Online Delta Course

Delta Module One

Unit 4
Study Topic Discussion Task 4
Study Guide 4: Discourse Analysis
Exam Practice Question 4

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Contents

Study Topic Discussion Task 4 .........................................................................3

Study Guide 4 Discourse Analysis....................................................................4

Part 1 .............................................................................................................5

Task 1: Genre ................................................................................................6

Task 2 ............................................................................................................8

Task 3 ............................................................................................................9

Task 4 ..........................................................................................................10

Task 5(a)......................................................................................................11

Task 5(b)......................................................................................................12

Task 6 ..........................................................................................................14

Task 7 ..........................................................................................................17

Features of spoken discourse .........................................................................17

Reading List: Discourse Analysis.................................................................18

Module One Exam Practice Questions Paper 1 Task 5 (Analysis of a piece

of learner text) ...................................................................................................20

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 Module One DELTA Online Preparation Course

Study Topic Discussion Task 4

This task operates in a completely different way from all previous tasks!

Make sure you have read these instructions!

• Download, print out and read the Study Guide to this week's topic. (NB You
do not need to submit any answers from worksheets.)
• Seek out the books and internet links listed in the Reading List and read as
much as you can before writing your responses.

• For this week you do not need to submit any formal task.
• Instead find the special “Discourse discussion” forum. Post as many times as
you can and discuss anything (and everything) of interest to you about the
topic of discourse analysis.
• This is a free-rolling discussion. Start and add to as many threads as you like.
No limits on what you post or what you post about.

• To get things going, it will be fine to start at the very beginning by saying what
you do or don’t know about this topic - even before you have read anything.
• For example, I suggest someone kicks off by saying "I have little idea what
Discourse is" or something similar - and see where it goes from there.
• Another starting point might be if someone could post something like "Is
Discourse analysis actually of any relevance to our everyday teaching?"
• You could also get a thread going perhaps on identifying meanings of terms -
and gathering examples, checking if you understand them – e.g. anaphora.
• Please add and amend definitions on the glossary as you go.

• You do not have a formal task to submit – but you are expected to take an
active role in the conversation.
• Tutors will be dropping in, joining in and monitoring.

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 Module One DELTA Online Preparation Course

Study Guide 4

Discourse Analysis
Introduction

Traditionally most language teaching has been at sentence level – the students learn a
structure or piece of vocabulary, and then put it into a correct sentence. This is
commonly known as studying the grammar of a language.

But there has been a move away from looking at sentences in isolation, to looking at
discourse - how language is used in a longer connected piece of writing or speaking i.e.
looking at the language above sentence level. This can include both the organisation of
the content of the text, and devices that are used to give a unity to a piece of text.

Think of grammar as being mainly “sentence level”. Think of discourse analysis as the
examination of how language remains coherent and cohesive beyond and between
sentences.

This is a very interesting area to study. However, it is also a relatively new area of
research and there are quite a lot of different views as to how we view or name what is
going on. If you read two different books on Discourse it is quite possible that they will
focus on quite different areas and give the same items different names. This guide aims
to introduce you to the central issues of discourse analysis.

Using this study guide

Read through and do the tasks. You will need to look up and read around quite a lot.

As there is no single task to post on the website, please engage actively in trying to
make sense of it all together.

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Part 1

Genre

The discourse of a text varies according to its genre. Genre is a type of text (spoken or
written) that is structured in such a way and/or has a distinctive use of language or
layout such that people would recognise it as being of a distinctive class.

For example, most people picking up an advertising leaflet and a poem would be able to
quickly identify which was which – perhaps without even needing to read any of the
words. Often the presentation and appearance is sufficient to place a text within a genre.

Genres often have features of overall organisation that distinguish them e.g. in a
newspaper account there is generally an overview of an event in the first paragraph
before the account goes into more detail. This is obviously very different from the
discourse of an anecdote or joke. Each genre may have its own rhetorical organisation
(i.e. underlying structure), and the reader/listener is aware of this and therefore can
recognise a text type.

