Discourse analysis

1. INTRODUCTION TO DISCOURSE STUDIES
Dr. Maryam Jahedi
Payame Noor University
Jan Renkema
14/May/2014

2. Chapter 1
(P. 1)
Introduction

3. Discourse Studies:
o The discipline
o The relationship between form and
function
o Oral and written communication
o Several disciplines

4. Questions:
 1. The relationship between form and function
 2. A separate discipline for the investigation of this
relationship

5. 1) The relationship between form and function
A: Say, there’s a good movie playing tonight!
B: Actually, I have to study.
A: the form statement the function of an invitation
B: the form statement the function of a refusal

6. 1) The relationship between form and function
a. The new office complex is situated in the old city
center. The architectural firm of Wilkinson and Sons
designed it.
b. The new office complex is situated in the old city
center. It was designed by the architectural firm of
Wilkinson and Sons.

7. The aim of discourse studies
 Description of the relations between forms and
their functions in communication.

8. 2) Why should there be a separate discipline discourse
studies?
 The relation between form and function
 Contributions from different disciplines such as Linguistics,
literature, …
 The concepts are taken from many disciplines
 A common ground discourse studies
 An inter- or multidiscipline
Necessary interaction
Specific contributions

9. Chapter 2
(P. 11)
Communication as action

10. Communication as Action
 Plato’s Cratylus …
 Speech as a form of action
 Words as instruments with which actions can
be performed

11. Organon model (by Karl Bühler):
(language as a tool (Organon), instrument)
Objects and states of affairs
Symbol
Sender
Symptom
Receiver
Signal
Sound =
Linguistic
Sign

12. Example:
 Have you heard that strange story about the drunk who
decided to play barber and cut off his friend’s ear?

13. Oto Jespersen:
The essence of language
To make himself
understood
Human
activity
To understand what was in the
mind of the speaker

14. Speech act theory:
 language as a form of acting
 What people are doing when they use language
 How people perform speech acts such as apologizing,
promising, ordering, etc.

15. Three kinds of action by John Austin (1967)
 Locution: the act of producing an utterance
 Illocution: the act that is committed by producing an
utterance
 Perlocution: the production of an effect through locution
and illocution

16. Felicity conditions that illocutions must meet (John Searle,1969)
 Felicity conditions:
 Circumstances required for illocutions to be
successful
a. The propositional content condition
b. The preparatory condition
c. The sincerity condition
d. The essential condition

17. To promise
 a. The propositional content condition
 A future act
 To be carried out by the speaker
 b. The preparatory condition
 The content of the promise is not a matter.
 The promise must be advantageous to the addressee.
 c. The sincerity condition
 The speaker must honestly be willing to fulfill the promise.
 d. The essential condition
 The responsibility of carrying out the act

18. Another approach by Habermas (1981)
 Speakers claim that their illocutions are valid.

19. Types of illocution (Habermas)
Aspect of the
utterance
Claim to
validity
Type of
illocution
Example of
illocution
symbol truth constative
predicting
claiming
describing
symptom sincerity expressive promising
congratulating
signal legitimacy regulative
inviting
requesting
ordering

20.  What is an IFID?
 Illocutionary force indicating device
 An Indication of the intended illocutions
 Performative verbs, word order, intonation, accent …

21. The co-operative principle:
 A principle of conversation
 Grice (1975)
 Make your conversational contribution such as is
required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the
accepted purpose or direction of the speech exchange.

22. Maxims:
 Supporting the co-operative principle are four maxims:
Quantity: Make your contribution as informative as is
required. Do not make your contribution more, or less,
informative than is required.
Quality: Try to be truthful, and don’t give information that
is false or that is not supported by evidence.
Relation: Try to be relevant.
Manner: Try to be brief, and orderly. Avoid obscurity and
ambiguity.

23. Relevance theory by Sperber & Wilson (1995)
 An essential feature of most communication is
“understanding each other”
 language in use is characterized by indeterminacy or
underspecification.
 If the discourse situation is not known vague or
ambiguous utterances
There is a good movie tonight.
 Invitation O.K. Let’s go.
 Advice O.K. I’ll go there.

24. Example:
 The discourse situation is known and the locution is clear
 But the locution is underspecified
 Doors must be locked and windows closed when leaving this room.

25.  An utterance:
As an act of “ostensive communication”
 Making things understandable and clear
As a means of enlarging mutual “cognitive
environments”
 A set of facts perceptible in reality or inferable from
knowledge about reality.

26.  If an addresser knows the cognitive environment of an
addressee, then he knows what kind of assumptions the
addressee will make in reaction to an utterance.

27. e.g. Doors must be locked and windows closed when leaving this room.
 The cognitive environment of an addressee:
 When I leave class for a toilet break, other people will stay there, I
will return in a few minutes and continue listening to the lecturer.
 The addressee’s reaction:
 There is no need to lock up and close the windows because of what
I know about the situation.
 The notice is relevant in the right context:
 At the end of the day when the lecture hall is left.

28. How people understand each other?
 Explicature:
 The enrichment/specification of the underspecified locution
 Explicature is ruled by the principle of relevance.
 Only that information is filled in that is relevant to the communication
situation.

