Module 9: An Introduction to Discourse Analysis

Pre-reading task:

Before you read the notes, consider your answers to these three questions.
You may like to make notes, as your answers will be discussed during the
session. Once you have answered them, read the notes which follow.

1. What, in your opinion, distinguishes good writing from bad writing? Give
examples if possible.
2. Learners often have difficulty participating in natural, authentic conversations.
Why might this be?
3. “In any text, there resides a whole syllabus waiting to be uncovered.” To what
extent do you agree with this statement?

9.1 What is ‘discourse’?

Discourse is any connected piece of speaking or writing. It follows that discourse
analysis is the study of how the separate ‘bits’ of language which make up the
discourse are connected in such a way that the discourse makes sense. And if it
doesn’t make sense, of course, discourse analysis enables us to find out why. To
a large extent, discourse analysis involves looking for patterns of language which
are not obvious from looking at individual sentences in isolation, but rather reveal
themselves only when the discourse as a whole is examined. Linguists
attempting to untangle the workings of discourse therefore have to look beyond
individual words or sentences, just as they do when engaged in other ‘text-based’
linguistic study, such as conversation analysis or genre analysis.

9.2 How does discourse “make sense”?

The language which makes up discourse – the text – typically needs to have two
characteristics if it is to stand a chance of being fully understood and meaningful:
it must be both cohesive and coherent. Discourse analysts, then, concern
themselves with investigating how textual cohesion and coherence are achieved.

IH CAM Module 9 – An Introduction to Discourse Analysis – Course Participants’ Notes

9.3 Cohesion
A text may be said to be cohesive if there are clear connections between its
component parts – between the clauses in its sentences, between the sentences
in its paragraphs, and between the paragraphs themselves. Broadly speaking,
there are three categories of ‘cohesive device’: grammatical, lexical and
rhetorical.

Grammatical cohesion
This is achieved via grammatical connections between the different elements of a
text. These grammatical connections may be grouped as follows: reference,
ellipsis / substitution, conjunction, and tense / aspect.

a) Reference
This group of cohesive devices contains those elements in a text which refer to
other elements both inside and outside the text. Examples of such devices are
pronouns (I, he, it, etc.), determiners (this, those, etc.), articles (a / an, the), and
expressions like “such a”. Reference may be anaphoric (referring back to
something mentioned earlier in the text), cataphoric (referring to something
which is mentioned later in the text), or exophoric (in cases when the referent
does not actually appear in the text at all but is, in some way, ‘common
knowledge’).

For example, look at these extracts from the opening paragraph:

• And if it doesn’t make sense, of course, discourse analysis enables us to

find out why.

The word it refers back to the word discourse at the end of the previous
sentence. This is an example of anaphoric reference, and is used here to avoid
the need for repetition of a word.

• It follows that discourse analysis is the study of how the separate ‘bits’ of
language which make up the discourse are connected in such a way that
the discourse makes sense.

The word it here refers forward to the phrase “that discourse analysis……the
discourse makes sense”. Cataphoric reference is much less common than
anaphoric reference, and its use tends to be restricted to literary texts as a
stylistic device, perhaps to encourage a reader to read on in order to identify the
referent. This particular example, however, is actually an example of ‘fronting’, a
technique used to add emphasis to an utterance.

IH CAM Module 9 – An Introduction to Discourse Analysis – Course Participants’ Notes 2

 • …discourse analysis enables us to find out why

The word us does not refer to anything stated in the text. As the reader, you
doubtless assumed, correctly, that it refers exophorically to “those people,
including you as the reader and me as the writer, who might be engaged in trying
to find out why a piece of discourse doesn’t make sense”.

This assumption is due partly to the fact that there is no other obvious referent for
the word us either in the text or the context, and partly to the fact that by reading
the opening paragraph you are entering into a world where you and I share
certain knowledge which does not need to be explicitly stated.

The principle of ‘shared knowledge’ explains the use of the definite article to refer
exophorically to things in many different contexts, be they immediate (Can you
pass the salt?), local (Shall we go to the pub?), national (Have you ever met the
Queen?), or global (I love lying in the sun). Because the writer / speaker and
reader / listener share contextual knowledge, there is no need to specify which
salt, pub, queen or sun is being referred to in each case – in fact, attempting to
specify in any of these cases (e.g., Can you pass the salt which is over there in
that salt shaker?) would be vaguely absurd.

