Chapter 11

Discourse Analysis
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 conversations.Through discourse, people
(i) represent the world
(ii) convey communicative intentions
(iii) organize thoughts into communicative actions
(iv) arrange information so it is accessible to others
(v) engage in actions and interactions with one another
(vi) convey their identities and relationships
1-Interpreting discourse
To arrive at an interpretation, and to make our messages interpretable, we
certainly rely on what we know about linguistic form and structure. But,
as language-users, we have more knowledge than that.

2-Cohesion
Texts must have a certain structure that depends on factors quite different
from those required in the structure of a single sentence. Some of those
factors are described in terms of cohesion, or the ties and connections
that exist within texts. A number of those types of cohesive ties can be
identified in 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 Id 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
commonelement of meaning, such as money (bought saving penny
worth a fortune sold pay) and time (once nowadays
sometimes). There is also a connector (However) that marks the
relationship of what follows to what went before. 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.

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.

3-Coherence
In coherence, (everything fitting together well) is not something that
exists in words or structures, but something that exists in people.It
conveys meaning that greater than the value of its parts. It is people who
make sense of what they read and hear. They try to arrive at an
interpretation that is in line with their experience of the way the world
is.You would have to create meaningful connections that are not actually
expressed by the words and sentences. This process is not restricted to
trying to understand odd texts. In one way or another, it seems to be
involved in our interpretation of all discourse.
It is certainly present in the interpretation of casual conversation. 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 others intentions that
makes this whole complex process seem so unremarkable. Here is a good
example, adapted from Widdowson (1978).
HER: Thats the telephone.
HIM: Im in the bath.
HER: O.K.

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? They do use the information contained in the sentences expressed,
but there must be something else involved in the interpretation. It has
been suggested that exchanges of this type are best understood in terms of
the conventional actions performed by the speakers in such interactions.
Drawing on concepts derived from the study of speech acts we can
characterize the brief conversation in the following way:

She makes a request of him to perform action.

He states reason why he cannot 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.
4-Speech events
1- It is found in taking part in conversation, or any other speech event
like (debate, interview, and various types of discussions).
2- We realize that people are different in speaking and in different
circumstances too.
3- If we want to describe the sources of that variation, we would have
to take into our consideration, we would have to specify the roles
of speaker and hearer (or hearers) and their relationship(s), whether
they were friends, strangers, men, women, young, old, of equal or
unequal status, and many other factors.
4- All of these factors will have an influence on what is said and how
it is said.
5- We would have to describe what the topic of conversationwas and
in what setting it took place.

5. Conversation analysis
1- Two or more people take turnsat speaking in English conversation.
2- Typically, only one person speaks at a time and there tends to be an
avoidance of silence between speaking turns.
1- 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: Didnt you [ know wh-
B: [ But he mustve been there by two
A: Yes but you knew where he was going
4- So, participants wait until one speaker indicates that he or she has
finished, usually by signaling a completion point.
Q: What are ways speakers use to mark their turns as complete?
 (i) by asking a question, for example, or by pausing at the end of a
completed syntactic structure like a phrase or sentence.
(ii) They can start to make short sounds, usually repeated, while the
speaker is talking, and often use body shifts or facial
expressions to signal that they have something to say.

6-Turn-taking
The strategies of participation in conversation seem to be the source of
what is sometimes described by participants as:
1- rudeness (if one speaker cuts in on another speaker)
2- shyness (if one speaker keeps waiting for an opportunity to take
a turn and none seems to occur).
3- One strategy, which may be overused by long-winded (- using
too many words in speaking) speakers or those who are used to
holding the floor, is designed to avoid having normal completion
points occur. We all use this strategy to some extent, usually in
situations where we have to work out (- to arrange) what we are
trying to say while actually saying it.
Q: How to expect the completion points?
They are marked by the end of a sentence and apause, then one way to
keep the turn is to avoid having those two markers occur together.
That is, dont pause at the end of sentences.
Q: How to make your sentences run on in conversations?
It is done 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).
Q: What is the influence of the pauses (marked by ) before and
after the verbs rather than at the end of the sentences? Give example.
It is difficult to get a clear sense of what a person is saying until we hear
the part after each pause.

