CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS DISCOURSE

1. Introduction
- discourse is a kind of language used to communicate and felt to be coherent.
Discourse can be anything from a grunt or single expletive, through short conversations and
scribbled notes right up to Tolstoy’s novel, War and Peace, or a lengthy legal case. What matters
is not its conformity to rules, but the fact that it communicates and is recognized by its receivers
as coherent.
- coherence is the quality of being meaningful and unified.
- coherence is a quality
 which is clearly necessary for communication and therefore for foreign language
learning.
 which cannot be explained by concentrating on the internal grammar of sentences.
- Approach language as isolated artificially constructed sentences, even if only occasionally and
for limited purposes.
 make a case for this.
- There is more to producing and understanding meaningful language – to communicating – than
knowing how to make or recognize correct sentences  communicative competence.
- discourse analysis is the search for what gives discourse coherence.

A.
 The text consists of 5 correct sentences.
 It simply does not make sense.
 It gives no feeling of unity.
 The text appears to be a collection of unrelated sentences or phrases that do not
form a coherent or meaningful narrative.
The sentences seem to be randomly assembled and lack context  difficult to
determine the overall purpose or genre of the text.
B.
 The opening passage of a book called “Playback” by Raymond Chandler -
introduces the reader to the story and sets the scene for the narrative.
 The category of fiction.
 Raymond Chandler was known for his detective fiction, and “Playback” is part of his
Philip Marlowe series, featuring the private detective Philip Marlowe.
 2. Grammar within and beyond the sentences
2.1.Grammar within sentence.

We can identify three kinds of sentences that are considered wrong, in addition to those with
writing errors in spelling and punctuation.
 Morphological errors: where the word endings (or other word parts) are wrong
The knight kill a dragons
 Syntactic errors: where the word order is wrong.
The a knight dragon killed.
 Semantic errors: where the meaning is wrong.
The night killed a teaspoon.
2.2. Grammar beyond the sentence
“The knight killed the dragon.”
There might be limits, or constraints, on what we can put as the next sentence:
 The knight killed the dragon. He cut off its head with his sword” and this would seem
quite reasonable; but could we write this?
 The knight killed the dragon. The pineapple was on the table.

The two sentences might go together, but the reasons are not strictly linguistic; they are
related to our knowledge of the world where these events occur.

Two approaches to language: sentence linguistics and discourse analysis:

Sentence linguistics data Discourse analysis data

Isolated sentences Any stretch of language felt to be
unified
Grammatically well-formed Achieving meaning
Without In context
Invented or idealized Observed

To make our text coherent we need:

a. Grammar rules
b. Knowledge of the world
6. The origins of discourse analysis

The first known students of language in the Western tradition, the scholars of Greece and Rome, were
aware of these different approaches, and divided grammar from rhetoric:

- grammar: concerned with the rules of language as an isolated object.

- rhetoric: how to do things with words, to achieve effects, and communicate successfully with people in
particular contexts.

Many other disciplines – philosophy, psychology and psychiatry, sociology and anthropology, etc. – often
examine their object of study – through language, and are thus carrying out their own discourse analysis
 studying something else through discourse, whereas discourse analysis has discourse as its prime of
study.

A sentence linguist, Zellig Harris, both coined the term ‘discourse analysis’ and intiated a search for
language rules which would explain how sentences were connected within a text by a kind of extended
grammar.

Paralinguistic features
 Chapter 2: FORMAL LINKS

1. Coherence and cohesion

- Coherence: the relationships that link the meanings of utterances in a discourse or of the
sentences in a text.
 The quality of being meaningful and unified.
 The glue that holds the text together, the overall semantic structure of a text.
- These links may be based on the speakers’ shared knowledge.

A: Could you give me a lift home?

B: Sorry, I’m visiting my sister.