A final example of reference outside the text is what is known as deictic

reference. This is what Thornbury defines as “language that makes direct
connection to the material world”1: in the above ‘absurd’ sentence, the referents
of the phrase over there and the word that, for example, can only be fully
understood in relation to the speaker’s physical environment at the time of
speaking.

b) Ellipsis / Substitution
These terms refer to the techniques of, respectively, omitting language which
would, on the face of it, be required by the rules of grammar, and the
replacement of a clause or noun phrase with a single, ‘multi-purpose’ word.
There are a number of reasons why ellipsis and / or substitution might be
employed, but in most cases it is to avoid the unnecessary repetition of language
which appears elsewhere in the discourse. Look at these extracts from the
opening paragraph:

1 Beyond The Sentence, Scott Thornbury, Macmillan; page 21.

IH CAM Module 9 – An Introduction to Discourse Analysis – Course Participants’ Notes 3

• And if it doesn’t make sense, of course, discourse analysis enables us to find
out why.

The final clause in this sentence – “discourse analysis enables us to find out why”
– does not make much sense on its own and leaves the reader asking the
question “why what?”.

The missing information, however, can be located by referring back to the

opening clause, and specifically to the phrase “it doesn’t make sense”. This
phrase is omitted from the end of the sentence because the information it
provides is easily recoverable from the first clause. In fact, to include it in the
second clause (“And if it doesn’t make sense, of course, discourse analysis
enables us to find out why it doesn’t make sense”) would result in a needlessly
‘wordy’, even clumsy, sentence.

The final clause, then, is said to be ‘elliptical’. Ellipsis is particularly common in

certain types of discourse, such as spoken English or written texts which require
the writer to be brief (e.g. postcards or short notes).

• Linguists attempting to untangle the workings of discourse therefore have to

look beyond individual words or sentences, just as they do when engaged in
other ‘text-based’ linguistic study…

In this case, the word do is used instead of - ‘substitutes’ - the phrase “have to
look beyond individual words or sentences”, for reasons similar to those
explaining the ellipsis in the previous extract.

c) Conjunction
A conjunction is a lexical item which connects together other words, clauses or
sentences. Conjunctions which connect sentences are called conjuncts or
linkers. There are many lexical items which can perform the role of a conjunction,
although three in particular – and, but and so – are by far the most common,
especially in informal spoken discourse.

Halliday provided something approaching a comprehensive list of conjunctive

items, grouping them into three generalised categories – elaboration, extension
and enhancement – which he broke down into several sub-categories.

A simplified classification of the main conjunctions identifies four categories of

logical relation between parts of a text: additive (e.g., and, also, as well, for
example, in addition); adversative (e.g., but, although, however); causal (e.g.,

IH CAM Module 9 – An Introduction to Discourse Analysis – Course Participants’ Notes 4

so, because, therefore); and temporal (e.g., then, next, finally, in the end). The
items in each category are far from interchangeable, with both grammatical
constraints and stylistic differences helping to determine which conjunction is
used to indicate a particular logical relation in a given situation.

For example, returning to the following extract from the opening paragraph:

• And if it doesn’t make sense, of course, discourse analysis enables us to find

out why.

The conjunct and links this sentence to the sentence which precedes it by telling
the reader that what follows in some way adds to what has been stated already.
In this case, what follows is information about an additional role for discourse
analysis.

Neither grammar rules nor stylistic differences do much, if anything, to prevent

the replacement of and with the conjunct in addition (perhaps followed by a
comma). Other conjuncts from the ‘additive’ category are more problematic,
though.

As well, for instance, only seems to be grammatically valid if it is moved to the

end of the sentence, as follows:

• If it doesn’t make sense, of course, discourse analysis enables us to find out

why as well.

Even then, however, it grates from a stylistic point of view, being more suited to
more colloquial discourse. Both syntactic and stylistic constraints, then, present
learners with problems which in turn lead to inappropriate use of conjunctions.

d) Tense / Aspect
Because inconsistent use of tenses in a text makes the text more difficult to
follow, i.e. less cohesive, it follows that tense is another grammatical feature
which helps to bind discourse together. The overwhelming dominance of the
present tense and simple aspect in the opening paragraph above, for instance,
helps to make it hang together as the generalised beginning of a relatively
academic, formal text in which basic concepts and their functions are introduced.