29.  A degree of relevance
utterances
 The greater the contextual effect and the less effort it takes to
create that effect, the greater the relevance is.
Contextual effects Processing effort

30. Politeness theory Goffman (1956)
 Face:
 The image that a person projects in his social contacts with others.
 Positive face:
 The desire to be appreciated or valued by others
 Negative face:
 The desire to be free and not interfered with

31.  Face threatening acts (FTAS):
 Forming a threat to the other’s positive or negative face
 Refusing a request or reproaching someone
 Face work techniques /politeness:
 To reduce the violation of face and preserve stability
 To prevent or repair the damage caused by FTAS

32.  Solidarity politeness:
 Face work that is aimed at positive face (e.g. giving
compliments)
 Respect politeness:
 Face work that deals with negative face
Not infringing another’s “domain” in the communication

33. Brown and Levinson (1978): a theory
 The relationship between the intensity of the threat to face and
linguistically realized politeness
 The intensity of the threat to face is expressed by a weight (W)
 The sum of three social parameters:
 (a) the rate of imposition (absolute weight)
 (b) the social distance
 (c) the power of the addressee

34. Brown and Levinson (1978): a theory
 Absolute weight:
 “May I borrow your car?”
 “May I borrow your pen?”
 The factors distance and power influence the ultimate weight.

35.  Intensity of threat to face
 W(FTA) = R + D + P
 Weight of Face Threatening Act = Rate of imposition + social Distance +
Power

36. Strategies for doing FTAs
 Do the FTA
 On record
 1. Without redressive action (bald)
 With redressive action (action used to improve the
stability and to minimize or prevent a loss of face)
 2. Positive Politeness
 3. Negative Politeness
 4. Off record
 The FTA is not recognizable. (I'm just so cold; “Then close the
window”)
 5. Don’t do the FTA
 When the risk of speaking is too great.

37. Example
a. Hey lend me a hundred dollars.
(baldly)
b. Hey, friend, could you lend me a hundred bucks?
(positive polite)
c. I’m sorry I have to ask, but could you lend me a hundred
dollars?
(negative polite)
d. Oh no, I’m out of cash! I forgot to go to the bank today.
(off record)

38.  Are you doing anything special tonight?
 An inquiry about an Individual’s planned activities
 An invitation to the addressee to go out together
 A different function?

39. An underlying structure consisting of four positions
(Levinson, 1983)
A: (I) Are you doing anything special tonight?
B: (2) No, not really. Why?
A: (3) Well, I wanted to ask if you would like to go out to dinner with
me.
B: (4) I’d love to.
 The underlying structure:
 (I) Pre-request
 (2) “Go ahead” reaction
 (3) Request
 (4) Consent
 Pre-request ensures the speaker that he does not lose face.

40. Chapter 3
(P. 35)
 Discourse in communication

41. Pragmatics:
 The study of acts
 Part of an approach to sign (semiotics)
 The focus is on the way linguistic signs function
 A sign can only be a sign if it is addressed to somebody, and creates an
“idea” in the mind of the addressee; this is called the interpretant.
 A sign is “nothing” without its function, referring to an object and creating an
idea.

42. Sign
Interpretant
The sense made of he sign
Representamen
The sound vehicle
Object
What the sign stands for

43. Types of signs
 Icon:
 The sign resembles some object, e.g., a picture of a castle on a billboard, the
picture of a man on a toilet door or an emoticon in email.
 Index:
 It directs attention to the object. For example, a weathercock is an index of the
direction of the wind. The phone ringing is an index of someone who wants to
talk to you and an arrow on a crossroads can be an index to a castle.
 Symbol:
 It is associated with an object by “rule”. A building with battlements, a drawbridge
and towers is called a castle.
 A symbol represents its object and determines its interpretant on the basis of
conventions.
 Most words are symbols.

44. Three areas in the field of semiotics (Morris, 1938)
1. Syntax: the relationship between signs within a sign system.
2. Semantics: the relationship between signs and the objects they
refer to.
3. Pragmatics: the relationship between signs and the people
who use them.
Pragmatics deals with questions about how signs function. Applied to
discourse, the pragmatic approach deals with the question of how
discourse is produced and interpreted in context, in specific situations.
Pragmatics is about the social rules for the interchange of symbols.

45. Six characteristics of social rules:
(1) Acquired: Learnable and that it is possible to act according to these
rules.
(2) Usually not applied consciously: Language user will not be aware of
these rules.
(3) Communal: They are not private rules, but are acted upon by groups
of people. Specific expectation exist about verbal behavior; addressors
expect addresses to react in a certain manner.
(4) Rules are a framework for interpreting and Judging an illocution in
terms of(in)consequence, implications and appropriateness.
(5) Rules can be violated.
(6) Rules are liable to change.

46. Descriptive and prescriptive rules
 Descriptive:
 To describe how language is used
 Prescriptive:
 Prescribes or dictates how language must be used
 E.g., a greeting has to be answered with a counter-greeting.

47. Distinction of rules and norms
 Norms:
 Concern the question of how one should behave
 They are guidelines with an ethic aspect.
 Norms are the values that are used when answering the question
about what is (morally) right or wrong: for example, to use foreign
words in your own language or not.
 Rules:
 Do not always imply a guideline.