A: thats their favorite restaurant because they enjoy French food and
when they were in France they couldnt believe it that you know
that they had that they had had better meals back home.

In the next example, speaker X produces filled pauses with (em, er, you
know) after having almost lost the turn at his first brief hesitation.
X: well that film really was [wasnt what he was good at
Y: [when di
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 wasyou
knowem best at doing
Y: so when did he make that one.
These types of strategies, by themselves, should not be considered
undesirable or domineering.

In fact, one of the most noticeable features of conversational discourse is

that it is generally very co-operative. This observation has been
formulated as a principle of conversation.

7-The co-operative principle

Paul Grice (1975: 45),described theco-operative principle as: 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 Four Gricean Maxims are:
(i) The Quantity maxim: Make your contribution as informative (=
providing information) as is required, but not more, or less, than
is required.
(ii) The Quality maxim: Do not say that which you believe to be
false or for which you lack adequate evidence.
(iii) The Relation maxim: Be relevant.
(iv) The Manner maxim: Be clear, brief and orderly.
In conversational exchanges, it is true that the co-operative principle may
not seem to be in operation. For example:
During their lunch break, one woman asks another how she likes the
sandwich she is eating and receives the following answer:
- Oh, a sandwich is a sandwich.
Q: Does this reply have communicative value?
This reply appears to have no communicative value since it states
something obvious and doesnt seem to be informativeat all. However, if
the womanis being co-operative and adhering to the Quantity maxim
about being as informative as is required, then the listener must assume
that her friend is communicating something.
Her friend, implying no good or bad opinion, has communicated that the
sandwich isnt worth talking about.

8-Hedges
Q: Why we use hedges?
We use Hedgesto show that we are concerned about following the
maxims while being co-operative participants in conversation.
Hedgescan be defined as words or phrases used to indicate that were
not really sure that what were saying is sufficiently correct or complete.
For example:
Forms of Hedges:
(i)sort of (ii)kind of as hedges on the accuracy of our statements, as in:
- 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 put at the beginning of
conversational contributions:
- As far as I know ,
- Now, correct me if Im wrong, but
- Im not absolutely sure, but .
We also take care to indicate that what we report is something we think or
feel (not know), is possible or likely (not certain), and may or could (not
must) happen. Hence the difference between saying:
- Jackson is guilty.
- I think its possible that Jackson may be guilty.
In the first version, we will be assumed to have very good evidence for
the statement.

9-Implicatures
When we try to analyze how hedges work, we usually talk about speakers
implying something that is not said. Similarly, in considering what the
woman meant by:
- A sandwich is a sandwich.
We decided that she was implying that the sandwich wasnt 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: Ive got an exam tomorrow.

On the face of it, Laras statement is not an answer to Carols question.

Lara doesnt say Yes or No. Yet Carol will immediately interpret the
statement as meaning No or Probably not. How can we account for
this ability to grasp (understand) one meaning from a sentence that, in a
literal sense, means something else? It seems to depend, at least partially,
on the assumption that Lara is being relevant and informative, adhering
to the maxims of Relation and Quantity. (To appreciate this point, try to
imagine Carols reactionif Lara had said something like Roses are red,
you know.) Given that Laras original answer contains relevant
information, Carol can work out that exam tomorrow conventionally
involves study tonight, and study tonight precludes (= prevents)
party tonight. Thus, Laras answer is not simply a statement about
tomorrows activities, it contains an implicature(an additional conveyed
meaning) concerning tonights activities.
It is noticeable that, in order to describe the conversational implicature
involved in Laras statement, we had to appeal to some background
knowledge (about exams, studying and partying) that must be shared by
the conversational participants. Investigating how we use our background
knowledge to arrive at interpretations of what we hear and read is a
critical part of doing discourse analysis.