In recent years corpus linguistics has revealed strong correlations between

certain discourse types and the use of particular tense / aspect combinations.
One example would be the tendency of news stories (both written and spoken) to

IH CAM Module 9 – An Introduction to Discourse Analysis – Course Participants’ Notes 5

be introduced using the present perfect, with the details and specifics of the story
then being fleshed out using the past simple.

In discourse analysis terms, the use of the perfect aspect serves to highlight the
‘newsworthiness’ of the story (drawing attention to the present significance of a
past event), whilst the later use of the past simple links this newsworthiness to
the associated details, such as how the event came about, how it unfolded, and
what the consequences were. Using tense and aspect to link information in this
way helps to make the story as a whole cohesive for the reader or listener.

e) Lexical cohesion
This is achieved by establishing clearly linked lexical patterns in a text. There are
various ways this can be done, including repetition of lexical items, use of
synonyms or words from the same word family, lexical set or semantic field,
nominalisation (generalising by employing certain nouns such as idea, process,
situation or suggestion to refer to something made explicit elsewhere in the
discourse), or the substitution of one or ones for words which are mentioned
elsewhere in the discourse.

Examples of some of these cohesive devices in the opening paragraph are:

• Repetition of words: discourse (8 times), analysis (5 times) and language

(twice).
• Partial synonyms: study and analysis.
• Items belonging to the same word family: language, linguists, linguistic.
• Items belonging to the semantic fields of ‘language’ (speaking, writing, words,
sentences, conversation) and ‘text-based linguistic study’ (discourse analysis,
conversation analysis, genre analysis).

f) Rhetorical cohesion
This refers to the existence of links within a text which are neither grammatical
nor lexical but which are achieved via textual patterns. One example of rhetorical
cohesion in the opening paragraph is the link between the question which heads
the paragraph, and the answer contained within the paragraph itself. This
question-answer pattern provides an example of how cohesion and coherence
often overlap, and is returned to below under micro-coherence.

A further kind of rhetorical cohesion is the phenomenon of parallelism. This refers

to the repetition or ‘echoing’ of sentences or parts of text at different stages of the

IH CAM Module 9 – An Introduction to Discourse Analysis – Course Participants’ Notes 6

discourse. There is a simple example of parallelism in the first two sentences of
the opening paragraph:

• Discourse is any connected piece of speaking or writing.

• …discourse analysis is the study of how the separate ‘bits’…

Both sentences, in other words, provide definitions of basic concepts, with the
second definition incorporating and following on from the first. By making different
parts of the discourse resemble each other, parallelism serves to help ‘glue’ the
discourse together. It also helps the reader in that it provides a form of
signposting to aid comprehension – readers learn to anticipate the shape a text is
going to take as they recognise recurring functional patterns within it.

9.4 Coherence
Although the presence of cohesive devices in a text will help the text to hang
together, it is no guarantee that the text will make sense, as this Groucho Marx
quote shows:

• Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.

In order to understand the quote – to ‘get’ the joke – we have to recognise that in
the first clause like is a preposition which marks the clause as a metaphor
whereas in the second clause like is a verb, and that flies is a verb in clause one
but part of a compound noun in clause two. Marx is misleading us into
recognising parallelism between the two clauses so that we initially assume that
the second clause is also a metaphor. To get the joke we therefore have to apply
our knowledge of the different meanings of the words like and flies. It also helps
us to know that bananas are a favourite food of fruit flies – and that bananas are
a type of fruit – as this knowledge helps us to understand the second clause.

Finally, knowing the quote to be by Groucho Marx, and knowing that he is famed
for his wit, also prepare us for the joke, in this case stemming from the underlying
‘double meaning’. If we have all this knowledge, and if the knowledge is
activated, the sentence becomes coherent, whereas if we don’t apply this
knowledge when attempting to grasp the meaning of the sentence, any cohesion
it may have is of no use to us.

In other words, whilst cohesion is a fixed characteristic of a text, coherence is a

function of the knowledge a reader or listener brings to the text. It is therefore the

IH CAM Module 9 – An Introduction to Discourse Analysis – Course Participants’ Notes 7

result of interaction between reader / listener and writer / speaker, and whether or
not the text is coherent depends on the nature of this interaction.

