ENGLISH LANGUAGE III 1ST ORAL EXAM

1) What is the main concern of D.A.? When did D.A. start as an independent
discipline? What is the importance of Mitchells analysis?
What is the main concern of D.A.?
D.A. is concerned with the analysis of language in use. That is, what language actually
means in different situations. In this analysis it is very important the role of the context
and the participants, because they will determine what the message really is depending
on the situation.
D.A. seeks to find the functions of language, so as to understand for what purposes it is
used. D.A. distinguishes two main functions of language: the transactional function and
the interactional function.
As D.A. focuses on language being used in different situations, it gives context a central
place and the features presented in that context: sociolects, idiolects, who the people are,
what they are doing, hesitations, false starts. Only by taking all these features into
account will we be able to understand the real meaning of what is said.
When did D.A. start as an independent discipline?
It started with Zellig Harris in 1952, who published an article entitled Discourse
Analysis. He wanted to search for language rules which would explain how sentences
were connected within a text by a kind of extended grammar. He said that there were
two possible directions for discourse analysis:
1- continuing descriptive linguistics beyond the limits of one sentence at a time (his
goal);
2- correlating culture and language.
D.A. developed around the 60s. It was referred to as the waste paper basket: it
embodied all the disciplines which studied language in use.
Contributions: Z. Harris, Mitchell, Firth, the greeks (studied rethoric: how to do things
with words), Coulthard (An introduction to D.A.), Brazil, Hymes (sociolinguist),
Halliday and Hasan.
What is the importance of Mitchells analysis?
Mitchell analyzed the structure of the buying and selling process. He describes this
process based on purely semantic criteria, dividing it into stages which can follow each
other in many ways and some of them are sometimes not present. Ideally, there are five
stages:
1- Salutation (sometimes it does not occur)
2- Enquiry as to the object of sale: asking (Have you a bed to sell?)
3- Investigation of the object of sale: do things through asking/describing
4- Bargaining: (Whats your last price?)
5- Conclusion: (Ill come this afternoon and pay you 3.00)
It is not a linguistic but a semantic analysis, because the stages are defined and
recognized by the activity that occurs within them. There are no linguistic markers
which signal the transition between stages, with the exception of the bargaining stage,
which begins invariably with the formula How much?.

2) What does Semantics study? What does Pragmatics study?

What does Semantics study?
Semantics studies the relationship between linguistic forms (the words) and entities in the
world: how words literally connect to things.
What does Pragmatics study?
Pragmatics studies how meaning is communicated by a speaker (or writer) and interpreted
by a listener (or reader).
It also studies how more gets communicated than is said: It explores how listeners can
make inferences about what is said in order to arrive at an interpretation of the speakers
intended meaning.
Finally, pragmatics deals with the study of the expression of relative distance: depending on
how close or distant the listener is from the speaker, the speaker will determine how much
needs to be said.
3) Explain the main differences between D.A and sentence grammar.
Sentence grammar: it is a trend in linguistics, which took share between the 1930s and
1960s, and which considers that context should be ruled out of language analysis as far as
possible. Only in this way they say they will be able to make discoveries about the system
of rules of language and language itself without depending on particular circumstances.
Sentence linguistics confines its enquiries to what happens within sentences, using one of
these two procedures:
1- They either invent their own examples, using their linguistic competence as a
yardstick;
2- Or they take language that people have used and remove all the features which they
believe to be irrelevant for their purposes. They omit: idiosyncrasies in an
individuals language (the idiolect), hesitations, false starts, social or regional
dialects, what people are doing and who they are.
They say that only in this way will we take away what is incidental and variable in language
and leave what is permanent and invariable.
Discourse analysis: it considers three particular features to be essential for the
understanding of what is said, and the reason for why the order of sentences proceeds in the
why that it does. D.A studies language used in concrete situations (language observed in
real exchanges) to communicate something, language that is coherent. How is it that
language is coherent, unified, meaningful, is crucial for D.A. to employ knowledge of the
world, of the speaker, of social conventions -of what is going on around us as we read or
listen- in order to make sense of the language we are encountering.
Data:
Sentence linguistics
Isolated sentences
Grammatically well-formed
Without context
Invented or idealized

Discourse analysis
Stretch of language unified
Achieving meaning
In context
Observed