48. The difference between rules and maxims
 Rules only apply in specific situations or are valid for specific
illocutions.
 Rules can be represented in the form “If X then Y”
 If one is greeted, one responds with a counter-greeting.

49. The difference between rules and maxims
 Maxims (ground rules) are assumed to always be valid.
 They are general rules without a condition
 “Avoid ambiguity”
 “Avoid unnecessary prolixity”
 Principle: When several of these maxims can be attached to
one underlying concept.
 Maxim of ambiguity + maxim of prolixity = the efficiency
principle.

50. The sender-message-receiver approach
 Sender and receiver
 It presupposes that there is an information package that has to be transmitted from one person to
another.
 This view stems from the general communication model (originates from Shannon and Weaver,
1949):
information
source
transmitter destination
receiver
message signal received
signal
message
noise
coding … decoding …

51. Two major objections:
 1. Nothing can be said about illocutionary force.
 Example: “I’ll come tomorrow” can be a promise, a statement, or a
threat (speech acts).
 2. It does not take into account the discourse situation in which
the communication originated.
 Pete told John that he was sick.
 Specific illocutions have to be linked to the message depending on the
situation in which discourse takes place.

52.  According to Clark (1996)
 Communication as a joint activity adds information to the common
ground of the participants.
 Common ground refers to:
 The sum of the joint and mutual knowledge, beliefs and suppositions
of the participants.

53. Three types of ommon ground
1. Initial common ground:
 The set of background facts, assumptions and beliefs the participants
presupposed when they entered the joint activity.
2. Current state of the joint activity:
 What the Participants presuppose to be the state of the activity at the
moment.
3. Public events so far:
 The events the participants presuppose have occurred in public leading
up to the current state.

54. Discourse situation
 Illocutions is viewed as functions of certain forms.
 Function means the objective and effect in a given situation.
 A: Do you smoke?
 B: Well, if you’ve got a cigarette.
 In the above example, A wants to make B feel at ease by using
the question form for the illocution to offer. A’s objective has a
specific effect: B makes it clear that the illocution is understood,
and counters with as a perlocution, a suggestion which makes
it clear that A’s objective has been achieved.

55. Discourse situation
 The interpretation of possible objectives and effects, however,
can be strongly influenced by the situation in which the
utterance takes place.
 If, for example, the question “Do you smoke?” is asked by a
physician, it does not function as a means of starting a
conversation, but as a medical question.

56. Components of speech events (SPEAKING) by Hymes (1972)
S Setting The time and place which is the concrete physical circumstances in which
speech takes place.
S Scene The abstract psychological setting, or the cultural definition of the occasion. A
setting can be changed (from formal to informal) by the participants.
A Act The form and the content of the message
P Participants Speaker-listener, addressor-addressee or sender-receiver
E Ends Goals and outcomes of communication
K Keys The tone of the conversation; serious, mocking
I Instrumentalities The choice of channel, such as oral, written, or telegraphic, and the actual form
of speech, such as dialect, standard language, register
N Norms The norms of interactions and the norms of interpretations
G Genre Clearly demarcated types of utterance, such as poems, proverbs, prayers, lecture

57.  Context is used instead of situation or discourse situation.
 The “verbal context” or “textual environment”: the context of a word,
a sentence, or a paragraph.
 The “social context” or “pragmatic context” : the context of situation
and the context of culture.
 According to Halliday and Hasan:
 The notion of cultural context is linked to discourse type - a news
story, an instruction, etc.
 The notion of situational context to style- informal, bureaucratic,
persuasive, etc.

58. The socio-semiotic approach
 Offers a good general framework for analyzing all the different aspects of
discourse.
 Two important aspects:
 Receivers are active cooperating participants in the communication.
 Discourse is always situated in a social context and in a specific situation.
 Michael Halliday (1978) and Ruqaiya Hasan proposed functional grammar or
systemic functional linguistics.
 Socio: the social context (the context of culture and the context of situation).
 Semiotic: the act of conveying meaning with symbols.
 The central claim in this approach is:
 Every (piece of) discourse has to be studied in its social context, in the
culture and situation in which it appears.

59. Three aspects of social context by Halliday and Hasan (1985):
 Field: What is happening; what the discourse is all about; different kinds of social
actions.
 Tenor: Participants, their roles/relationships, status. Power and social distance. It
also refers to affect: the degree of emotional charge in the relationship between
the participants, the attitudes and emotions that playa role in communication.
 Mode: The symbolic organization of the text, its status and its function including
the channel (spoken, written or a combination of the two), persuasive, expository,
and didactic categories, and the like.
Situation
components of contexts
Discourse
Aspects of meaning
Field of discourse
Tenor of discourse
Mode of discourse
Ideational meaning
Interpersonal meaning
Textual meaning

60. Three aspects of meaning in discourse
 Ideational meaning: corresponds to the field. It is the content of a
discourse as it refers to what is going on in a particular situation or a
specific topic.
 Interpersonal meaning: corresponds with the tenor of context and
can be detected by analyzing how participants in the discourse are
related to the content or ideational meaning and how they use
language to act
 Textual meaning: corresponds to the mode of the context. The
textual meaning is the organization of the content elements in a
larger structure, e.g., the techniques of putting some information in a
prominent place or the combining of sentences.