Example: Renting a house

A: I have a fourteen-year-old son.  meaningful and coherent
B: Well, that’s all right.
A: I also have a dog.
B: Oh, I’m sorry.
- Cohesion: the grammatical and/or lexical relationships between the different elements of a
text. This may be the relationship between different sentences or between different parts of a
sentence.
a. A: Is Jenny coming to the party?
B: Yes, she is.
b. If you are going to London, I can give you the address of a good hotel there.
2. Formal and contextual links
- 2 ways of approaching language:
 Contextual, referring to facts outside language  to explain what it is that creates a
feeling of unity in stretches of language of more than one sentence.
 Formal, referring to facts inside language (there are formal features that operate within
sentences and formal features that operate across sentences – cohesive devices)
3. Cohesive devices
3.1.Parallelism
- Parallelism: (song song) a device which suggests a connection, simply because the form of
one sentence or clause repeats the form of another  often used in speeches, prayers,
poetry, and advertisements, and rather less saliently, in casual conversation
Lặp lại cấu trúc
(a form is repeated)
- Grammatical parallelism, sound parallelism, semantic parallelism.
- A powerful emotional effect – a useful aide-mémoire. (aide- memory: help us to remember
more easily)
 Connection in the first 3 sentences: enriched something by something  his contribution to
the world  grammatical parellelism.

 semantic parralleism

3.2.Referring expressions
- Referring expressions: words whose meaning can only be discovered by referring to other
words or to elements of the context which are clear to both sender and receiver.
- Referring expressions is in English include pronouns (e.g., he, she, it, him, they, etc.),
demonstratives (this, that, these, those), the articles the, and expressions like such a.
- Referring expressions fulfill a dual purpose of unifying the text and of economy.
- 3 types:
 Anaphora: (anaphoric reference) a process where a word or phrase (anaphor) refers
back to another word or phrase which was used earlier in a text or conversation.
 Exophora: (exophoric reference) reference to something extralinguistic, i.e., not in
the same text. Exophoric reference directs the receiver ‘out of’ the text and into and
assumed shared world  not text-internal, not truly cohesive. (ko nằm cùng 1
đoạn, not really cohesive)

 Cataphora: (catophoric reference) the use of a word or phrase which refers forward
to another word, or phrase which will be used later in the text or conversation.

3.3.Substitution
- Another kind of formal link between sentences is the substitution of words like do or so for
a word or group of words that have appeared in an earlier sentence.
The writer here obviously wishes to say that he/she will send further information. “Do so” could only be
used if “send” a similar verb had occurred in the previous clause. In fact the previous clause only
contains require, which makes “do so” inappropriate as a substitute.

So, the revised sentence would be: “If you require further information on the applicant, I would be
pleased to provide it (anaphoric).”

3.4. Ellipsis
- Ellipsis: omitting part of sentences on the assumption that an earlier sentence or the
context will make the meaning clear.
e.g.: Mary ate an apple and Jane (ate) a pear. (verb ellipsis)
- 3 types of ellipsis: nominal (noun), verbal, and clausal

3.5. Conjunction
- A conjunction presupposes a textual sequence and signals a relationship between
segments of the discourse.
- Conjunctions: words or phrases that explicitly draw attention to the type of relationship
which exists between one sentence or clause and another.
- Many words and phrases can be put into this category in English and they can be classified
in many different ways.
- One simplified categorisation based on Halliday and Hasan (1976)
 Additive
 Adversative
 Causal
  Temporal
- And, but, so and then  overwhelmingly frequent
 To link individual utterances with turns
 (often at the beginning of turns) to link one speaker’s turn with another speaker’s, or to
link back to an earlier turn of the current speaker, or else to mark a shift in topic or sub-
topic (often with but)  discourse markers (discourse markers organise and “manage”
quite extended stretches of discourse)
 CHAPTER 3: DISCOURSE ANALYSIS AND VOCABULARY
1. Lexical cohesion
- Lexical cohesion  exact repetition of words and the role played by certain basic semantic
relations between words in creating textuality.
- Related vocabulary items occur across clause and sentence boundaries in written texts and
across act, move, and turn boundaries in speech and are a major characteristic of coherent
discourse.
- Relations between vocabulary items in texts:
 Collocation refers to the probability that lexical items will co-occur.
Refers to the restrictions on how words can be used together, for example, which
prepositions are used with particular verbs, or which verbs and nouns are used
together.
The doctor performed the operation.
The committee performed a discussion.
A high probability.
A high chance.
 Reiteration means either restating an item in a later part of the discourse by direct
repetition or else reasserting its meaning by exploiting lexical relations.
o Repetition of the original nominal can create the same sort of chain as
pronouns, conveying the same semantic content, though with different
stylistic effect.
o The use of repetition is more frequent in certain discourse types than in
others.