4) Speech Act Theory (Austin and Searle). Performatives and constatives. Felicity conditions. Primary
performatives. Locutionary , Illocutionary and Perlocutionary Acts. Perlocutionary object and
Perlocutionary sequel. Regulative rules and Constitutive rules. Indirect Speech Acts.
Speech Act Theory (Austin and Searle)
To understand the function that an utterance has in a specific context, we need, as well as knowledge of the
physical and social world, to make assumptions about the knowledge that the people with whom we are
interacting have.
There is an approach which tries to understand how such knowledge is brought into play: speech act theory.
This theory was formulated by the philosopher John Austin in a series of lectures collected into a book called
How to do things with words in 1962, and further developed by the philosopher John Searle (1969-1975).
Performatives and constatives.
Constatives are sentences which look like statements, but their intention is not to report facts, but to mean
things.
One group of sentences are the Performatives, in which the saying of the words constitutes the performing of
the action. They are related to verbs such as: arrest, vow, declare, which do not necessarily need to be
present.
E.g.: I name this ship Queen Elizabeth
I pronounce you husband and wife.
However, in the case of an order I can say:
I order you to clean your boots! Or
Clean your boots!
Felicity conditions.
For the performative act to be satisfied, four conditions must be fulfilled, which are known as felicity
conditions.
1- There must exist an accepted conventional procedure, having a certain conventional effect: uttering
specific words by certain people in certain circumstances.
E.g.: There is a procedure for christening babies but not dogs, for naming ships but not houses.
2- The particular persons and circumstances must be appropriate for the invocation of the particular
procedure.
E.g.: If you want to get married in a church, a priest must perform the act.
3- The procedure must be executed correctly by the participants.
4- The procedure must be executed completely by the participants.
Primary performatives.
A performative must be explicit. E.g.: I warn you that. However, it is more likely to be primary. E.g.: (I
warn you that) Theres a dog in the classroom.
How do we recognise a performative act?
Austin says that any utterance which is in fact performative can be expanded into a verb form with a verb
which is in the first person singular present indicative active.
E.g.: Out --- I declare/pronounce/call you out.
Locutionary, Illocutionary and Perlocutionary Acts.
Austin says that in issuing an utterance we perform three simultaneous functions:
1- Locutionary act: uttering words with our phonatory system.
2- Illocutionary act: what we mean with what we say.
3- Perlocutionary act: the effect it has on the listener. It can be visible or not.
E.g.: Shoot her!
1- Locutionary act: he said to me those words.
2- Illocutionary act: he urged/advised/ordered me to shoot her.

3- Performative act: He persuaded me to shoot her.

Perlocutionary object and Perlocutionary sequel.

1- Perlocutionary object: the intended result of the illocutionary act.
2- Perlocutionary sequel: the unintended result or secondary result.
E.g.: I tell you that theres a rat in the kitchen with the intention of alerting you, but instead of that you
become alarmed.
Sometimes there is no perlocutionary object but only perlocutionary sequel.
E.g.: I may upset you, though there is no illocutionary formula I upset you by.
Regulative rules and Constitutive rules.
Regulative rules: they are concerned with conditions on the occurrence of certain forms of behaviour.
E.g.: children are forbidden to play football on the grass.
All interaction has regulative rules that are usually not stated, but that govern greetings, choice of topic,
interruption, etc. These rules vary from one community to another.
Constitutive rules: they define the behaviour itself.
E.g.: A player is offside of
(If one ignores these rules one is no longer playing football, because football has no existence apart from its
constitutive rules).
Searles aim was to describe the constitutive rules for the illocutionary act of promising. They are 5:
1- Propositional content rule: the act must be predicated of the speaker and it must be a future act.
2- Preparatory rules:
a)A promise is defective if the promiser doesnt believe the promise.
b) A speaker cannot promise to do something he would be expected to do anyway.
3- Sincerity rule: the speaker must intend to perform the action.
4- Essential rule: the uttering of the words counts as the understanding of an obligation to perform the
action.
Indirect Speech Acts.
They are indirect directives or requests. They are grouped into six categories:
1- Sentences concerning the hearers ability.
E.g.: Can you pass the salt?
2- Sentences concerning the hearers future action.
E.g.: Will you/ are you going to pass the salt?
3- Sentences concerning the speakers wish or want:
E.g.: I would like (you to pass) the salt.
4- Sentences concerning the hearers desire or willingness
E.g.: Would you mind passing the salt?
5- Sentences concerning reasons for action.
E.g.: It might help if you passed the salt
I dont think you salted the potatoes.
6- Sentences embedding either one of the above or an explicit performative (they are not a separate
class).
E.g.: Can I ask you to pass the salt?.
5) What is a Pragmatic Act? How is it similar to / different from a Speech Act? (see Mey, 1993) What is
a Macro Speech Act?

What is a Pragmatic Act?

They are not necessarily or exclusively acts of speech, that is to say, there are no specific formulas to identify
a speech act: what is important is that there has to be uptake (that is to say, the listener has to understand our
intention).
E.g.: If we offer a bribe to a policeman but he doesnt understand our intention, there isnt speech act. If the
policeman realises what our offer is and wants to arrest us for offering a bribe to a police officer in function,
we can always cancel the uptake with a denial. E.g.: To say that we dont have the slightest intention of
offering a bribe, but that the $20 bill got stuck to our license.