61.  What makes a sequence of sentences or utterances a
discourse?
 The existence of connections between sentences is an
important characteristic of discourse.
 Robert de Beaugrande (1981) has formulated seven criteria for
textuality, that is, criteria that a sequence of sentences must
meet in order to qualify as a discourse.

62. Seven criteria for textuality:
(1) Cohesion: Connections between elements in the text.
(2) Coherence: The connection that is brought about by something
outside the text.
(3) Intentionality: Writers and speakers must have the conscious intention
of achieving specific goals with their message.
(4) Acceptability: A sequence of sentences be acceptable to the intended
audience.
(5) Informativeness: A discourse must contain new information. If a reader
knows everything contained in a discourse, then it does
not qualify.
(6) Situationality: It is important to consider the situation in which the
discourse has been produced and dealt with.
(7) Intertextuality: A sequence of sentences is related by form or meaning
to other sequences of sentences.

63. Chapter 4
(P. 59)
Discourse Type

64. Three main discourse types based on organon model
 This divsion is too simple.
 The functions seldom occure in their pure forms.
 Many more functions are possible, for example:
 language can be used to conceal information, to give Instructions or to
instill a feeling of camaraderie.
Organon model Functions Types
symbol information informative discourse
symptom expression narrative discourse
signal persuasion argumentative discourse

65. Functions according to Jakobson (1960)
(An extended version of the communication model)
f 1. Context
referential (organon symbol)
(the reference to something in the world)
2. addresser
emotive (expressive)
(Organon symptom)
(the attitude of the addresser)
4. message
poetic
(the most pure form of it is poetry)
also used in everyday language, ads, …
3. addressee
conative (Organon signal)
Orientation towards the
addressee, e.g., giving a
command or an instruction
5. channel, contact
(physical and psychological connection)
phatic communion
(language is used for checking channel or
making contact)
6. code (e.g., symbols)
metalingual/ metalinguistic/ glossing
function
(language focuses on the code itself)

66. 1. Classification by Steger et al. (1974)
 The relation between the discourse situation and general discourse characteristics
Number of
speakers
One speaker
Multiple speaker
+ + +
+ + +
Rank Equal
Unequal + + +
+ +
+
Theme fixation Theme predetermined
Theme not predetermined
+ + + +
+
+
Method of themes
Treatment
Descriptive
Argumentative
Associative
+
+ +
+
+
+
public
debate
report
presentation
message
interview
conversation

67. 2. Werlich’s discourse typology (1982)
Basic (ideal)
Forms
Subjective
( the writer’s perception)
Objective
(what can be verified by
readers)
(1) Descriptive
(2) Narrative
(3) Explanatory
(4) Argumentative
(5) Instructive
impressionistic description
report
essay
comment
instructions
technical description
news story
explication
argumentation
directions, rules, regulations
and statutes
From abstract forms to discourse types

68. 3. Biber’s typology (1989)
 Biber relates the co-occurrence of linguistic features to com-
municative functions.
1. Involved versus informational production
2. Narrative versus non-narrative concernes
3. Elaborated versus situation-dependent reference
4 Overt expression of persuasion
5. Abstract versus non-abstract style

69.  The above dimensions set the following:
1. Interactive and affective discourse types, like conversations
and personal letters, and, on the other hand highly informative
texts like editorials and academic prose.
2. Narrative texts versus non-narrative texts.
3. The highly explicit context-independent texts, like official
documents, apart from all other discourse types.
4. Ads and politicians’ speeches.
5. The abstract and formal style.

70. Written language and verbal interaction
 The differences between written discourse and verbal interaction according to
Chafe (1982):
 1. Writing takes longer than speaking.
 2. Writers do not have contact with readers.
 The first factor is responsible for integration through the use of subordinate
conjunctions as opposed to fragmentation that takes place in verbal interaction.
 The second factor is responsible for detachment from the reading public in eritten
language as opposed to the involvement that is present with verbal interaction.
 Verbal interaction is part of a shared situation that includes both speakers and
listeners.
 Nonverbal language can be used in verbal interaction.

71.  According to Mikhail Bakhtin (in the 1920s):
 (Written) discourse is viewed as dialogic interaction.
 Language in use cannot be considered a set of words with abstract
meanings as described in dictionaries, but that the meaning of
words is actualized in discourse.
 It is the particular situation that determines which meaning is
actualized.
 “Multivoicedness”/ polyphonic aspect of discourse is an important
factor in many types of discourse.
 For example, a news story reflects the viewpoints of different actors.

72. Every day and literary language according to Jakobson:
 The poetic function projects the principle of equivalence from the axis
of selection into the axis of combination.
 The syntagmatic/ horizontal aspect of language
 Syntax- the combination of words by fixed rules.
 The paradigmatic / vertical aspect of language
 Choosing words that are categorically equivalent as in paradigm.
 Equivalent means: sharing something in common
 In everyday language, the combinations can be described using rules
of grammar. For example, a verb like “to go” cannot be followed by a
direct object.
 A. John went the school.
 B. John went to school.

73. Every day and literary language according to Jakobson:
 Alive when I drive.
 In this example, the words “alive” and “drive” are equivalent
because they rhyme.
 Types of equivalence:
 Projection: words rhyme.
 Parallelism: the repeated use of the same grammatical construction.
 Intertextuality: the structyre of a sentence is reminiscent of the
structure of a sentence from another kind of discourse.

