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 People do not always speak or write in

complete sentences, yet they still succeed in
communication.

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 “There were too many loose ends, too

many leftovers. Too much. Hanging
over his head.”

 “He knocked hard. Once, twice and a

third time.” (John Katzenbach)

 “But I had to be alone. To breathe air.

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Discourse & the Sentence

- Two Different Kinds of Language

as Potential Objects for Study

 Sentences: concerned with rules.

 Discourse (DA): may (not) be composed

of a correct sentence or a series of

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 “We thought it was right to come to a decision

when I next met them last night.” (said by
British politician Geoffrey Howe in a TV

interview)

 “Which of you people is the fish?”

 Discourse treats the rules of grammar as a

resource, conforming to them when it needs
to, but departing form them when it does not.

 Discourse can be anything: a grunt,

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Two approaches to language:

Sentence Linguistics (SL) and DA

 SL data

 Isolated sentences

 Grammatically

well-formed

 Without context

 Invented or

idealized

 DA data

 Any stretch of

language felt to be
unified

 Achieving meaning

 In context

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The Origins of Discourse Analysis

 DA is not sth totally new.

 The first known students of language in the

western tradition, the scholars of Greece and
Rome, were aware of the 2 above different

approaches, divided grammar from rhetoric.

 Grammar: concerned with the rules of

language as an isolated subject.

 Rhetoric: how to do things with words, to

achieve effects and to communicate

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 In 20th century linguistics, alongside sentence

linguistics, there have been influential

approaches which studied language in its full
context, as part of society and the world.

 US linguists and anthropologists did research

into the languages and society of native
Americans (Indians).

 British linguists (J. R. Firth) saw language not

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DA at the intersection of

diverse disciplines

 Many other disciplines – philosophy,

psychology and psychiatry, sociology

and anthropology, Artificial Intelligence,
media studies, literary studies often

examine their object of study – the
mind, the society, other cultures,
computers, the media, works of

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 Many disciplines have plenty of insights

to offer to DA.

 The most useful distinction is to think of

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The term “discourse analysis”

 Zellig Harris (a sentence linguist) coined the

term ‘DA’ & initiated a search for language
rules which would explain how sentences
were connected within a text by a kind of
extended grammar.

 In 1952, in an article entitled ‘DA’, he

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 Harris’s conclusions: 2 possible

conclusions for DA:

 “continuing descriptive linguistics

beyond the limits of a single sentence
at a time” (This is Harris’s aim &

concern.)

 “correlating culture & language

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 Having weighed up the two options, at

the end of the article, Harris concluded:
’ … in every language it turns out that
almost all the results lie within a

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Brown & Yule’s View

 “DA on the one hand includes the study

of linguistic forms and the regularities

of their distribution and, on the other

hand, involves a consideration of the
general principles of interpretation by
which people normally make sense of

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 If we are to find the answer to the

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 We must see just how far formal, purely

linguistic rules can go in accounting for
the way one sentence succeeds

another.

 We must look beyond the formal rules

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Discourse versus Text

 1<sub>st</sub> approach of text

 Type of linguistic unit

larger than the
sentence.

 The verbal record of a

communicative act
(Brown & Yule)

 The linguistic product of

a communicative

process (Widdowson)

 2<sub>nd</sub> approach of text
 A semantic or

communicative category

(Halliday & Hasan)

 A communicative
occurrence which

possesses 7 constitutive
conditions of textual

communication: cohesion,
coherence, intentionality,
acceptability, informativity,
situationality &

intertextuality) (De

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Text Analysis (TA) & DA

 Text Analysis

 Deals with formal

features (cohesion,
text structure)

 Little reference to

extra-linguistic
factors.

 Relationship b/t TA

& DA?

 Discourse analysis
 Deals with a

functional analysis of
language in use

(coherence, context
of situations,

writer/speaker’s
intention or

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DA’S OBJECT OF STUDY

 ‘…discourse is … language in use.’

(Brown & Yule).

 ‘Discourse is a communicative process

by means of interaction. Its situational
outcome is a change in a state of

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