How wide is a genre? This is a matter of discussion and personal choice. For example,
you might identify the genre “news reporting” – but within that, there are clearly different
sub-genres associated, for example, with “factual news agency report” or “popular
newspaper celebrity report” which would look very different from each other.

Someone needing to work in a particular specialised field may need to become

competent at reading and/or speaking in any specific genres associated with it.

Here are a few examples of different genres:

Written
• Tourist pamphlet
• Personal blog
• In-store special offer advertisement notice
• Informal letter
• Horoscope
• Autobiography
• Car manual
• Dictionary entry
• Internet messenger message

Spoken
• Business marketing presentation
• Fairy tale narrative
• Public safety announcement
• Phone call answering machine message
• Parent – child negotiation
• Sermon
• Video conference exchange

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Task 1: Genre

Identify these genres. Are they spoken or written? What distinctive features allow you to
decide which genre they are?

1 This is a good guide book, as all the guide books in the series, but I did
expect a bit more from it. We felt that it focused too much on churches,
castles etc, and a lot of really interesting things were missed - like the local
food markets, which we love to visit. You can only look at so many churches
during three weeks...

2 Terrible weather isn’t it? Are you comfortable there? OK. Upper right 1, 2, 3
occluded, 4, 5, 6.

3 Collis, B., De Boer, W. and Ven der Veen, J. (2002). Building on learner
contributions: A Web-supported pedagogic strategy. Educational Media
International 38 (4), 229-240

1 Premere Home
seguito da Contatti ... (tasto azione destroy)

2 Premerre Nuovo ... (tasto azione sinistro).

5 So then this taxi driver, he walks over to the couple having a row and he hands
over the bag of oranges.

Cohesion and coherence

Most texts will probably be cohesive – i.e. there may be grammatical or lexical features
that help the reader see the connection from sentence to sentence, or utterance to
utterance e.g.

Marc and Frieda went into the flat. It was just the sort of place they were looking for.

The word “they” links with “Marc and Frieda”. The word “place” links to “flat” and links to
“it”. The use of past tense in both sentences sets them at the same time.

A text (written or spoken) should usually also be coherent – i.e. it should make sense.
We find the coherence by using our knowledge of the context and the world to try and
interpret what we are given. So, for example, in the “Marc and Frieda” example, even
after only two sentences we are starting to try and work out what is going on – e.g. we
may assume that the two people want to buy or rent a place to live. Each new sentence
provides us with more evidence to support or alter our working hypothesis, possibly even
changing our assumptions about what genre we are reading.

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Imagine that the next sentences are:

Frieda went over to the window. As she had hoped, there was a clear view down to
the bank doorway.

After reading this, maybe we start to change our hypothesis as to their reasons for being
in the flat. However, we are still eager to find some meaning and make use of any clues
that help us to do this. The continuing cohesion of the text (e.g. Frieda – she; room -
window; window - view) helps us to believe that there is a message here. We also use
our knowledge of the world (e.g. flats may be on a floor above ground level; windows
may look down on streets) to help us grow an interpretation that makes sense to us.

Texts can be coherent but not cohesive e.g.

The pavements are slippery. There was a frost last night.

We draw on our world knowledge so that this makes perfect sense, but there are no
cohesive features linking the two sentences.

Contrast this with a text that is cohesive but not coherent e.g.

Bell is a language teaching organisation. I rang it. French is a language. That

chimes with me.

Despite some apparent cohesive links (e.g. Bell – rang – chimes e.g. language –
French) it is a struggle to make much sense of this.

What makes a text cohesive?

A written text usually has various linguistic features which make it a text rather than a
series of sentences.

The main cohesive devices to consider are listed below. Look up all of these and make
sure you are comfortable with them. Add or edit definitions on the Moodle glossary. Try
Tasks 2, 3 and 4 below.

