DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

UNIT 1 Introducing Discourse Analysis/ The Data for Discourse Analysis

CHAPTER 1
1.1. Defining text and discourse. What is Text Linguistics? What is Discourse Analysis?
It isn’t an easy task to define and describe the scope of study of TL and DA. In everyday popular
use the term text is restricted to written language, while discourse is restricted to spoken
language. Modern Linguistics has introduced a concept of text that includes every type of
utterance; therefore a text may be a magazine or a television interview.
-Crystal defines TL as the formal account of linguistic principles governing the structure of texts.
-Beaugrande and Dressler define text as a communicative event that must satisfy 7 criteria:
1.Cohesion: relationship between text and syntax. 2.Coherence (it has to do with the meaning
of the text, how language is used and the reception influence on the interlocutor) 3.
Intentionality (the attitude and purpose of the speaker) 4Acceptability (the preparation of the
hearer or reader to assess the relevance or usefulness of a given text) 5Informativity (quantity
and quality of the information) 6Situationality (the situation in which the text is produced is
significant) 7Intertextuality (the text is always related to a preceding discourse and texts are
always linked and grouped in particular text varieties or genres.
-Tischer et al explain that the first two criteria are text-internal while the other criteria are text-
external. Traditionally DA has always paid more attention and importance to the external
factors.
-Some other authors believe that text is everything that is meaningful in a particular situation,
therefore texts are viewed as cognitive process and context plays a subordinate role. It could be
said that text-internal elements constitute the text and text-external ones constitute the
context.
-Schiffrin suggests text and context constitute two kinds of information that contribute to the
communicative content of an utterance. Text is the linguistic content (the stable semantic
meaning of words, expressions, etc. Context is the world filled with people producing
utterances. DA involves the study of both text and context. Beaugrande’s definition of DA does
not differ from the one presented by Schiffrin. However, the tendency in TL has been to
present a more formal and experimental approach, while DA tends toward a functional
approach. Schiffrin integrates both.
*Discourse studies are multidisciplinary and cross the Linguistic border into different and varied
domains. When analyzing discourse, researchers are not only concerned with linguistic facts,
they pay equal attention to language use in relation to social, political and cultural aspects.
*The aim of this book is to adopt the general definition of DA as THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE IN
USE, including text and context as parts of discourse.

1.2. Origins and brief history of Text Linguistics and Discourse Analysis.
A good linguistic description should go beyond the sentence. In the 20 th century the following
disciplines emerged within the field of Linguistics: Functionalism, Cognitive Linguistics,
Sociolinguistics, Pragmatics, Text Linguistics and Discourse Analysis. They are all interrelated.
According to Bernárdez they share 4 tenets. At that point TL and DA are “integrated”
disciplines. The current aim now in DA is to describe language where it was originally found, in
the context of human interaction. This interaction involves other media besides language.

1.3. Approaches to the phenomenon of discourse.

There are many definitions and most of them fall into three main categories:
1. Anything beyond the sentence
2. Language use
3. A broad range of social practice includes non-linguistic and non-specific instances of
language.
Authors such as Leech and Schiffrin distinguish between two main approaches, where
discourse is defined as a unit of language beyond the sentence and the functional approach
which defines discourse as language use. Harris was the first to use the term discourse analysis
and he was a formalist.
*Functionalists give importance to the functions of language, to the extreme of defending the
notion that language and society are part of each other. Functional analyses include all uses of
language because they focus on the way in which people use language to achieve
communication goal. Schiffrin on the contrary proposes a balanced approach where both
formal and functional paradigms are integrated. She considers utterances as units of linguistic
production which are inherently contextualized.
*Within the category of discourse we may include not only the purely linguistic content but
also sign language, dramatization, etc. Therefore we can conclude that discourse is multi-modal
because it uses more than one semiotic system.
*Wetherell et al present four approaches to DA: 1.The model that views language as a system,
therefore researchers have to find patterns. 2.The model that is based on the activity of
language use. Language is viewed as a process and not as a product. 3.The model that searches
for language pattern associated to a given topic or activity. 4.The model that looks for patterns
within broader contexts, such as society or culture.
*A common characteristic of the mentioned schools is that they do not focus on language as an
abstract system. They tend to be interested in what happens when people use language as well
as how they do things with language (expressing feelings, entertain others, etc) This is the main
reason why the discipline has been called Discourse Analysis rather than language analysis.