How is it similar to/different from a Speech Act? (see Mey, 1993)

A speech act has specific labels, such as an invitation, a complaint, a protuse which have specific structures,
but there is no fixed way of bribing, fishing for compliments or not committing to invite someone somewhere:
we can perform the pragmatic act with a silence or with other expressions that do not mention the specific
words bribe or invite.
What is a Macro Speech Act?
It is the overall purpose of a text.
E.g.: In a political speech, the macro speech act is persuading.
6) Which aspects of the theory of Speech Acts were later criticized?
- It has no theory of action: if it has, action is thought emanating from the individual. The individual is situated
in a social context, and that context limits and empowers the social conditions under which the individual
lives. The individual is not a free agent who is engaged freely in all kinds of social enterprise and deciding
freely on means and ends.
- There is no speech act for the act of doing nothing, so what is best is to use words that say as little as
possible, that is to say, nothing.
7) The role of context in interpretation: its two main functions according to Hymes. Features of context.
(Brown and Yule, 1983)
The role of context in interpretation: its two main functions according to Hymes.
Hymes views two main functions of the role of context in interpretation:
1- It limits the range of possible interpretations;
2- It supports the intended interpretation.
In an utterance, the linguistic form that is used can signal a range of possible meanings; at the same time, the
context in which that linguistic form is used can support a range of possible meanings. When a form is used in
a particular context, all the meanings which are beyond the reach of what the linguistic form can signal are
eliminated. At the same time, al the meanings which are beyond those which the context can support for that
signal are also eliminated.
Features of context.
There was an initial approach to describing the characteristics of the context which was developed by Firth.
He said that the context of situation serves as a schematic construct to apply lo language events. This
context brought into relation these categories:
1- The relevant features of the participants.
a)The verbal actions of the participants.
b) The non-verbal actions of the participants.
2- The relevant objects.
3- The effect of the verbal action.
It is common to find these sorts of descriptions in language manuals designed for the people who are initiating
in a society. E.g.: a picture of a railway station and the operative words for travelling by train.

In 1964, Hymes described the features of context which are useful to identify a speech event:
Addressor: the speaker who produces the utterance.
Addressee: the recipient of the utterance, the hearer.
Topic: what is being talked about.
Setting: where the event is situated in place and time, the physical relationship between interactants (gestures,
posture, facial expressions)
Channel: speech, writing, smoke signals.
Code: what dialect or language or style of language is used.
Message-form: sermon, love letter, fairy-tale, etc.
Event: the nature of the communicative event within which a genre may be embedded. E.g.: a sermon or a
prayer might be part of the larger event, a church service.
Key: evaluation: was it a good sermon, a pathetic explanation?
Purpose: what was the intended result that the participants wanted to express in the communicative event?
The more the analyst knows about the features of context, the more likely he is able to predict what is likely to
be said.
There is another characterization of the context provided by Lewis to specify in an index those co-ordinates
which characterize the context against which the truth of a sentence is to be judged. They are:
Possible world co-ordinate: accounts for states of affaires which might be or could be.
Time co-ordinate: accounts for tensed sentences and adverbials like today or next week.
Place co-ordinate: accounts for sentences like here it is.
Speaker co-ordinate: accounts for sentences with first person reference such as I, me we, our.
Audience co-ordinate: accounts for sentences that include you, yourself, yours.
Indicated object co-ordinate: accounts for sentences with demonstrative phrases: this, those.
Previous discourse co-ordinate: accounts for sentences with the latter, the aforementioned.
Assignment co-ordinate: an infinite series of things (sets of things, sequences of things).
All of these elements are deictics which the hearer will need to have specified in order to determine the truth
of a sentence.
8) Two main functions of language: transactional and interactional. Other functions: directive, emotive,
poetic, etc. (Brown and Yule, 1983 and Cook, 1989)
Two main functions of language: transactional and interactional.
The transactional view: it is the function which linguists and linguistic philosophers tend to consider as the
most important function of language. It is the communication of information (factual or propositional).
What the speaker has primarily in mind is the efficient transference of information: the language used here,
therefore is message oriented. It is very important that the recipient gets the informative detail correct.
E.g.: A policeman gives directions to a traveler. He should make what he says clear.
The interactional view: it is the function which more concerns to sociologists and sociolinguists. It is the
function of language to establish and maintain social relationships (phatic use of language).
A great deal of everyday human interaction is characterized by the primarily interpersonal rather than the
primarily transactional function of language.
E.g.: My goodness, its cold! What seems to be primarily at issue here is the sharing of a common point of
view.
Other functions: directive, emotive, poetic, etc.
Based on the elements of communication identified by Roman Jakobson, and further developed by Dell
Hymes (addresser, addressee, channel, etc.), macro-functions are then established, each focusing attention
upon one element:
The emotive function (addresser): communicating the inner states and emotions of the addresser. E.g.: Oh,
no!, Fantastic!