• Discourse markers – also called linkers, linking devices, conjuncts

• Referencing – anaphoric (backward), cataphoric (forward), exophoric (external)
deictic (to context) (See examples on next page. NB Referencing is key! Check
that you really know what these terms refer to)
• Ellipsis (missing words out)
• Substitution (using a single word to replace a noun phrase or a clause)
• Parallelism (using/reusing the same or similar words or grammatical patterns)
• Cohesion through tense use, article use
• Lexical cohesion through lexical fields, repetition of vocabulary, related
words

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Task 2

Look back at the first three paragraphs in the Introduction (‘Traditionally most language
teaching ...>>> ... grammar beyond and between sentences’) and find as many
examples of cohesion as you can. (There is a guideline answer at the back of the Study
Guide – but try to do it first).

Four important types of referencing (Learn these!)

Anaphoric = backward reference e.g.

My cat’s called Charlie. He’s very friendly.

The word “he” refers back to something mentioned earlier in the text e.g. Charlie / My cat

Cataphoric = forward reference e.g.

They walked along by the old canal. Frankie and Johnny were very much in love.

The word “They” at the beginning refers forward to something not yet mentioned in the
text. This is naturally rarer than Anaphoric reference – but still surprisingly often used
e.g. to create tension, interest or expectation.

Exophoric = external reference

i.e. reference to some assumed shared knowledge between writer and reader that is
external to the text e.g.

This whole project has a Titanic feel to it.

This assumes that the reader will be able to work out a meaning by relating their
knowledge of the Titanic to what is in the text.

Deictic = reference to immediate context of speaker in space or time e.g.

This is the document we are going to take to the boss next.

The words this, we, next all refer to things in relation to where the speaker is in time and
space e.g. “this” refers to the document close to the speaker, perhaps that she is holding
or pointing to.

Notice also that the verb “take” is deictic. It shows a movement away from the speaker
(as opposed to “bring”)

• In spatial terms we distinguish between “near the speaker” and “away from the
speaker”
• In temporal terms we distinguish between “close to the speaker’s present” and
“away from the speaker’s present”

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Task 3

This task focuses on cohesion

Here is a short text extracted from a Graham Greene novel.

How many cohesive features you can find in it? List and name them.

Also, consider what makes this text typical of its genre in terms of organisation.

The boy lay asleep diagonally in his teak bunk with his head on a box of lead soldiers

instead of a pillow. One black foot hung out of the blankets altogether and an officer of

the Tank Corps was wedged between his toes. Castle watched Sarah rearrange him,

picking out the officer and digging out a parachutist from under a thigh. She handled his

body with the carelessness of an expert, and the child slept solidly on.

Graham Greene – The Human Factor

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Task 4

This task focuses on cohesive devices

Describe how the underlined items create cohesive links in the following short texts.

1 He gave her a cast iron pool. He gave her a reason to believe him.

2 The train approached the station. The train pulled in. The train stopped.

3 A pen is a wicked tool. A mere writing implement can cast down kings.

4 They entered through the skylight. Batman landed before Robin.

5. It had four wavebands including Short Wave and a headphone socket. So she

bought it.

6. Has your north country boy gone home? Did he tire of your good

humour?

7. You're not really going to buy a Shrek toy?

Yes, I am.

8. Do you prefer whisky?

Yes, I do.

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Task 5(a)

This task focuses on coherence. Look back at the Graham Greene text. How do you

know that there is not a real parachutist under the child’s thigh?

(This may sound like a foolish question – but an awful lot of what we read and

understand or misunderstand is connected with how we “know” these sorts of things!)

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Task 5(b)
In this text from BBC news, what does “he” (line 2) refer to? How do you know?