Writers / speakers tend to employ cohesive devices in order to help make their
text more coherent – the Groucho Marx quote, as an example of quite
sophisticated wordplay, is a deliberate exception to this – although as already
mentioned cohesion is in itself no guarantee that a text makes sense, and just as
a cohesive text is not necessarily coherent, a text may be coherent even though
it contains few, if any, cohesive devices. Textual coherence, in fact, can be
explored on two levels: micro-coherence and macro-coherence.

Micro-coherence
Micro-coherence refers to the way the meaning of a sentence unfolds as the
logical connections between parts of sentences, and across different sentences,
reveal themselves. At the centre of this are the expectations a reader / listener
has of what is likely to come next in the discourse. Although these expectations
are sometimes brought about by the presence of specific linkers indicating, for
example, additive, adversative, causal or temporal relations (see above section
on conjunction), often the expectations are simply the product of what we know
about the way discourse is organised.

It follows that if we lack knowledge of discourse organisation, or are unable to

access this knowledge, we are less able to ‘predict our way through the
discourse’, and the meaning of the discourse is more obscure – i.e. less
coherent.

Coherence, then, results from expectations being set up and realised by the
sentences which make up the discourse. As an example of how this works, look
at this sentence from the opening paragraph:

• Discourse is any connected piece of speaking or writing.

Reading this sentence in isolation would lead us to suppose that discourse is the
topic of the paragraph, if not the entire text. We might also suppose that the next
sentence will give us more detailed information about discourse or about its
‘connectedness’. This hypothesis about what comes next is confirmed by the
following sentence:

• It follows that discourse analysis is the study of how the separate ‘bits’ of
language which make up the discourse are connected in such a way that the
discourse makes sense.

IH CAM Module 9 – An Introduction to Discourse Analysis – Course Participants’ Notes 8

In other words, the next sentence does indeed provide more detail about both
discourse (how it can be analysed) and its connectedness (how the
connectedness comes about and the effect of it).

Clauses and sentences in English typically have both a topic – a theme – and
some further information about this topic – the comment or rheme. The theme
tends to be information which is given (i.e. it is already known), whereas the
rheme adds new information:

Discourse is any connected piece of speaking or writing.

THEME RHEME

The rheme may then become the theme of the next sentence or, alternatively,
the original theme may keep its role of theme for the next sentence as well. In
this case an entirely new theme is introduced in the second sentence, although
this new theme is clearly an extension of the original theme of discourse:

…discourse analysis is the study of how the separate ‘bits’ of language…..

THEME RHEME

A text consists of a series of theme / rheme patterns which in effect provide a

map to guide us through the text and towards the meaning which the writer wants
to get across. This helps to explain why new information tends to be placed in the
rheme position in a sentence – placing it in the theme position would make it
harder to follow the map, because the expectations we had formed when reading
the previous sentence would not be met.

The map analogy is useful in other ways too. As texts increase in complexity,
there is a greater chance that the textual patterns within them will contain what
we might call ‘detours’, when expectations are not met but rather are put on hold
while the writer moves off at a tangent. In cases like this the reader is required to
put faith in the overall coherence of the text, and to trust that the detour will
eventually lead back to the main argument of the text. The reader must assume
that sooner or later everything that has gone before in the text will in some way
be ‘gathered up’ in such a way that it makes sense and paves the way for what
comes next. The relationship between reader and writer is fundamental to the
coherence of a text – in Thornbury’s words, “readers are on the constant look-out

IH CAM Module 9 – An Introduction to Discourse Analysis – Course Participants’ Notes 9

for clues that will support their assumption that texts are, first and foremost,
coherent – that they make sense.”2

Some textual patterns appear so frequently, as ‘segments’ of text linked together

by particular functional relationships, that they become “part of our cultural
knowledge”3. Examples of such relationships are: phenomenon – reason;
phenomenon – example; or cause – consequence. A very simple example of
another textual pattern is provided by the question – answer relationship between
the sentence which begins this module - What is discourse analysis? - and the
sentence (and paragraph) which follows it. As a reader, you began the paragraph
expecting to find within it the answer to the question which precedes it and
whether or not your expectation was confirmed depends on how coherent the
paragraph turned out to be!

