Discourse Analysis
- 1. INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTIC • Agustina Betsy • Anggita • Annisa Putri
- 2. DISCOURSE ANALYSIS • Discourse Analysis = The study of language beyond the sentence, in text or conversation. Discourse a term used in linguistics to refer to a continuous stretch of (especially spoken) language larger than a sentence. Most general, a discourse is a behavioral unit which has a pre-theoretical status in linguistics; it is a set of utterances which constitute any recognizable speech event, e.g: a conversation, a joke, a sermon, an interview, etc. * Trains collide, two dies No shoes, no services No woman, no cry * David Crystal, A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics fourth edition
- 3. INTERPRETING DISCOURSE • Interpret what the writer intended to convey even though the text contains ungrammatical form. 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. (provided by Eric Nelson)
- 4. COHESION The ties and connections that exist within texts. Cohesive ties = individual connections between words and phrases in a text. 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. 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. It becomes clear from this type of example that the “connectedness” we experience in our interpretation of normal texts is not simply based on connections between the words. There must be some other factor that leads us to distinguish connected texts that make sense from those that do not. This factor is usually described as “coherence.”
- 5. COHERENCE The connections that create a meaningful interpretation of texts. • The key to the concept of coherence (“everything fitting together well”) is not something that exists in words or structures, but something that exists in people. It is people who “make sense” of what they read and hear. HER: That’s the telephone. HIM: I’m in the bath. HER: O.K. (Adapted from Widdowson (1978)) • There are certainly no cohesive ties within this fragment of discourse. How does each of these people manage to make sense of what the other says?
- 6. • She makes a request of him to perform action. • He states reason why he can not comply with request. • She undertakes to perform action. • If this is a reasonable analysis of what took place in the conversation, then it is clear that language-users must have a lot of knowledge of how conversation works that is not simply “linguistic ” knowledge.
- 7. SPEECH EVENTS • In exploring what it is we know about taking part in conversation, or any other speech event (e.g. debate, interview, various types of discussions), we quickly realize that there is enormous variation in what people say and do in different circumstances. • In order to begin to describe the sources of that variation, we would have to take account of a number of criteria. For example, we would have to specify the roles of speaker and hearer (or hearers) and their relation ship(s), whether they were friends, strangers, men, women ,young, old, of equal or unequal status, and many other factors. • All of these factors will have an influence on what is said and how it is said. • We would have to describe what the topic of conversation was and in what setting it took place.
- 8. CONVERSATION ANALYSIS • In simple terms, English conversation can be described as an activity in which, for the most part, two or more people take turns at speaking. turns=in conversation, the unit of talk by one speaker, ended by the beginning of the next speaker’s unit of talk. • For the most part, participants wait until one speaker indicates that he or she has finished, usually by signaling a completion point. completion point=in conversation, the end of a turn, usually marked by a pause at the end of a phrase or sentence.
- 9. TURN TAKING • There are different expectations of conversational style and different strategies of participation in conversation. • The participants characterized as “rude” or “shy” in this way may simply be adhering to slightly different conventions of turn-taking. turn-taking =the way in which each speaker takes a turn in conversation • If the normal expectation is that completion points are marked by the end of a sentence and a pause, then one way to “keep the turn” is to avoid having those two markers occur together. • That is, don’t pause at the end of sentences; make your sentences run on by using connectors like and, and then, so, but; place your pauses at points where the message is clearly incomplete; and preferably “fill” the pause with a hesitation marker such as er, em,uh, ah. • Hesitation marker in a conversation = filled pause
- 10. •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
- 11. THE 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 purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged” • The Quantity maxim: Make your contribution as informative as is required, but not more, or less, than is required. • The Quality maxim: Do not say that which you believe to be false or for which you lack adequate evidence. • The Relation maxim: Be relevant. • The Manner maxim: Be clear, brief and orderly.
- 12. HEDGES • A word or phrase used to indicate that you are not really sure that what you are saying is sufficiently correct or complete. His hair was kind of long The book cover is sort of yellow As far as I know … Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but … I’m not absolutely sure, but ….
- 13. IMPLICATURE • An additional meaning conveyed by a speaker adhering to the co- operative principle. CAROL: Are you coming to the party tonight? LARA: I’ve got an exam tomorrow. • Lara’s original answer contains relevant information, Carol can work out that “exam tomorrow” conventionally involves “study tonight,” and “study tonight” precludes “party tonight.” • Thus, Lara’s answer is not simply a statement about tomorrow’s activities,
- 14. BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE • John was on his way to school last Friday. • He was really worried about the math lesson. • 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 a janitor’s duties.
- 15. SCHEMAS AND SCRIPTS • A schema is a general term for a conventional knowledge structure that exists in memory. supermarket (food is displayed on shelves, arranged in aisles, etc.) • A script is essentially a dynamic schema. “Going to the dentist” “Going to the supermarket” Clearly, our understanding of what we read is not only based on what we see on the page (language structures), but also on other things that we have in mind (knowledge structures).
- 16. THANK YOU