10-Background knowledge
A particularly good example of the processes involved in using
background knowledge was provided by Sanford and Garrod (1981), who
presented readers with a short text, one sentence at a time. Their text
begins with the following two sentences:
- John was on his way to school last Friday.
- He was really worried about the math lesson.
Most people who are asked to read these sentences report that they think
John is probably a schoolboy. Since this piece of information is not
directly stated in the text, it must be an inference (additional information).
Other inferences, for different readers, are that John is walking or that he
is on a bus. These inferences are clearly derived from our conventional
knowledge, in our culture, about going to school, and no reader has
ever suggested that John is swimming or on a boat, though both are
physically possible, if unlikely, interpretations.
- Last week he had been unable to control the class.
On encountering this sentence, most readers decide that John is, in fact, a
teacher and that he is not very happy.

11-Schemas and scripts

A schema: is a general term for a conventional knowledge structure
that exists in memory. If you hear someone describe what happened
during a visit to a supermarket, you dont have to be told what is
normally found in a supermarket. You already have a supermarket
schema (food displayed on shelves, arranged in aisles, shopping carts
and baskets, check-out counter, and other conventional features) as part
of your background knowledge (i.e. schema is involved inbackground
knowledge). Similar in many ways to a schema is a script. A script(= a
plan of action): is essentially a dynamic schema. That is, instead of the
set of typical fixed features in a schema, a scripthas a series of
conventional actions that take place. You have a script for:
- Going to the dentist.[Booking a number, passing some places
along the way to the dentist's clinic by bus or on foot, etc]
 - Going to the movies.[Purchasing a ticket, eating a sandwich
while walking, etc]
We all have versions of an Eating in a restaurant script, which we can
activate to make sense of this short text:
- (Trying not to be out of the office for long, Suzy went into the
nearest place, sat down and ordered an avocado sandwich. It was
quite crowded, but the service was fast, so she left a good tip. Back
in the office, things were not going well.)

On the basis of our restaurant script, we would be able to say a number of

things about the scene and events briefly described in this short text.For
example: Although the text doesnt have this information, we would
assume that Suzy opened a door to get into the restaurant, that there were
tables there, that she ate the sandwich, then she paid for it, and so on.
The fact that information of this type can turn up (= appear) in
peoplesattempts to remember the text is further evidence of the existence
of scripts. It is also a good indication of the fact that our understanding of
what we read doesnt come directly from what words and sentences are
on the page, but the interpretations we create, in our minds, of what we
read.
Indeed, crucial information is sometimes omitted from important
instructions on the assumption that everybody knows the script. Think
carefully about the following instructions from a bottle of cough syrup:
Fill measure cup to line and repeat every 2 to 3 hours.
- No, youve not just to keep filling the measure cup every 2 to 3
hours.
- Nor have you to rub the cough syrup on your neck or in your hair.
- You are expected to know the script and drink the stuff from the
measure cup every 2 or 3 hours.
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). To understand more about the
connection between these two things, we have to take a close look at the
workings of the human brain.