74.  In poetic language, the syntagmatic axis is of lesser importance
than the paradigmatic axis because the syntagmatic axis is
influenced by the the paradigmatic one.

75. Electronic discourse:
 Since the 19705 a new mode of communication has emerged:
 Electronic discourse/ netspeak/ web communication/ computer-
mediated communication/ e-language
 Discourse types in computer-mediated communication:
Type Example
synchronous
asynchronous communication
chat groups, instant messages. MUDs (multi- user
dimensions, e.g., for creation and education)
e-mail, discussion lists, websites

76. What is the place of computer-mediated communication between
written and spoken discourse?
 Written speech or spoken writing?
 Immediateness of spoken/ the possibility of interaction
 Permanence of written communication/ the possibility of browsing
and skipping
 Partially combines some aspects of spoken and written
communication: the interactivity, the browsing and skipping
 The question is incorrect; it cannot be categorized in terms of
spoken language or writing.

77. What is new in netspeak?
 Crystal (2001) has used framework of Grice’s maxims to describe
characteristics of netspeak.
 According to Crystal there are many violations of maxims:
 Violation of Quantity maxims: junk mail/not informative
 Violation of Quality maxim: uncertainty on a contribution to a chat
group
 Violation of relevance: browsing the web using a search engine
may result in many irrelevant hits.
 Violation of manner: the degree of disorder seems much higher
A new mode of verbal interaction or a principle other than cooperative
principle?!

78. Conventionalized forms for conventionalized occasions
 The difficulties in describing discourse types led to another
approach to genres.
 According to Bakhtin:
 The focus on discourse use is in specific situations. In situations that are
more or less the same, the discourse will have more or less the same
characteristics.
 The most important approach to genres as conventionalized forms
was developed by Swales (1990):
 A genre is a class of communicative events with shared recognizable
communicative purposes. These purposes give rise to exploitable
constraints concerning content and form.

79. Moves in a research article abstract (by Bhatia, 1993):
1. Introducing the purpose: the author’s intention, hypothesis that formed the
basis of the research. It may also include the goals or objectives of research or
the problem that the author tackled.
2. Describing the methodology: the experimental design, including information on
the data, procedures or method used and, if necessary, the scope of the
research.
3. Summarizing the results: observations and findings and also suggests
solutions to the problem.
4. Presenting the conclusions: to interpret results and draw inferences.
Implications of the findings.

80. Multimodality:
 Mix of modes in communication
 The simultaneous use of modes
 Watching TV, reading the subtitle, hearing the sounds
 Visual element in written discourse: a text with a diagram, a
picture, etc.

81. The GeM model (genre and multimodality) for both textual and visual meaning:
 I. Content structure: The raw data.
 2. Rhetorical structure: The way the content is “argued”.
 3. Layout structure: The nature, appearance, and position of
communicative elements.
 4. Navigation structure: The ways the intended modes of
consumption of the document is/are supported.
 5. Linguistic structure: The structure of the language used to
realize the layout elements.

82. Chapter 5
(P. 87)
Structured content

83. Proposition (microlevel):
 Minimal meaningful unit.
 Linked endlessly to build a discourse (macrolevel).
 The meaning of a simple assertive sentence.
 Simple means: a sentence can contain more than one proposition.
 Assertive means: it is irrelevant whether the sentence is a
question, a wish, an exclamation, etc.
 Example: What a pity that the poor boy can’t cope with the horrible truth!
 There are four propositions in the above example:
 1. This a pity that x.
 2. The boy can't cope with the truth.
 3. The boy is poor.
 4. The truth is horrible.

84. A topic or a theme (mesolevel):
 What a discourse, a discourse fragment or a sentence is about.
 It encompasses series of propositions that are linked together.
 The shortest summary of a discourse, the main proposition of a
paragraph or what is commented on in a sentence.
 Aaboutness of a unit of discourse.

85. A distinction
 A discourse topic: the topic dealt with in a discourse.
 A sentence topic: the topic dealt with in a sentence.
 (1) The New York Yankees won.
Sentence topic Comment
 (2) A: Did you see the Yankees-Sox game yesterday?
Discourse topic
 B: Yah, who would have thought that the Yankees
would win!
Comment

86. Concepts parallel to the topic-comment division
1. Theme-rheme
 Theme: what is under discussion.
 Rhyme: what is said about the theme.
2. Given-new
 Given: What is known.
3. Background-foreground information
 The topic does not contain the most important information in a
sentence. Often it is in the background.

87. Although those oncepts run parallel to the topic-comment division, this is
not always the case:
(1):
A: Shall we discuss the minutes now?
B: I didn’t receive a copy.
new given
topic comment
(2): Theme-rheme concepts are more or less synonymous with the subject and the
predicate, however, a sentence topic is not necessarily synonymous with the subject.
(3):
 A: I had coffee at Mary’s yesterday.
 B: Say, did you hear that her neighbor wants to get a divorce?
topic- foreground

88.  Tendencies for the analysis of the sentence topic:
A topic is:
1. More likely to be definite than indefinite;
2. Sooner pronoun than noun;
3. Sooner subject than object.
 The blonde woman saw a man cross the street. She immediately
started walking faster.
 Blonde woman is definite and in the subject position.
 Topicality is strenghtened by the pronoun “she”.