Gilliam admitted he had been worried whether Ledger would have "accepted" the idea of
having three actors replace him, but now he has seen it he is pleased with the decision.
In March the director admitted filming had resumed in Vancouver with the blessing of
Ledger's family. Ledger died from an accidental overdose of six different types of
prescription drugs in his New York apartment.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/hi/entertainment/newsid_7536000/7536731.stm

Coherence
Coherence is harder to analyse and describe than cohesion. Whereas cohesive links
may be obvious and visible, coherence is something that relies on the text relating to the
reader/listener’s own knowledge.

Three important kinds of types of knowledge are relevant:

Schema: The pre-existing knowledge structure in your own memory. Something that is
unique to you and which you have built up and added to or amended over a
long time. For example, if you see the words “tree house” you will access your
schema to find out what this means to you, what it may look like etc. Your
schema for “tree house” may be very different from mine or anyone else’s.

Script: (NB This has a specific meaning in Discourse Analysis – it is not the usual
meaning). A script is the pattern of exchanges in a conversation in a specific
context. It is not the actual words – but rather the kind of things likely to be
said at specific moments e.g. in a restaurant the waiter will ask you if you are
ready to order” and you are likely to reply with an order or a postponing
utterance. A script does not supply the actual words – but rather the overall
shape of a conversation – i.e. the functions most likely to come at each step
of the exchange. So for example, the script for going into a new doctor’s may
start something like:

Patient: Greet the receptionist.

Say your name and when your appointment is.
Receptionist: Ask person to take a seat and wait.

Frame The knowledge you have of things that exist with a fixed static pattern e.g.
what’s in a room in a house.

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Assumptions

When we talk with someone we have to make some assumptions about them and about
what we can say (or can’t say to them) – in particular:

Assumptions about the degree of shared knowledge

We are constantly making and refining guesses as to what shared knowledge there is
between participants in an exchange. If we think the person we are speaking to already
knows something it changes how we refer to it and how much we need to say. Consider
this example:

A: Did you see the match?

The speaker asks the question assuming that, despite the word match having a number
of possible meanings, and despite there having been many matches of all kinds in many
sports played in the world since time began – that the listener will know precisely which
match is being referred to and will be able to reply. If the speaker didn’t think this was
shared knowledge then he would need to be much clearer in his question, e.g.

A: Did you see the water polo match between Belarus and Korea on Channel 4
last night?

Assumptions about cooperativeness

We usually assume that a person speaking with us is being cooperative – that when they
say something, they are trying to be clear, relevant and truthful. Thus when we hear a
comment that doesn’t immediately seem to make any sense, we seek to find out what it
might mean. Only if these guidelines seem to be repeatedly broken do we typically start
to give up.

So for example, in the following exchange:

A: Where’s my snorkel?
B: I packed the suitcases this morning.

There is no cohesive link between the question and the response. However, A is likely to
assume that B is giving a clear, relevant and true answer and so will seek to find how the
answer relates to the question, by filling in the gaps e.g. ‘B probably means that when
she packed the suitcases, my snorkel was packed along with the other things.’

Even when the reply seems to be far from obvious, we are likely to continue assuming
that speaker is trying to help and search for any interpretation that makes sense in the
circumstances e.g.

A: Where’s my snorkel?
B: The dog’s been sick again.

This filling in of gaps may account for the power of some apparently bland pop songs.
They don’t provide all the meaning – but we fill it back into the spaces and appropriate
the meanings for ourselves.

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Task 6

This task focuses on coherence

(a) What is the genre of each of the following food-obsessed texts?

(b) Decide how a listener/reader might discover a meaning in each text.
(c) What are the various types of knowledge a listener/reader may need to use?

Example: "Which of you is the plaice?"

Example answer:

Genre:
This is an example of the genre of “waiter in a restaurant talking to customer”.

Understanding meaning:
The speaker does not think that the person IS a fish but is asking which person
ordered the fish, which he/she is now delivering. We understand this meaning
because of being able to see the plate of food being held and the wish of the waiter to
put it in front of a diner. In the same context, a grammatically similar sentence, e.g.
“Which of you is the thief?” would be interpreted very differently.