The directive function (addressee): seeking to affect the behaviour of the addressee. E.g.: Please tell me!,
Shut up!
The phatic function (channel): opening the channel or checking that it is working, either for social reasons,
E.g.: Hello, Lovely weather, or for practical ones, E.g.: Can you hear me?, Can you read my writing?
The poetic function (message form): the particular form chosen is the essence of the message. E.g.: Beanz
meanz Heinz would lose its point if it were paraphrased as If you are buying beans, you will naturally buy
Heinz
The referential function (topic): carrying information.
The metalinguistic function (code): to focus the attention upon the code itself, to clarify it or renegotiate it.
E.g.: What does this word here mean?
The contextual function (setting): creating a particular kind of communication. E.g.: Right, lets start the
lecture
9) What is deixis? (see Brown and Yule, 1983 and Yule, 1996)
Deixis means pointing via language.
Any linguistic form used to accomplish this pointing is called a deictic expression. Deictic expressions are
also sometimes called indexicals.
There are three types of deixis:
1- Personal deixis: it indicates people: me, you.
2- Spatial deixis: it indicates location: here, there
3- Temporal deixis: it indicates time: now, then
All these expressions depend for their interpretation on the speaker and hearer sharing the same context.
Near speaker vs. away from speaker:
In English, the near speaker is marked by: this, here, now
The away from speaker is marker by: that, there, then
1- Personal deixis: it operates on a basic three-part division:
a)Pronouns for first person: I
b) Pronouns for second person: you
c)Pronouns for third person: he, she, it
Honorifics: expressions which indicate higher status. The choice between one form or another is the
study of social deixis.
E.g.: the choice in Spanish between a familiar addressee/a non-familiar addressee: t/usted signals the
relationship that addresser and addressee share.
E.g.: in English, there is an inclusive we (speaker and addressee included) and an exclusive we
(speaker plus others excluding addressee).
2- Spatial deixis: there are two adverbs for the distinction in English: here and there
Deictic projection: speakers project themselves into other locations prior being in those locations. E.g.:
Ill come later (movement to addressee location)
E.g.: Im not here now (recording of a telephone answering machine)
The pragmatic basis of spatial deixis is psychological distance. Objects which are physically close will
tend to be treated by the speaker as psychologically close; elements which are physically distant will be
treated as psychologically distant. E.g.: That man over there.
3- Temporal deixis: then can be used to express both past and future.
E.g.: I was in Scotland then. (Past)
Ill see you then (Future)
Psychological basis of temporal deixis is similar to that of spatial deixis: we treat the near/immediate
future as being close to utterance time by using the proximal deictic this. E.g.: This coming week.
In English, temporal deixis is expressed by verb tenses as well as deictics. There are two
basic forms:

a)The present tense or proximal form.

b) The past tense or distal form. The past tense is commonly used in if-clauses which signal events
which are unlikely to happen. E.g.: If I was/were rich
10) Pragmatic concepts in D.A: Inference, Presupposition, Reference and Implicature (conventional
and conversational, particularized and generalized).
They are all pragmatic concepts: they indicate relationships between discourse participants and elements in the
discourse.
Inference: as the discourse analyst, like the hearer, has no direct access to a speakers intended meaning in
producing an utterance, he often has to rely on a process of inference to interpret an utterance or make
connections between utterances.
If some subsequent information does not fit in with this inference, we abandon it and form another.
E.g.: John was on his way to school (we could infer hes a school boy). But if it is followed by Last week
he had been unable to control the class, well change our minds and think hes a teacher.
Reference: it is one of the formal links or cohesive devices that can be found operating across sentences. It
is a device, just as other formal links, that operates inside language (that is why it is called a formal link).
It is an act in which a speaker or writer uses linguistic forms to enable a listener or reader to identify
something. These linguistic forms are called referring expressions and they can be:
- Noun phrases that are definite: E.g.: The island
- Noun phrases that are indefinite: E.g.: A man
- Pronouns: E.g.: he, her, them.
Types of reference:
- Anaphora: the element to which the referring expression points is given once at the beginning and then
referred to with a referring expression.
E.g.: There was a pineapple on the table. So I ate it.
- Cataphora: we are given the pronoun first, and then kept in suspense as to its identity, which is
revealed later.
E.g.: Nobody seemed to know where they came from, but they were in the forest: Kanga and baby Roo.
Referring expressions unify the text and economize, they save us from repeating the identity of what we are
talking about again and again.
Presupposition: the notion of presupposition required in discourse analysis is a practical one: that is to say, it
consists on the assumptions that the speaker makes about what the listener already knows, hence will accept
without challenge. The notion of common ground is very important here, because presuppositions are the
assumptions that the speaker makes about what is already shared between speaker and listener.
Property of a presupposition: constancy under negation. The content of a presupposition will remain
constant even when the statement is negated.
E.g.: Everybody knows that John is in prison.
Everybody doesnt know that John is in prison.
In both cases, John is in prison.
Types of presupposition:
- Existential presupposition: the speaker is assumed to be committed to the existence of the entities
named.
E.g.: The king of Sweden, The girl next door.
- Factive presupposition: the information after certain verbs is treated as a fact.
E.g.: know, regret, realize, be aware, be glad
She didnt realize he was ill (He was ill)
I wasnt aware that she was married (She was married)