Macro-coherence
Macro-coherence is really just a rewording of the fact that texts are usually about
something – in other words, a text which is not about anything in particular would
lack macro-coherence. What the text is about is usually revealed by a
combination of three factors: the lexical chains displayed in the text; the text’s
internal patterning; and the nature of the interaction between the text and the
reader / listener.

a) Lexical chains
As we saw above, the presence of patterns of lexis in a text is usually evidence
of lexical cohesion. In addition to the lexical cohesive devices already mentioned,
however, texts which are coherent on a macro level tend to contain one or more
clearly identifiable lexical chains (sometimes called ‘semantic layers’). These are
groups of lexical items or chunks which have a common thematic area, and
which in turn give important clues as to what the text is about. In the opening
paragraph, for example, one obvious lexical chain, relating to discourse and
discourse analysis, would perhaps include the following words and phrases:
discourse; any connected piece of speaking or writing; discourse analysis; the
separate ‘bits’ of language; the discourse; connected; the discourse; makes
sense; doesn’t make sense and so on. Another, relating to academic research or
investigation, would include these items: analysis; the study; analysis; to find out
why; analysis; looking for patterns; looking at; reveal themselves; is examined;
attempting to untangle; to look beyond; study; analysis; analysis. A reader would

2 Beyond the Sentence, Scott Thornbury, Macmillan; page 45.

3 Discourse Analysis for Language Teachers, Michael McCarthy, CUP; page 28.

IH CAM Module 9 – An Introduction to Discourse Analysis – Course Participants’ Notes 10

probably rightly conclude that the text, or at least the paragraph, was about the
study of discourse from an academic perspective.

b) Internal patterning
Chains of lexis within a text, whilst adding an element of cohesion, do not in
themselves ensure coherence. In order for the text to make sense these chains
need to be organised in such a way that patterns become evident and help to knit
the text together into something meaningful. The following extracts from the
opening paragraph provide examples of such patterns:

• [1] …discourse analysis is the study of how the separate ‘bits’ of language
which make up the discourse are connected in such a way that the discourse
makes sense.

• [2] …discourse analysis involves looking for patterns of language which are
not obvious from looking at individual sentences in isolation, but rather reveal
themselves only when the discourse as a whole is examined.

Apart from the repetition of the key words discourse analysis, language and
discourse, macro-coherence is achieved through the way the underlined phrase
in [1] is reworked into the more concise patterns of language in [2]. In fact, these
two extracts end up effectively saying the same thing in two different ways,
thereby reinforcing the message without – I hope! – coming across as repetitive.

• [3] Linguists attempting to untangle the workings of discourse therefore have

to look beyond individual words or sentences…

This extract again repeats the key word discourse, as well as the word sentences
from [2], but also echoes other elements of the first two extracts, e.g.

 the word untangle links with connected (in [1]) and patterns (in [2]) to develop
the metaphor of ‘text as fabric’;

 the workings of discourse is another re-expression of the underlined phrases

in [1] and [2];

 have to look beyond individual words or sentences is a reworking of reveal

themselves only when the discourse as a whole is examined from [2]

IH CAM Module 9 – An Introduction to Discourse Analysis – Course Participants’ Notes 11

Such direct and indirect repetitions of words and phrases typically occur not just
within a paragraph but through an entire text, and it is this internal patterning
which helps to make clear what the text is about, i.e. makes it coherent.

c) Interaction
However well a text knits together, the extent to which it is understood by a
reader ultimately depends on what the reader brings to it, i.e. on the reader’s
experience of the world. An extreme example would be if you were to attempt to
read a text written in a language and script with which you were unfamiliar –
regardless of how cohesive and internally coherent the text was, even if the text
had a title you would probably have little notion of what it was about. The
coherence of a text, then, is not only down to how easy it is to identify the topic of
the text, but also how much the reader knows about that particular topic. The way
knowledge of a topic is represented mentally is known as a schema. As the first
sentence of a text, Discourse is any connected piece of speaking or writing made
sense to you partly because you understand that a piece of speaking or writing
normally connects together in some way via the linking together of words,
phrases, clauses, sentences and so on. It is not just a collection of unconnected
words. This understanding forms part of your ‘language schema’.

By contrast, if the first sentence of the text had been Discourse is any connected
piece of speaking or doodling, your knowledge that piece of does not normally
collocate with doodling, and that doodling is not usually referred to as being
‘connected’ in any way (in fact, as doodling is usually a random and unconscious
activity it is arguably anything but ‘connected’!), your ‘doodling schema’ does
nothing to help you make sense of the sentence.