Types of knowledge needed:

• Typical behaviour of waiters in a restaurant.
• Typical sequences of events in a restaurant.
• Fixed expressions used in restaurants.
• When waiters deliver food they may have forgotten who ordered what.

1 Whale of a problem for Japanese Ministry

2 "And for Sir?"

"I'd like the steak."
"Thank you. And how would you like it cooked?"
"Medium, please."
"Thank you. And chips or baked potato?"
"Chips, please."
"Good. And to drink?"
"Shall we get a bottle of house red?"
"Mmm. That sounds fine. I prefer red."
"We'll have a bottle of house red, please."
"Certainly, sir. Thank you."

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3 "Would you like to come round for a meal tonight?"
"Thanks, but let's just stay as good friends, shall we?"

4 "What's for supper?"

"Billy fell downstairs."

5 “Why don't you like Maria?"

"Maria is a pizza."

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Spoken discourse

Features of written discourse also apply to spoken, but there are other aspects of
spoken English which mark it out as different.

The study of spoken discourse has grown with the study of spoken corpora, such as the
British National Corpus (BNC) or the Cobuild Corpus, which have enabled linguists to
look at language as it is actually used, rather than the idealised language of written
English.

Spoken discourse is different because it is generally unplanned language, spoken in real

time; it is spontaneous, so there are usually pauses, hesitation, repetition and repair.

It is also interactive – normally the speaker and the listener are present (unlike the
reader and writer) so there is more shared ground, and the language can often be less
explicit. The speaker needs different skills, such as signalling when he or she has
finished, bringing in the other person, gauging the reaction of the other person and
adjusting the message accordingly. The listener too needs skills, such as ways of
signalling that they’re listening, ways of interrupting.

Spoken discourse is often divided into two types.

• Interactional – the aim of this is to maintain relationships – what is said is less

important than the fact of making contact. E.g. “How are things? “ “Fine.”

• Transactional - the aim of this is to transmit information, request a service, etc.

In practice very few conversations are purely interactional or transactional, as
transactional conversations nearly always have an interactional element. e.g. If
you go into a shop in England, you may make a comment about the weather
before you say what you want to buy.

Some important features of much spoken interaction are:

• Adjacency pairs exchanges where one utterance automatically leads to another

e.g. apology
acceptance, invitation
acceptance.
• Use of hedges and vague language i.e. ways of being imprecise or avoiding
saying something too assertive or definite.
• The illocutionary force is the intention of a speaker when producing an
utterance. The apparent surface meaning may not be the intended force of the
utterance. For example, someone might say “I’m feeling really tired” which could
really be intended to mean “I hope you’ll cook supper tonight.” However, the
message sent may not be what is received by the listener – hence the source of
many arguments.
• Utterances in progress i.e. utterances that go on and on, co-created between
speakers without any apparent “full stops” and not seeming to follow the
grammar rules of written English.

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Task 7

Features of spoken discourse

What features of these dialogues are typical of spoken discourse?

1
A: Go anywhere at the weekend?
B: No, too busy doing assignments.

2.
A: So I went into town and bought a jacket.
B: Oh….
A: because my old one’s nearly worn out……
B: Uhum….
A: …and I have to look respectable for work.
B: Right.

3.
A: Where shall I put this?
B: Here.
A: What next?
B: Hand me the other one.

4
A: That girl we met just now, her mother’s in my evening class.

5
A: I’ll see you at eightish. But I may be a bit late.
B: Shall I order you a pizza or something?
A: No I’ll eat before I come out. I’ve got some stuff in the fridge that needs eating.

6.
A: It wasn’t very good, that restaurant.
B: No it wasn’t, was it.
A: Let’s eat in tomorrow, shall we?

7.
A: Well, I never really got on with John. I used to find him kind of irritating.
B: Yeah, I never actually working working with him. He wasn’t always all that helpful.
A: Anyway, hopefully he’s gone for good now.