Lexical presupposition: one presupposition is interpreted with the presupposition that another nonasserted meaning is understood.
E.g.: He stopped smoking (He used to smoke)
Youre late again (You were late before)
- Structural presupposition: used to indicate that some part of the structure of the sentence is already
assumed to be true. As speakers treat that information to be already true, they create the same effect of
acceptance on the listeners.
E.g.: Wh. questions.
When did he leave? (He left)
- Non-factive presupposition: it is assumed not to be true. It is usual with verbs such as imagine,
pretend, dream. What follows is used with the presupposition that its not true.
E.g.: I dreamed that I was rich (Im not rich)
He pretends to be ill (Hes not ill)
- Counter-factual presupposition: what is presupposed is not only not true, but also contrary to facts.
E.g.: If-clauses.
If you were my friend, you would have helped me
Implicatures: this term is used by Grice to account for what a speaker can imply, suggest or mean, as distinct
from what the speaker literally says. The strategy to which listeners resort to understand the speakers
intended meaning is inference.
Conversational Implicatures: somebody conveys more than is said.
E.g.: A- I hope you brought the bread and the cheese
B- I brought the bread (one might infer that what is not mentioned was not brought)
These Implicatures are derived from a general principle of conversations and a series of maxims that Grice
calls The cooperative principle: 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 maxims that support the principle are as follows:
Quality: do not say that which you believe to be false/lack adequate evidence (be true).
Quantity: make your contribution as informative as is required (be brief).
Manner: avoid obscurity of expression, avoid ambiguity, be orderly (be clear).
Relevance: be relevant.
Conversational implicatures imply that the participants adhere to this principle and its maxims. They are
produced in a specific context which is shared by the speaker and the hearer.
There are two types of conversational implicatures:
1- Generalized conversational implicatures: no special knowledge is required in the context to interpret
the additional conveyed meaning.
E.g.: I was sitting in a garden one day. A child looked over the fence.
This implicature is interpreted according to the generalized conventional implicature that:
an X > not speakers X
The listener will interpret that the garden and the child are not the speakers, based on the maxim of
quantity. If the speaker would have wanted to state that the garden and the child were hers, she would have
been more specific (informative) and say: my garden, my child.
2- Particularized conversational implicatures: most of the time, our conversations take place in very
specific contexts in which locally recognized inferences are assumed.
E.g.: A- Hey, coming to the wild party tonight?
B- My parents are visiting.
A has to infer that when one college student receives his parents visit he is expected to spend a quiet
evening with them, not going to a party.
A- Do you like ice-cream?
B- Is the Pope catholic?
Bs utterance seems to flout the maxim of relevance, but as A assumes B is being cooperative, he considers
Bs question as a yes.

Conventional Implicatures: they do not depend on Grices cooperative principle or the maxims. They do not
have to occur in conversation and they do not depend on special contexts for their interpretation. They are
associated with specific words which give the sentences an additional meaning. E.g.:
-But: indicates a contrast between two pieces of information.
Mary suggested black, but I chose white
(P in contrast to Q)
-Even: indicates contrary to expectations, in any sentence describing an event.
Even John came to the party
-Yet: indicates that the present situation is expected to be different at a later time.
Dennis isnt here yet (but I expect hell be here later)
-And: when joining two statements containing dynamic information, it implicates and then
She put on her clothes and left
11) The Cooperative Principle. The four maxims (Grice) (see Brown and Yule, 1983 and Yule, 1996)
The cooperative principle: 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 maxims that support the principle are as follows:
1 Quality: do not say that which you believe to be false/lack adequate evidence (be true).
2 Quantity: make your contribution as informative as is required (be brief).
3 Manner: avoid obscurity of expression, avoid ambiguity, be orderly (be clear).
4 Relevance: be relevant.
Flouting the cooperative principle: sometimes meaning also derives from deliberate violations or floutings
-as Grice calls them- of the cooperative principle, always provided that the sender intends the receiver to
perceive them as such, and that this is how the receiver perceives them.
If the sender does not intend violations of the principles to be perceived as such, or if the receiver does not
realize that they are deliberate, then communication degenerates into lying, obfuscation, or simply breaks
down altogether.
1 It is possible to flout the maxim of Quality without lying.
E.g.: Ive got millions of beer bottles in my cellar, or
My car breaks down every five minutes
This is a type of hyperbole, which is a way of making my point more forcefully, it will not be perceived as a
lie. The same happens with:
Metaphors: Queen Victoria was made of iron
Irony and sarcasm: I love it when you sing out of key all the time
2 It is also possible to flout the maxim of Quantity: we often say more than we need to mark a sense of
occasion or respect, and we often say less than we need, perhaps to be rude, or blunt, or forthright.
3 It is also possible to flout the maxim of Manner, for humor purposes, where rival meanings are
deliberately tolerated, or in order to establish solidarity between speakers and exclude an overhearer from the
conversation. E.g.: lawyers and judges talk to each other in ways the prisoner in the dock cannot understand.
The meanings created by these floutings are often social, signaling the attitude of the speaker to the listener of
the message, and the kind of relationship between them.
12) Differences between spoken and written language (manner of production).
Spoken texts: the speaker has available to him the full range of voice quality effects (as well as facial
expressions, posture and gestural systems).
The speaker can monitor not only his own performance but its reception by the hearer. He can even modify
what he is saying in order to make it more accessible or acceptable for the hearer.
The speaker has no permanent record of what he has said earlier, and only under unusual circumstances does
he have notes which remind him what he wants to say next.
The speaker is under considerable pressure to keep on talking during the period allowed to him.
Written texts: paralinguistic features are not available to the writer.