o Advertisements often repeat the brand name together with other words,
which – we might hypothesize – they wish to associate with it.
o Legal discourse tends to avoid pro-forms  to diminish possible ambiguity.
o Instruction manuals favor repetition to avoid ambiguity.
o Literary discourse often favors repetition over pro-forms.
O my luve’s like a red, red rose
That’s newly sprung in June;
O my luve’s like the melody …
2. Lexis in talk
- Relexicalisation  speakers reiterate their own and take up one another’s vocabulary
selections in one form or another from turn to turn and develop and expand topics in doing
so.
3. Textual aspects of lexical competence
- Discourse-specific lexical relations can be called instantial relations.
- Instantial relations often represent important stylistic features in texts, either in the sense of
creative lexical usage, or perhaps as devices of evaluation or irony or for particular focus; by
definition, each case has to be interpreted individually.

4. Vocabulary and the organizing of text

- Grammar words vs. lexical words/ function words vs. content words/ empty words vs. full
words  enables us to separate off those words that belong to closed systems in the
language and which carry grammatical meaning, from those that belong to open systems
and which belong to the major words classes.
- Discourse-organising words: share qualities of both the open and the closed-set words. They
operate predictively in text as well as retrospectively.
 To organize and structure the argument, rather than answer for its content or field.

5. Signalling larger textual patterns

- Discourse-organizing words:
  To represent segments of text
 To parcel up phrases and whole sentences
 To signal to the reader what larger textual patterns are being realised (a broader textual
function)
- Words often occuring in the environments of the elements of problem-solution patterns:

- Items characteristically clustering round the elements of claim-counterclaim) or

‘hypothetical-real’ patterns)

6. Register and signaling vocabulary.

 - Register/ style: variation in a person’s speech or writing. Style usually varies from casual to
formal according to the type of situation, the person or persons addressed, the location, the
topic discussed, etc.
- Register is closely tied to the lexical selection.
- The relationship between vocabulary and register needs to be brought out when studying
textual signaling. Lexical choice within the identified clusters will depend on the context, the
author’s assumptions about the audience, whether the style is to be read as ‘written’ or
‘spoken’, and so on.
7. Modality
Two kinds of meaning: most of the meanings of modal verbs can be divided into two groups:
- One is to do with degrees of certainty: modal verbs can be used to say for instance that a
situation is certain, probable, possible, or impossible.
- The other is to do with obligation, freedom to act, and similar ideas: modal verbs can be
used to say that somebody is obliged to do something, that he/she is able to do something,
that there is nothing to stop something happening, that it would be better if something
happened (or did not), or that something is permitted or forbidden.
1. Classification of macro-function

Macro-function: the main functions of language

Each macro-function focuses on upon one element of communication

Elements of communication:

 The addresser
 The addressee
 The channel
 The massage form
 The topic
 The code
 The setting

Macro function:

 The emotive function

 The directive function
 The phatic function
 The poetic function
 The referential function
 The metalinguistic function
 The contextual function

Trang 25/coffeepdf

-Semantic meaning: the fixed context-free meaning

-Pragmatic meaning: the meaning which the words take on in a particular context, between particular
people.

-Sorry, love. I saw you were home. There’s a cat stuck under the gate

Apology-explanation-Request

-A: Would you like a piece of cake?

B:I’m on a diet

I want to lose weight by eating the food wwhich is not rich in fat, sugar, etc.

I don’t want any piece of cake. I’m afraid that I have to refuse your ivitation
-A: Did you enjoy the show?
 B: We left in the middle of the show.

 We didn’t enjoy the show

2. Conversational principles: Co-operation

Consider the following scenarios. There is a woman sitting on a park bench and a large dog lying on the
ground in front of the bench. A man comes along and sits down on a bench.