89.  For the analysis of the discourse topic, only intuitions apply.
 It is usually possible to come to a consensus as to what the topic of a
given discourse fragment is. It is more difficult to determine where a
subtopic begins or if there is topic continuity, topic shift or topic
digression.
 Example:
 A: I had coffee at Mary’s yesterday.
 B: Say, did you hear that her neighbor wants to get a divorce?
 In the above example:
 A subtopic: if the conversation returns to drinking coffee at Mary’s.
 Topic digression: if the conversation were to turn to the special way in
which the coffee was made at Mary’s.

90.  a. The Prime Minister stepped off the plane. Journalists
immediately surrounded him.
 b. The Prime Minister stepped off the plane. He was
immediately surrounded by journalists.
 In “b” there is topic continuity/ “the prime minister” remains the
subject in the following sentence.
 In “a” there is topic shift/ the following sentence starts with
another subject.

91. Givo'n’s (1989) code quantity principle:
 The less predictable or accessible a referent is, the
more phonological material will be used to code it.

92. Example:
 a. He watched how the gas station attendant hooked up the
hose.
 b. The man watched how the gas station attendant hooked up
the hose.
 c. The man behind the wheel watched how the gas station
attendant hooked up the hose.
 Two characters: “man behind the wheel”, “gas station attendant”
 The first man possesses topic status through “he” the topic
status is lowered as more phonological material is used.

93.  Macrostructures (introduced by Teun van Dijk, 1980):
 The global meaning of discourse.
 Macrostructures are formed using three macrorules.

94. Macrorules:
 A. Deletion rule
 This rule eliminates those propositions that are not relevant for the
interpretation of other propositions in discourse.
 A girl in a yellow dress passed by.
 I. A girl passed by.
 II. She was wearing a dress.
 III. The dress was yellow.
 Propositions 2 and 3 can be eliminated.

95. Macrorules:
 B. Generalization rule
 Specific propositions are converted into a more general proposition.
 Mary was drawing a picture. Sally was skipping rope and
Daniel was building something with Lego blocks.
 I. The children were playing.

96. Macrorules:
 C. Construction rule
 One proposition can be constructed from a number of propositions.
 John went to the station. He bought a ticket, started running
when he saw what time it was, and was forccd to conclude that
his watch was wrong when he reached the platform.
 I. John missed the train.

97.  The difference between the construction rule and the
generalization rule is that the propositions on the basis of which
a general proposition can be constructed do not all have to be
contained in discourse.
 In the above example, neither “train” nor “missed” are
mentioned. Yet, on the basis of general knowledge, it is
possible to construct a proposition from this incomplete
description.

98.  Superstructure:
 A kind of prefab structure to present a structured content.
 Conventionalized schemas that provide the global form for the
macrostructural content of a discourse.
 Macrostructures deal with the content and superstructures with the
form.
 A specific form of a letter of application:
 introduction
 an argumentative segment
 conclusion
 a reference to the curriculum vitae
 references

99.  Advance organizers:
 The text itself provides clues about the macrostructure or
superstructure.
 An organizer can be a title or a subtitle that indicates the
content, but it can also be an introductory paragraph in which
the structure of the text is explained. Actually, every text
fragment that describes the text that follows is an advance
organizer.

100. Chapter 6
(P. 103)
Discourse connections

101.  Sentences or utterances are linked together.
 Two concepts are used to show this “connectedness” or
“texture”:
 Cohesion: the connections which have their manifestations in
the discourse itself.
 Coherence: the connections which can be made by the reader
or listener based on knowledge outside the discourse.

102. Example
 In a sentence like:
 “Mary got pregnant and she married.”
 The fact that she refers to Mary is an example of cohesion.
 The interpretation that her pregnancy was the reason for
her to marry is an example of coherence.

103. Types of cohesion (Halliday & Hassan,1976)
1) Substitution
2) Ellipsis
3) Reference
4) Conjunction
5) Lexical cohesion

104. Substitution
 The replacement of a word (group) or sentence segment by a
“dummy” word.
 Three frequently occurring types of substitution:
 Substitution of a “noun”, “verb” and “clause”.
 Example:
(1) These biscuits are stale. Get some fresh ones.
(2) A: Have called the doctor?
B: I haven’t done it, but I will do it.
A: Though actually, I think you should do it.
(3) A: Are they still arguing in there?
B: No, it just seems so.

105. Elipsis
 The omission of a word or part of a sentence.
 Since Ellipsis is closely related to substitution, can be called as
“substitution by zero”.
 Types of ellipsis: nominal, verbal and clausal.
 Example:
1) These biscuits are stale. Those are fresh.
2) He participated in the debate, but you didn’t.
3) Who wants to go shopping? You?

106. Reference
 The semantic relationship between a discourse element and a
preceding or following element.
 Reference deals with a semantic relationship whereas
substitution and ellipses deal with the relationship between
grammatical units: words, sentence parts and clauses.
 The meaning of a dummy word can be determined by what is
imparted before or after it.
 (1) I see John is here. He hasn’t changed a bit.
 (2) She certainly has changed. No, behind John. I mean Karin.