10

The writer has the advantage of not being under the pressure the speaker is, he can look over to what he has
already written, pause between each word with no fear of his interlocutor interrupting him, take his time to
choose a word, look it up in the dictionary, record what he has written.
13) Different views of language: sentence as object, text as product and discourse as process. (see Brown
and Yule, 1983)
Sentence as object: it is the view which is adopted by sentence-grammarians. As opposed to the discourse
analysts view that the data that is investigated is the result of active processes, the sentence-grammarian
considers data as not connected to behaviour. His data consists of objects called the well-formed sentences of
language, which exist independently of any individual speaker of that language. There are no producers and
no receivers. They do not consider language in terms of its functions, but on what it is.
Text as a product: view in D.A., which concentrates on the words-on-the-page. E.g.: Halliday and Hasans
analysis of the cohesive devices that establish relationships between sentences in a printed text. One element
(word, phrase) is linked to other words or phrases.
Much of the work undertaken in textlinguistics is of this type. It does not involve any consideration of how
the product is produced or how it is received.
Discourse as process: words, phrases and sentences in a text are considered by discourse analysts as an
attempt by a producer (speaker/writer) to communicate his message to a recipient (hearer/reader). D.A. is
particularly interested in how the reader/hearer comprehends the intended message and how the requirements
of this recipient, in particular circumstances, influence the organisation of the producers discourse.
14) Principles of local interpretation and analogy (see Brown and Yule)
Principle of local interpretation: it instructs the reader not to construct a context any larger than the one he
needs to arrive at an interpretation.
E.g.: Shut the door
If the hearer hears this utterance, he will look towards the nearest door available for being shut (if that door is
shut, he may well say it is shut, rather than consider what other doors are potentially available for being
shut).
The initial setting of the co-text determines the extent of the context within which the hearer will understand
what is said next.
The reader/hearer will assume that the entities referred to will remain constant, that the temporal setting will
remain constant, as well as also the locational setting, unless the speaker indicates some change in any of
these, in which case the hearer will minimally expand the context.
E.g.: the mans bored/goes to the window looks out the window/and goes out/goes to his goes to a club/has a
drink talks to the barman
Not only does the hearer assume that it is the same man who is being talked about throughout, but he also
assumes that he moves. When the man goes to the window, the hearer assumes it is the window in the
living room which has already been mentioned and he also assumes that the man goes to the window on
the same occasion, within minutes of the original setting sitting in the living room.
This principle is linked to another strategy which instructs the hearer/reader/ to do as little processing as
possible, only to construct a representation which is sufficiently specific to permit an interpretation which is
adequate for what the hearer judges the purpose of the utterance to be.
It is the experience of similar events which enables the hearer to judge what the purpose of an utterance might
be. It is its knowledge of the world which constraints his local interpretation.
E.g.: Houses which contain living rooms do not usually contain bars.
Principle of analogy: it provides the analyst, as well as the hearer, a reasonably secure framework for the
interpretation. We assume that everything will remain as it was before unless we are given specific notice that
some aspect has changed.

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15) What is discourse topic and topic framework? (see Brown and Yule)
Discourse topic: it is not a simple noun phrase, it is a proposition. There must be, for any fragment of
conversational discourse, a single proposition which represents the discourse topic of the fragment. It may be
suggested that the topic of a text is the title, and that for any text there is a single expression which is the
topic. However, for every text there are a number of possible titles, different ways to express the topic,
which will represent different judgements of what is being written (or talked about) in a text.
Topic framework: according to Tyler, the topic can only be one possible paraphrase of a sequence of
utterances. We need to characterise the topic as including all possible titles as partially correct and all
judgements about what is being talked about. This characterisation has to be developed in terms of a topic
framework.
Discourse analysts have two strategies:
- one is to work predictably in terms of his previous experience (similar speakers, similar genres)
- the other is to examine the content of the text, so as to determine what aspects of the context are
explicitly reflected in the text (Activated features of context: they constitute the contextual framework
within which the topic is constituted).
E.g.: the speaker talks:
About a joke or a prank;
About an object called the taw which produces smoke;
Make up the topic
About filling houses with smoke;
framework
About the use of a trolley 40 years ago;
About his own childhood;
Consider why the speaker says what he says in that situation (he bases his explanation of what does to smoke
the houses mean in his view about the hearer).
16) What aspects of spoken language have no counterpart in writing? What is used to replace
paralinguistic features in writing? How many functions does punctuation have? What is register and
what is DIALECT? (Halliday, 1989)

What aspects of spoken language have no counterpart in writing?

- Prosodic features: intonation, rhythm.
- Paralinguistic features: facial and bodily gestures, tamber (breathy or creaky voice), and loudness.
- Indexical features: (outside individuals control, display or identity) pitch range, resonance, tension.
These aspects are missing in written language because its aim is not usually to represent spoken utterances as
they occurred (with all these features).
The speakers state of mind, his doubts and hesitations, are generally not reflected in the written language,
because it is not anchored to the here-and-now of the utterance. The conditions present at the time of writing
will not be present for the reader, who has access to the text with a distance of time.
Objection: writing and spoken texts have many different kinds, and many of them display features of the other
medium.
What is used to replace paralinguistic features in writing?
It is punctuation.
How many functions does punctuation have?
Punctuation has three functions:
1- Boundary marking:
(:) Colon: stronger boundaries.
(,) Comma: weaker boundaries.
They both separate clauses. The comma is also used to mark phrases, and even words (an
afterthought or a list).