12 Discourse analysis (Study Questions)

1 Language beyond the sentence
2 Cohesion is the ties and connections that exist within texts. Coherence
is the sense of everything fitting together in the interpretation of texts.
3 Speakers can mark completion points by asking a question or by
pausing at the end of a completed syntactic structure such as a phrase or
sentence.
4 Hedges are words or phrases used to indicate that were not really sure
that what were saying is sufficiently correct or complete.
5 Quality, because the speaker indicates that he or she may be
mistaken.
6 Scripts are like dynamic schemas (or knowledge structures) in which a
series of conventional actions takes place.
11 Discourse analysis (Tasks)
11A Intertextuality
Some discourse analysts study how connections are made when material
from one genre of discourse is borrowed into another or one part of a text
echoes another.
This is intertextuality and is perhaps more familiar in the world of art, as
Deborah Cameron explains:
Most works of art are not original in the sense of being totally unlike
and unrelated to any other works of art; rather they are full of allusions to
and echoes of the works that preceded them. These allusions create
intertextual (between texts) relationships: in alluding to other texts, an
author can transfer something of those texts qualities and their cultural
significance into his or her own text.
When the focus is more specifically on language, intertextuality is
defined more narrowly in this way: Within a text, the inclusion of
material from, or the allusion (referring to) to, other texts (Jackson,
2007: 76). So, intertextuality is the connection that exists between a text
and all the other texts that are echoed in its form and content.
11B Preference structure
Preference structure is one way of describing what is structurally typical
in conversation. When one person in a conversation asks a question, the
other person typically provides an answer. The answer response is
preferred (with the meaning of expected rather than liked), whereas
not giving an answer is dispreferred. When an invitation is made, the
preferred response is acceptance and the dispreferred response is refusal.
When an assessment (Thats a beautiful painting) is expressed, the
preferred response is agreement and the dispreferred is disagreement.
People tend to produce preferred responses with ease (Yeah, Okay,
Right), but seem to be obliged to avoid being very direct when they
produce dispreferred responses. They hesitate, they act as if theyre not
sure, they apologize, they talk about obligations and other factors and
generally make dispreferred responses much longer than preferred
responses.
In the first example (i) He produces an invitation and Sheproduces many
indications of a dispreferred response. Without actually stating a refusal
to accept,
- She will be interpreted as not accepting the invitation. In (ii) He
produces an assessment or opinion and Sheeventually produces a
 disagreement (I dont think so) with that opinion after giving many
indications that her response is a dispreferred one.
11C Or something
The phrase or something is an example of a general extender. Other
general extenders are or anything, or whatever, and stuff, and everything,
and things (like that). According to Maryann Overstreet, the type of
general extender that begins with or can be used by speakers to suggest
alternative possibilities and thereby create a hedge on the truth of the
statement (1999: 113). By using or something on both occasions, Crystal
would seem to be adhering to the maxim of Quality and hedging her
descriptions as being potentially inaccurate. Indeed, Crystal explicitly
draws attention to her inability to attest to the truth of her description (I
dunno ... I dont even know if it was true). By using or something, Crystal
indicates that her description may be wrong and she doesnt want to
ignore the Quality maxim, thereby signaling her ongoing commitment to
the Co-operative Principle.

11D Cohesive ties

(i) the fence - the fence - the fence - the fence - the fence the curling
flower spaces - the flower tree - the flower tree I - I - I - we - we - I
them - They - They - they - they - they - he - the other - They - they
hitting - hitting - hit hit the flag - the flag - the flag Luster - Luster - we
- we Luster went along the fence - went along the fence - went along
the fence was hunting in the grass - was hunting in the grass
Through the fence - through the fence
(ii) They were hitting golf balls.
11E The surgeons son
The initial confusion for many people arises because the boys father
seems to have been in two different places at the same time: out for a
walk and working in the hospital. One background assumption in this
confusion is that the surgeon and the man must refer to the same person
because they both have the boy as their son. The socio-cultural
assumption involved here may derive from the fact that a surgeon
(historically) has typically been a man. If the reader does not rely on this
assumption and easily brings to mind a woman in the role of surgeon,
then there is no confusion. The larger socio-cultural schema in which
gender works is explored in Chapter20.

11F Critical discourse analysis

(i) Critical discourse analysis has been described as an analytic
framework for studying connections between language, power and
ideology (Fairclough, 1995:23). Another description is offered by Brian
Paltridge: Critical discourse analysis explores the connections between
the use of language and the social and political contexts in which it
occurs. It explores issues such as gender, ethnicity, cultural difference,
ideology and identity and how these are both constructed and reflected in
texts. It also investigates ways in which language constructs and is
constructed by social relationships (2006: 179).
(ii) According to van Dijk (1996) and Cameron (2001), the Sun
newspaper report uses two metaphors (invading army and tide) to create a
negative and frightening view of these immigrants. The use of vague high
numbers (tens of thousands) adds to this frightening perspective.
Dishonest and criminal behavior is attributed to the immigrants through
the verbs sneak, deceive, forge and run away. Another negative
implication is that the immigrants who work for a pittance, slaving
behind bars will be a threat to the economic status of people who are
reading this newspaper. Other observations can be made relating to
existing power structures (no mention is made of the employers who must
be benefiting from the situation) and ideology (what does the image of
Britain being invaded by an army suggest?)