8
A: I’m going to go home, give Peter a call, have a look round the garden, and have a drink.

9.
A: I had to fire her, you know, it wasn’t easy, but, well someone had to do it, I mean, and it
was my job.

Find examples of each of these features in the texts

Fronting/Left displacement Vague language/general words

Ellipsis
Discourse markers Delexicalised verbs
Back-channelling
Hedges Tags
Tails, right displacement.
Deixis Fillers

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 Module One DELTA Online Preparation Course

Reading List: Discourse Analysis

Key References (Read at least one if you can)

Beyond the Sentence
Thornbury, S. 2005 Macmillan
especially pages 63- 83
Cook, G. Discourse 1989 OUP
Discourse Analysis for Language
McCarthy, M. 1991 CUP
Teachers

Other resources
Oxford Introduction: Discourse
Widdowson, H. 2007 OUP
Analysis
Brown, G and Yule,
Discourse Analysis 1983 CUP
G.
Bygate, M. Speaking especially pages1-15 1987 OUP
Nolasco, R. and
Conversation especially pages 5-13 1987 OUP
Arthur, L.
The Language Teaching Matrix
Richards, J. 1990 CUP
Chapter 4
About Language
Thornbury, S. 1997 CUP
Chapter 28 Conversations
Thornbury S. An A-Z of ELT 2006 Macmillan
Thornbury, S. How to Teach Speaking 2005 Longman

Internet Links

There are a lot of internet sites on Discourse analysis – though many are quite specialist
or complex.

We suggest searching on specific terms that you wish to learn more about e.g.
cataphoric.

Some terms e.g. hedges may pick up mainly spurious references (e.g. to gardening) so
try searching using the word discourse first e.g. discourse hedges.

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Answer and commentary for Task 1

Introduction

Traditionally most language teaching has been at sentence level – the students learn a
structure or piece of vocabulary, and then put it into a correct sentence. This is
commonly known as studying the grammar of a language.

But there has been a move away from looking at sentences in isolation, to looking at
discourse - how language is used in a longer connected piece of writing or speaking i.e.
looking at the language above sentence level. This can include both the organisation of
the content of the text, and devices that are used to give a unity to a piece of text.

Think of grammar as being mainly “sentence level”. Think of discourse analysis as the
examination of how language remains coherent and cohesive beyond and between
sentences.

Some examples of cohesion on the first page – not comprehensive

it – anaphoric reference, referring back to “structure or item of

vocabulary.”
Ellipsis of the students (e.g. and then the students put it) to avoid
Paragraph 1:
repetition of subject.
then - Sequencing/temporal linker.

But - Contrastive linker.

Paragraph 2: This – anaphoric reference – back to “how language is used…”

Paragraph 3: “Think of X as ...”Parallelism – the same grammar structure used twice.

There is a lexical family to do with language – sentence, language,

Lexical field: grammatical, lexical etc - which gives cohesion to the text.

The fact that only the present simple and the present perfect tenses are
Tense use: used gives cohesion.

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 Module One Exam Practice Questions

Paper 1 Task 5 (Analysis of a piece of

learner text)

(25 minutes)

The text (286 words) for this question is reproduced below. It was written for homework
by an upper intermediate student in response to the writing task given. The student was
asked to write between 250 and 300 words.

How far do you think the weather and climate affect our personalities and how we
feel? Refer to how the weather affects the way of life in your country. (250-300
words)

a) Identify three key strengths and three key weaknesses of the text. Provide an
example of each strength and each weakness.

Your answers should focus on some or all of the areas listed below:

• Task achievement
• Appropriacy of style and genre
• Range and complexity of language
• Organisation and cohesion

b) Which of the weaknesses identified above would you choose to prioritise?

Give three reasons for your choice.

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