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2- Status marking: it is necessary to indicate the speech function of a sentence: is it a statement, a

question?
- Full stops: for statements.
- Question marks: for questions.
- Exclamation marks: mix of greetings, calls, offers, suggestions, exclamations, commands. They
are not exchanges of information: in offers, suggestions and commands the speaker is exchanging
goods and services (Ill help you; lets be friends; go home!); in exclamations they express the
speakers attitude (What a mess!)
- Quotation marks: there are two forms:
*Quotation: something said by a character in a narrative
*Citation: word or phrase cited as an example, a highlighted word such as a technical term.
They can be single or double.
3- Relation markers: include four elements:
a) The hyphen: indicates that two words are to be taken as forming a compound or that two letter
sequences separated by a line break constitute one word (back-up).
b) The dash: indicates that one element is to be taken in apposition with the preceding one.
c) Parentheses: indicate that the enclosed element is a kind of sub-routine or a loop off the main
track of the sentence.
d) The apostrophe: indicates that a letter has been omitted (wont, didnt) or that a noun is
possessive (Freds)
What is register and what is DIALECT?
Register: it is also called the principle of functional variation, and it ensures that spoken and written language
will never be totally alike.
There is always variation in language and it is of two types:
1- Social (dialect): It is the variety of language we speak because we belong to a social group, particular
region, generation, sex group, etc.
2- Functional (register): language varies according to the functions it serves:
What are the people doing while speaking/writing takes place, who are they and what role the
language is playing.
What is going on (field)
Who are taking part (tenor)
What role the language is playing (mode)
These three variables will determine the functional variety or register, of the language that is being
used.
Whereas the dialect is what you speak habitually and is determined by who you are, register is what you are
actually speaking or writing, and is determined by what you are doing at the time.
17) Written language: Lexical density. Spoken language: Grammatical intricacy. (Halliday, 1989)
Written language: Lexical density.
Written language displays a much higher ratio of lexical items to total running words.
Written language is dense, spoken language is sparse (spread over in a large area in small amounts) as regards
the way in which information is presented.
Each type of language is complex in its own way:
Written: lexically.
Spoken: grammatically.
Spoken language: Grammatical intricacy.
Although spoken language is in many cases filled with brief sentences, false starts and hesitations, that is what
characterizes it and gives its distinctive structure and feeling.

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Speech is low in content (lexical items) but not low in context in the sense of lacking information. It wasnt
meant to be written down.
18) Clause relations: Definition. Main types. (Hoey, 1983)
Definition.
It is the cognitive process where we interpret the meaning of a sentence or group of sentences in the light of its
adjoining (in the same discourse) sentence or group of sentences,
It is also the cognitive process whereby the choices we make from grammar, lexis and intonation in the
creation of a sentence or group of sentences are made in the light of its adjoining sentence or sentences.
Main types.
1- Logical sequence relations: they include:
a) Condition-consequence:
E.g.: If the royal portrait was not used on stamps, the arms of the country or reigning house were often taken
as a suitable symbol.
b) Instrument-achievement:
E.g.: Mrs. Barton lighted a dip by sticking it in the fire.
c) Cause-consequence:
E.g.: She was here because she was waiting for somebody,
2- Matching relations: statements are matched against each other in terms of identicality of description.
a) Contrast:
E.g.: The skirmish was not taken very seriously at Wiene. What was taken seriously, however, was the fact
that Constantious had named me his fellow consul for the new year.
b) Compatibility:
E.g.: Upstairs Fred thumped and bumped and tossed and turned, And downstairs Ted moaned and groaned and
crashed and thrashed all over the bed.
(Fred and Ted are being matched for their similarity of response to their sleeping arrangements.)
There is one more clause relation which governs both logical-sequence relations and matching relations:
Situation-evaluation, which represents the two facets of world-perception: knowing and thinking: all
relations are reducible to these elements.
19) What is lexical signalling? How can clause relations be clarified when they are not overt? What are
broad and narrow questions?
What is lexical signalling?
It is possible to signal a relationship between a clause and its preceding text with certain lexical items.
E.g.: People think of Birmingham in different ways. Alderman Frank Price sees the city as a sort of anvil; my
barber thinks of it as a neutral place built by people who worked hard for general.
The adjective different allows us to specify that this following clause is of a contrastive type or if it is part of
a list.
- If lexical signals occur before the event, they are Anticipatory.
- If lexical signals occur after the event, they are Retrospective.
How can clause relations be clarified when they are not overt? What happens when the
writer/speaker does not spell out the relationship between his/her clauses?
E.g.: Peter went red. He knew he had been silly.
consequence
cause
Paraphrasing allows us to clarify what is the type of clause: by rewording the sentence using a lexical signal
we will make the relationship overt.