107.  Reference can be acheived by other means: a definit article, an
adverb, etc.
 (1) A man crossed the street. Nobody saw what happened.
Suddenly the man was lying there and calling for help.
 (2) We grew up in the 1960s. We were idealistic then.

108. Conjunction/ connectives:
 The relationship which indicates how the susequent sentence or
clause should be linked to the preceding or the following (parts of
the) sentence.
 Three frequently occurring relationships:
 Addition: Besides being mean, he is also hateful.
 Temporality: After the car had been repaired, we were able to continue our
journey.
 Causality: He is not going to school today because he is sick.
 In conjunction the relationship can be hypotactic (combining a main
clause with a subordinate clause or phrase) or paratactic (linking
two main clauses).

109. Lexical cohesion
 The links between the content words (nouns, verbs, adjectives,
adverbs) which are used in subsequent segments of discourse.
 Types of Lexical cohesion:
 (a) reiteration (b) collocation
 Types of reiteration:
1. Repetition:
 A conference will be held on national environmental policy. At this conference
the issue of salination will play an important role.
2. Synonymy:
 A conference will be held on national environmental policy. This environmental
symposium will be primarily a conference dealing wih water.

110. 3. Hyponymy/ Hyperonymy: (the relation of flower to tulip and vice
versa, subordination and superordination)
 We were in town today shopping for furniture. We saw a lovely table.
 Did you see the wooden igloos in this new town? Oh, they build even
stranger house here.
4. Metonymy: (part vs. whole: house/roof; container vs. contents:
bottle/water; representative vs. symbol: king/crown).
 After its six-month checkup, the brakes have to be repaired. In general,
however, the car was in good condition.
5. Antonymy:
 The old movies just don’t do it anymore. The new ones are more
appealing.

111. Collocation:
 The relationship between words occuring in the same
surroundings.
 Sheep & wool, congress & politician, college & study.
 Red cross helicopters were in the air continuously. The blood bank
will soon be desperately in need of donors.
 The hedgehog scurried across the road. Its speed surprised me.
 In the five main types of cohesion, the interpretation of a
discourse element is dependent on another element that can
be pointed out in discourse.

112. Referential elements
 Endophora:
 Back-referential pronouns/ anaphora:
 John said that he was not going to school.
 Forward-referential pronouns/ cataphora:
 When he came in John tripped over the blocks.
 Exophora: (reference to another person or thing that is not present
in the linguistic context)
 In the above example if “he” refers to another person. Then it is called an
exophor or a deictic element.
 Jerry is standing over there.
 This hose is better than that.

113. Principle of Natural sequential aboutness (Peter Bosch,1983)
 Unless there is some reason to assume the contrary, each
following sentence is assumed to say something about objects
introduced in previous sentences.
 Interpretation principle is used to interpret anaphora:
 The use of general knowledge (a pragmatic factor)
 The use of grammatical knowledge of grammar
 Steve blamed Frank because he spilled the coffee. (general knowledge)
 Jane blamed Bill because he spilled the coffee. (knowledge of grammar)
 Pragmatic factors only play a role when grammatical clues are
lacking.

114.  Coherence (meaning-bearing discourse relations):
 Concentrates on those links between sentences which bear
meaning.
 Types of meaning-bearing discourse relations:
 (a) the additive relation (b) the causal relation
 Additive relation is related to conjunction and various types of
coordination:
 and (conjunction or addition), but (contrast), or (disjunction), or an
equivalent of these words.

115.  Causal relation: can be traced back to an implication and is
related to subordination.
 The most important causal relations:
 Cause, reason, means, consequence, purpose, condition, and
concession.
 Cause: A consequence that is outside of the domain of volition.
 John did not go to school. He was sick.
 Reason: Always presents a volitional aspect.
 John did not come with us. He hates parties.

116.  Means: A deliberate use of a cause for achieving a volitional result.
 Would you mind opening the door.
 Purpose: A volitional consequence.
 The instructions should be printed in capital letters. It is hoped that in this
way, difficulties in reading them will be avoided.
 Condition: A necessary or possible cause or reason for a possible
result.
 You can get a job this summer. But first you have to pass your exam.
 Concession: A cause or reason for which the expected consequence
fails to occur, or the yielding of a point.
 He was rich. Yet he never gave anything to charity.

117. Discourse relations: semantic-pragmatic dimention
 Semantic relations connect discourse segments on the basis of
their propositional content, locutions, linking the situations that are
referred to in the propositions.
 John did not come with us. He hates parties.
 In this example, the hearer can interpret John’s hating parties as a reason, without
having to deal with the illocutions of the segments.
 Pragmatic relations connect segments on the basis of their
illocutions.
 I’ll get the groceries. I have to go shopping anyway.
 In this example, the relation does not pertain to the two situations in both
sentences, but to the illocutions.

118.  A special subset of pragmatic relations is rhetorical
relations:
 The relations with which speakers or writers bring about a
change in opinion, position or behavior of their readers or
listeners.