If a schema is the mental representation of knowledge of a topic, a script is a

mental representation of how we expect things to happen. In discourse analysis
terms, the script of a text refers to the order in which a reader expects the
information contained in the text to be presented.

It follows that every ‘text type’ has its own script. One particularly common
example of such a script is the ‘problem-solution’ pattern common to many
advertisements – a typical advert might start by describing a situation, then
introduce a problem associated with it, then suggest a response to that problem,
and end by evaluating the response.

Another example might be the script of a newspaper obituary, starting with a

sentence stating who has died, why their death is significant (i.e. a summary of
their role or achievements), and perhaps brief information about the

IH CAM Module 9 – An Introduction to Discourse Analysis – Course Participants’ Notes 12

circumstances of their death, before moving on to a biographical, chronological
account of their life, and ending with information about close family relatives
(usually their partner(s) and children). This is not to say that all obituaries are
structured this way. However, as this is the way we expect an obituary to be
structured, reading one structured differently would present us, as readers, with
more of a mental challenge.

Whilst the idea of challenging readers in this way might appeal to some writers, it
stands to reason that if the primary aim of the act of writing is to communicate
information to a reader, on the whole the writer would be ill-advised to
deliberately challenge the reader unnecessarily. A reader’s knowledge of a text’s
script will generate questions in his mind as he works through it – questions
which will soon be answered if the text is coherent. It is this continuously evolving
series of questions from the reader and answers from the text which makes a text
‘interactive’.

At this point, it might be worth considering the extent to which your knowledge of
the script of a CAM course module has caused you to ask questions of this text
as you have been reading it and, in particular, the extent to which your questions
have been answered!

9.5 Spoken discourse

The features of speech which differentiate it from writing (i.e. spontaneity,
interactivity and interpersonality – see Module 11), although perhaps distracting,
do not alter the fact that spoken discourse operates under the same principles of
cohesion and coherence as written discourse. Although the focus so far has been
more on written text, then, spoken texts essentially hang together and make
sense in the same way that written texts do.

However, spoken discourse differs in that its coherence is the result of

collaboration between speakers to a much more obvious and immediate extent
than written discourse (although on-line chat is an example of written text which
displays many of the characteristics of speech).

The linguistic philosopher Paul Grice suggested that spoken discourse, or at

least conversation, was governed by four ‘maxims’ – quality (adequate),
quantity (informative), relation (relevant) and manner (clear) – which, if adhered
to, prevent the conversation from breaking down. In practice, the maxims ensure
that spoken discourse tends to be characterised by features such as turn-taking
devices (e.g. fillers, interruptions and paraphrasing), repetition of lexis (which
helps to clarify the topic and therefore ensures everyone is talking about the

IH CAM Module 9 – An Introduction to Discourse Analysis – Course Participants’ Notes 13

same thing) and discourse markers (e.g. words such as ‘oh’ and ‘anyway’, which
indicate a speaker’s interpretation of the direction the discourse is taking, giving
clues to other speakers as to what is expected to happen next).

The notion of scripts is relevant to spoken discourse too, particularly through the
existence of adjacency pairs. These are simple two-way spoken exchanges
which are more or less invariable and therefore very predictable, much like
‘macro-scripts’ such as the problem-solution pattern in written texts.

The importance of adjacency pairs in contributing to coherence is indicated by

the following exchange, between native speakers in a café:

Speaker 1: Do you mind if I sit here?

Speaker 2: Yes, go ahead.

A high-level learner who is not familiar with this adjacency pair would face a
problem whichever role they were in: as Speaker 1, they might quite reasonably
interpret the answer ‘Yes’ as ‘Yes I do mind’ and the imperative ‘Go ahead’ as
‘Go away’. As Speaker 2, they might be reluctant to answer ‘No’ because, though
it would be technically valid as a response, they might be unwilling to answer a
request using negative language, but at the same time to answer ‘Yes’ would, of
course, suggest ‘Yes, I do mind’! There is, inevitably, endless scope for
confusion.

9.6 Context
In addition to a text’s internal cohesion and coherence, the context in which the
discourse itself unfolds is also key to how its meaning is interpreted. Meaning, in
other words, has a pragmatic dimension as well as a semantic one. According to
Wikipedia, a leg is “the part of an animal's body that supports the rest of the
animal above the ground between the ankle and the hip and is used for
locomotion.” Whilst this semantic meaning is fairly unambiguous, it does not
really help learners to interpret the meaning of the word ‘leg’ in this sentence:

• Ensure fingers are clear when operating legs.