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The test consisting in using different lexical signals to analise the meaning of a sentence is very useful: if the
meaning does not change once a signal is inserted, then the relation is that indicated by a signal.
What are broad and narrow questions?
It is better to replace the use paraphrase because of the influence of context- by recreating a dialogue in the
form of question-answer between speaker and listener.
Broad questions: they are for convenient generalisations. Questions such as how? apply to very many
situations: they can be used to elicit answers of a certain type in almost any discourse.
They are criticised because they do not distinguish sufficiently between different situations.
Narrow questions: they can apply to one situation and which are unlikely to be used to elicit answers in any
other discourse.
They are criticised because they cannot be used to generalise.
Their merit is that they spell out exactly the relationship between two parts of a particular discourse.
E.g. of both:
A: Mr. Wilson won many middle-class votes in the election.
B: How did Mr. Wilson win many middle-class votes in the election?
A: He appealed to scientists and technologists to support his party.
20) What does Hoey call a pattern? Which are the most common patterns in texts according to M.
Hoey?
What does Hoey call a pattern?
A pattern is a combination of relations which organise part of a discourse.

Which are the most common patterns in texts according to M. Hoey?

21) Be ready to identify the different patterns in simple texts. Problem-solution, claim counterclaim,
matching etc.
22) Usage and Use, according to Widdowson. What is signification and value?
Explain the connection between cohesion and proposition and between coherence and illocutionary acts.
Usage and Use, according to Widdowson.
When we acquire a language we do not only learn how to compose and comprehend correct sentences as
isolated linguistic units of random occurrence; we also learn how to use sentences appropriately to achieve a
communicative purpose.
Usage: the learning of a language involves the ability to produce correct sentences, that is possible by
knowing the grammatical rules of the language being learnt.
Use: but it is not enough to manifest the abstract system of language, but also understanding which sentences
are appropriate in a particular context.
Usage and use are related to performance in two different ways: the knowledge of the language is put into
effect through the citation of sentences to illustrate these rules. Performance yields instances of usage.
Abstract knowledge is manifested.
E.g.: grammar books (language teachers, in teaching structures and vocabulary, select those items of usage
which are more effective to teach the underlying rules of the language).
The knowledge of the language is put into effect through the ability that the language user has to communicate
effectively. E.g.: He speaks persuasively

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 What is signification and value?

Signification: sentences have meaning as instances of usage: they express propositions by combining words
into structures in accordance with grammatical rules.
Value: sentences and parts of sentences assume this meaning when they are used for communicative purposes.
E.g.: A- Could you tell me the way to the railway station please?
B- The rain destroyed the crops (It has a signification because it is grammatically well-formed, but it
has no value, no communicative use in the context that it is employed)

Explain the connection between cohesion and proposition and between coherence and illocutionary
acts.
Connection between cohesion and proposition: The sentences produced by speakers in an exchange are such
as to ensure that each proposition fits in with the others so that each sentence is contextually appropriate. In
this way, there is a flow of the propositional development with no oddities. The exchange then is said to be
cohesive. A speaker asks what he needs to know and the listener replies to satisfy his needs.
E.g.: A- Well, did you talk to her?
B- Yes, I did
A- Well, when did she say the parcel would be returned?
B- Tomorrow
Generally, sentences used communicatively in discourse take on value in relation to other propositions
expressed through other sentences.
Connection between coherence and illocutionary acts: when we use language we do not just express
propositions either, we perform illocutionary acts in the expressing of propositions.
E.g.: A- What are the police doing?
B- I have just arrived
To interpret Bs utterance we focus on the illocutionary act that the proposition of the sentence performs: we
can imagine a situation which will provide us with an illocutionary link to join the two utterances and hence
supply the missing propositional link.
B- (I dont know what the police are doing because) I have just arrived.
When we recognize a relationship between the illocutionary acts which propositions are being used to
perform, we recognize the coherence of discourse.
F.A.Q
How do we perceive meaning and how are we meaningful?
We can recognize a stretch of language as being unified and meaningful in two different ways:
1- We employ language rules of the type studied by grammarians;
2- We employ knowledge -of the world, of the speaker, of social conventions, of what is going on around
us as we read or listen- in order to make sense of the language we are encountering.
The quality of being meaningful and unified is known as coherence.
There is more to producing and understanding meaningful language than knowing how to make or recognize
correct sentences. To be effective language producers or language understanders we need more tools apart
from that which involve the formal language system; we need to be able to manage a paralinguistic system,
communicate through our voice, our face and body; have a knowledge of the cultural world (knowledge about
roles and relationships) and also reasoning to be able to relate a specific form to a specific function and thus
construct coherent discourse.
Why are formal links not enough when trying to analyse a text?
In order to account for discourse, we need to look at features outside the language, at the situation, the people
involved, what they know and what they are doing.
Although formal links reinforce the unity of discourse, they cannot, on their own, create it.

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E.g.: A- Its a mistery to me, how the conjuror saved that woman.
B- Well, Jane was the woman he did it to. So presumably she must be Japanese
Here there are also formal links (so, she) but it is not clear how the sequence makes sense, but to find out what
gives it its sense we must look for some other information about the context.
Which is the smallest unit of analysis in D.A.?
It is the utterance, it is the unit of language used by somebody in context to do something.

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