Discourse analysis

Fourth Year, Department of English, Al Iraqia University

By
Mr. Ahmed Samir
 Discourse analysis
• The word “discourse” is usually defined as “language beyond the
sentence” and so the analysis of discourse is typically concerned with the
study of language in texts and conversation.
• As language-users, we are capable of more than simply recognizing
correct & incorrect forms and structures. We can cope with fragments in
newspaper headlines such as Trains collide, two die. We can also make
sense of notices like No shoes, no service, on shop windows in summer.
We have the ability to create complex discourse interpretations of
fragmentary linguistic messages.
Interpreting discourse
• Look into the following example from an essay by a student learning English
and contains all kinds of errors, yet it can be understood.
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.

• This example may serve to illustrate a simple point about the way we react
to language that contains ungrammatical forms. Rather than simply reject
the text as ungrammatical, we try to make sense of it. That is, we attempt to
arrive at a reasonable interpretation of what the writer intended to convey.
(Most people say they understand the “My Town” text quite easily.)

• It is this effort to interpret (or to be interpreted), and how we accomplish it,

that are the key elements investigated in the study of discourse. To arrive at
an interpretation, and to make our messages interpretable.
1. Cohesion
• Cohesion is the grammatical and lexical linking within a text or sentence that holds
a text together and gives it meaning. Look into the following Paragraph:
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.
There are connections present here in the use of words to maintain reference to the
same people and things throughout: father – he – he – he; my – my – I; Lincoln – it.
There are connections between phrases such as: a Lincoln convertible – that car –
the convertible.
There are more general connections created by a number of terms that share a
common element of meaning, such as
1. “money” (bought – saving – penny – worth a fortune – sold – pay) and
2. “time” (once – nowadays – sometimes).
3. There is also a connector (However) that marks the relationship of what follows to what went before.
4. The verb tenses in the first four sentences are all in the past, creating a connection between those events, and a
different time is indicated by the present tense of the final sentence.
Cohesion (Cont.)
• Analysis of these cohesive ties within a text gives us some insight into how
writers structure what they want to say. An appropriate number of cohesive
ties may be a crucial factor in our judgments on whether something is well
written or not. It has also been noted that the conventions of cohesive
structure differ from one language to the next and may be one of the sources
of difficulty encountered in translating texts. However, by itself, cohesion
would not be sufficient to enable us to make sense of what we read. It is quite
easy to create a highly cohesive text that has a lot of connections between the
sentences, but is very difficult to interpret.
• Ex:
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.
The cohesion is good, then what is the problem!!!!
2. Coherence
• The unity in a written text or spoken discourse that
originates from the links among its underlying ideas and
from the logical organization and development of its
thematic content. Or it is “everything fitting together
well.”
• You may have found when you were reading the last
examples that you kept trying to make the text fit some
situation or experience that would accommodate all the
details. If you work at it long enough, you may indeed
find a way to incorporate all those disparate elements
into a single coherent interpretation. In doing so, you
would necessarily be involved in a process of filling in a
lot of gaps that exist in the text. You would have to
create meaningful connections that are called
(coherence).
Coherence (Cont.)
• We are continually taking part in conversational interactions where a great
deal of what is meant is not actually present in what is said. Perhaps it is the
ease with which we ordinarily anticipate each other’s intentions that makes
this whole complex process seem so unremarkable. Here is a good example,
Ex:
HER: That’s the telephone.
HIM: I’m in the bath.
HER: O.K.

HER: She makes a request of him to perform action.

HIM: He states reason why he can not comply with request.
HER: She undertakes to perform action.
3. 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 and
their relationship, whether they were friends, strangers, men, women ,
young, old, of equal or unequal status, and many other factors.
 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.
1. Only one person speaks at a time.
2. There tends to be an avoidance of silence between speaking turns.
(This is not true in all situations or societies)
If more than one participant tries to talk at the same time, one of them
usually stops, as in the following example, where A stops until B has finished.
A: Didn’t you [ know wh-
B: [ But he must’ve been there by two
A: Yes but you knew where he was going Speaking Turns
 Conversation analysis
• For the most part, participants wait until one speaker indicates that he or she
has finished, usually by signaling a completion point. Speakers can mark their
turns as complete in a number of ways:
1. By asking a question.
2. By pausing at the end of a completed syntactic structure like a phrase or
sentence.
3. By indicating that they want to take the speaking turn.
4. By making short sounds while the speaker is talking, usually repeated.
5. By body shifts or facial expressions to signal that they have something to
say.
Completion Point
The co-operative principle
• Co-operative Principle describes how people achieve effective conversational
communication in common social situations, how listeners and speakers act
cooperatively and mutually accept one another to be understood in a
particular way.
Paul Grice Theory:
“Make your 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.”

Maxim of quantity: Make your contribution as informative as is required, but not more, or less, than is
required.

Maxim of quality: Do not say that which you believe to be false or for which you lack adequate evidence.
Maxim of relation: Be relevant.
Maxim of manner: Be clear, brief and orderly.
Hedges
• Hedges can be defined as words or phrases used to indicate that we’re not
really sure that what we’re saying is sufficiently correct or complete.
We can use sort of or kind of as hedges on the accuracy of our statements, as
in descriptions such as
• His hair was kind of long
• The book cover is sort of yellow (rather than It is yellow).
These are examples of hedges on the Quality maxim. Other examples would
include the expressions listed below that people sometimes put at the
beginning of their conversational contributions.
• As far as I know …,
• Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but …
• I’m not absolutely sure, but ….
Implicatures
We usually talk about speakers implying something that is not said. Similarly,
in considering what the woman meant by:
• sandwich is a sandwich.
We decided that she was implying that the sandwich wasn’t worth talking
about. With the co-operative principle and the maxims as guides, we can start
to work out how people actually decide that someone is “implying”
something in conversation. Consider the following example.
➢CAROL: Are you coming to the party tonight?
➢LARA: I’ve got an exam tomorrow.
Lara’s statement is not an answer to Carol’s question. Nevertheless, Lara did not violate the maxims of Relation and
Quantity. Lara’s answer is not simply a statement about tomorrow’s activities, it contains an implicature (an additional
conveyed meaning) concerning tonight’s activities.