119. Types of rhetorical relations (pragmatic relation):
 Evidence:
 No single measure has had an effect. The traffic jams are still as bad as ever.
 Conclusion:
 The window is open. There must have been a burglar.
 Justification:
 Now I am throwing in the towel. I’ve tried it ten times.
 Solution:
 No single measure has had an effect. With this proposal our goals will be
acheived.
 Motivation:
 Do you want to know more? Send us a stamped self-addressed envelope.

120. More types to the pragmatic relations (Sweetser,1990):
 Epistemic relations: expressing a writer or speaker’s
conclusion based on a causal relation in reality.
 He must have a headache. He has drank too much.
 Speech act relation: the speech act is motivated by reference
to a situation constituting the reason for it.
 What are you doing tonight, because there is a good movie on.
 Why don’t you close the window because it’s cold tonight.
 Metalinguistic relations: refer to discourse itself.
 “In conclusion i would like to remark ...”

121. Rhetorical structure theory/ RST (Mann & Thompson)
 A theory for the analysis of discourse and discourse relations
between text segments
 It considers a discourse to be a hierarchical organization of text
segments.
 Dividing a text into minimal units, such as independent clauses
and labelling the connection between these units by choosing a
relation name, Mann and thompson propose propose a set of
over 20 relations in two divisions:
 Subject matter relations
 Presentational relations

122.  Subject matter relations:
 Elaboration, Circumstance, Solutionhood, Volitional cause,Volitional
result, Non-volitional cause, Non-volitional result, Purpose,
Condition, Otherwise, Interpretation, Evaluation, Restatement,
Summary, Sequence, and Contrast.
 Presentational relations:
 Motivation, Antithesis, Background, Enablement, Evidence,
Justification, and Concession.

123.  The units in RST:
 Nucleus: the member of the pair that is more essential to the
writer’s purpose.
 Satellite: the supporting element.
 A pair consisting of a nucleus and a satellite unit is called a
Span.
 Spans can be linked to other units or spans, so that the text is
connected together into a hierarchic structure. The largest span
created in this manner encompasses the whole text.

124. Example:
1. Leading indicators
2. Steep declines in capital spending commitments and building permits,
along with a drop in the money stock pushed the leading composite down
for the fifth time in the past 11 months to a level 0.5% below its high a
year ago.
3. Such a decline is highly unusual at this stage in an expansion;
4. for example, in the three most recent expansions, the leaders were rising
on average, at about 7% clip at comparabl phases in the cycle.
5. While not signaling an outright recession,
6. the current protracted sluggishness of the leading indicators appears
consistent with our prognosis of sluggish real GNP growth over the next
few quarters.

125.  Unit 1 is a title and acts as a preparation that prepares the
reader for what is to come,
 Unit 2 gives information about the main subject of the text.
 Units 3 and 4 together elaborate what mentioned in unit 2.
 Units 5 and 6 interpret the span that is formed by units 2-4.
 Unit 5 provides concession (limit) on the degree of
interpretation.
 Unit 6 provides the interpretation.

126. Shortcomings for RST:
(1)The set of relations in RST is purely descriptive and there is no
generally acknowledged standard set of relations.
(2) A set of relations is presented without further structuring. This
means that a set of discourse relations must not only be
descriptively adequate, but also be psychologically plausible
(Sanders et al., 1992).

127.  Sanders et al. propose a classification for discourse relations by four
fundamental ordering principles that are called Primitives:
 Basic operation: Each relation has a causal or an additive component.
 Source of coherence: Each relation is coherent on semantic or
pragmatic grounds.
 Order of segments: this distinction applies only to causal relations.
These have a basic order when the antecedent (e.g., cause) is to the left
of the consequence (e.g., result) and a non-basic order when the
antecedent is to the right of the consequence.
 Polarity: Positive and negative relations.
 According to Sanders et al. the four primitives can be combined in
order to obtain twelve classes of discourse relations:

128. (3) Owing to the vagueness of the definition of discourse relations,
i.e., the assignment of the “correct” relation lable, it can not be
clearly determined which relations are applicable in an analysis.
 Sue is corporate president. You should take this to her.
 Is this a reason relation or a conclusion? Or even the relation of motivation or
justification?
 The view that perhaps two or more relations can hold at the
same time is known as Multi-Level Hypothesis (MLH).

129. (4) Moor and Pollack (1992) claim that the interpretation of
discourse requires the co-existence of informational and
intentional relations. They concern the notion that texts are
meant to realize changes in a reader’s mental state.
(5) In determining the nucleus-satellite division in a text, it is in
fact the context that decides which sentence is the nucleus.
 John prepared a pie for his parents. (But) he forgot to put it in the
oven.
 If the topic in the context is forgetfulness, then the second sentence is the
nucleus, and if the topic is the fact that John loves cooking, then the first
sentence is the nucleus.

130. (6) There is the order of the parts.
 Is there a marked and unmarked order of parts? And if so, under
what conditions will an unmarked order appear?
 For example, in “a”, the condition comes after the statement,
but the reverse order is also possible, as in “b”.
 a. You can go to that party this Saturday. But first you have to clean
up your room.
 b. He liked taking care of her sister’s kids. Yet he and his wife never
had children themselves.

131. (7) The division of discourse or text relations into explicit and
implicit which depends on the presence or absence of a
conjunction. It is clear that in the most texts the use of
conjunctions is optional, and moreover, a conjunction can
indicate more than one relation.