The word ‘operating’ might suggest a mechanical operation, and the words
‘ensure’ and ‘clear’ conjure up the sense of precautionary advice, but unless the
context is known, the lexical chain suggested by the words ‘fingers’ and ‘legs’
obscures the meaning of the sentence. It is apparently lexically cohesive but its
coherence suffers because the relationship between the writer and the intended
audience is unclear. The full meaning is only apparent when the context (a

IH CAM Module 9 – An Introduction to Discourse Analysis – Course Participants’ Notes 14

sticker on the side of a hydraulic delivery lorry) and the text type (a safety notice)
are known.

In general, if native speakers are presented with a text, the grammar and
vocabulary within it provide clues as to the text type, and given the text type they
are able to make educated guesses as to the context. In the case of the above
example, native speakers would be able to call on their knowledge that some
machines, as well as animals, have legs. The lexical chain linking this wider
meaning of ‘legs’ with the mechanical sense of ‘operating’ then overrides the
chain linking ‘legs’ with ‘fingers’, and if the knowledge that operating machinery
requires caution is added, the text type reveals itself. And because there are a
limited number of situations when such a safety notice would be required, the
context itself could then also be worked out.

Language which exists in a context can be described as ‘functional’ language, in

that it is performing a function. Examples of such functions might be expressing
feelings, regulating (e.g. making requests or giving permission), and interacting
(i.e. managing social relations). The function of a text in turn influences the way
the text is constructed, which is where pragmatic meaning comes in. This is
particularly evident when language with a regulatory function is structured so that
it appears to have a different function, in order to avoid appearing too direct and
causing offence – an example would be the utterance “It’s a bit hot in here”, the
pragmatic function of which might be to request that the window be opened.

Although the function of a text influences its structure, then, it does not always do
so clearly and unambiguously. Other contextual factors are involved in
determining the kind of language which makes up a text, and in particular its
register. The register of the language which makes up a text depends on the
field (what the situation is, the topic and the type of social interaction), the tenor
(the people involved in the discourse and the relationship between them) and the
mode (how the text is being generated, the form of discourse). These three
factors combine to determine the kind of language (i.e. grammar and vocabulary)
which is used in the text.

Through repeated use of similar field, tenor and mode combinations to achieve
communicative goals, some text types acquire a standard, generally accepted
register. Such text types are referred to as genres. The precise difference
between genres and text types is much debated, but one way of looking at it is
that a genre is an institutionalised text type which is a reflection of the society and
culture in which it exists. The structure of a particular genre of text, then, reflects
its social purpose. This view has implications for language teaching, with genre-

IH CAM Module 9 – An Introduction to Discourse Analysis – Course Participants’ Notes 15

based approaches suggesting that language should be learned through analysis
of different genres because genres accurately reflect the social context in which
the language is used. Whilst critics of this approach see it as too academic for
the needs of most learners, there is obvious value in developing learners’
awareness of the contextual features underlying the production and interpretation
of discourse.

Pre-session task

Think back to a teaching programme you have been involved in delivering

recently. To what extent did discourse analysis feature in the course content? To
what extent might the student(s) have benefited from more explicit attention to
the discourse features outlined in the above notes?

IH CAM Module 9 – An Introduction to Discourse Analysis – Course Participants’ Notes 16

Bibliography

Brown, G., Brown, G. D., Brown, G. R., Gillian, B., & Yule, G. (1983). Discourse
analysis. Cambridge university press.
McCarthy, M. (1992). Discourse analysis for language teachers. Cambridge
University Press.
Halliday, M. (2014). An introduction to functional grammar. Arnold.
Hoey, M. (2012). Lexical priming: A new theory of words and language.
Routledge.
Thornbury, S. (2006). An aZ of ELT. Oxford: Macmillan.
Thornbury, S. (2005). Beyond the sentence: Introducing discourse analysis.
Macmillan Education.
Widdowson, H. G. (2007). Discourse analysis (Vol. 133). Oxford: Oxford
University Press.

IH CAM Module 9 – An Introduction to Discourse Analysis – Course Participants’ Notes 17