1.4. What do discourse analysts do?

Discourse analysts investigate the use of language in context; they are interested in what
speakers or writers do and not so much in the formal relationships among sentences or
propositions. DA has a social dimension.
This discipline is called discourse analysis because it typically focuses on the analytical process
in an explicit way. This analysis may be realized by dividing long stretches of discourse into
parts or units of different sorts, depending on the initial research question. Analyses provide us
a great deal of information regarding how hearers or readers interpret what they hear or read.
Discourse analysts have contributed to answer important research questions. In order to carry
out their analyses they need to work with texts. Texts constitute the corpus of any study, which
may consist of the transcripts of a recorded conversation, a written document or a
computerized corpus of any language. The use of corpora is a very widespread practice among
researchers, and they need to acquire some basic knowledge of how to handle the data and
how to work with corpora.

CHAPTER 2

2.1. Data collection

One of the first problems when facing discourse analytic research concerns the data to be
used. So what type of discourse are we going to analyze? It depends on the research question
for example to analyze spoken or written language, if we want to focus on a given genre or
register. Once we know the type of discourse we want to analyze we have to figure out how to
collect the discourse we want to analyze. Taylor suggests that one of the processes by which
material becomes data is selection and there are different criteria for selecting a sample. For
example some approaches focus on few fragments of talk, others on distribution of discourse
items, or social and cultural information. When it comes to data collection the goal will lead us
to choose different procedures

2.2. Transcribing the data

When discourse analysts use samples of spoken language as their data, they generally turn the
spoken discourse into a document called transcript by means of the process of transcription. A
very important aspect of data collections involving talk or spoken discourse is transcription. By
means of transcription the researcher turns the spoken discourse into a document called
transcript. Transcribing is not an easy task. We have to use a system of transcription. There isn’t
a totally neutral transcription and it is hard to create a system to represent all variables.
Researchers have tried to contrive annotation systems to obtain reliable results. The data do
not only include words but aspects of the conversations such as pauses, etc. Some analysts
include information about the text, such as genre, date and place of publications
(pronunciation, intonation, sex, age, social class, occupation.
2.2.1. Transcription conventions used by some discourse analysts
There is no single accepted way to transcribe. Each analyst chooses and annotates features that
best suit the purpose of his research. There are as many ways to transcribe speech as there are
researchers. However there is a certain consensus when dealing with some syntactic
categories. There isn’t an ideal transcription system; some of them include too much
information, others less detail. According to Edwards three mains principle should be observed
when designing a transcription system: 1 Categories should be systematically discriminable,
exhaustive and systematically contrastive. 2 Transcripts should be readable. 3 For
computational tractability, mark-up should be systematic and predictable. The designer should
make a decision whether the transcription is to be prosodic, phonetic, etc. Therefore more
than one level of transcription must be aligned.
2.2.1.1. Notation used in the London Lund Corpus
The London Lund Corpus is a computerized corpus of spoken English widely used by linguists
and discourse analysts. It consists of 87 texts arranged in text groups.
2.2.1.2. Notations used by Deborah Schiffrin
2.2.1.3. Other annotations practices
The examples of notation conventions display only a few of the innumerable possibilities. Each
researcher chooses his own conventions which depend on the needs and objectives of the
analysis.

2.3 Ethics of data collection

It is an important aspect and it affects the process of data collection. The researcher has more
power than the other participants in the experiment. The researcher has more information
about the experiment than the subjects. Researchers ought not to abuse their power and as an
ethical requirement they have to obtain the consent of the participants. Researchers have the
obligation to protect all participants, not harm them in any way and always observe their legal
rights.

2.4. Corpus Linguistics: The use of corpora for DA

Corpus is defined by Crystal as a collection of linguistic data, either written texts or
transcription of recorded speech to be used to obtain a hypothesis about a language.
Corpus linguistics has to do with the practice and the principles of using corpora in language
study. Biber says that some of the most important characteristics of corpus-based analysis are
empiricism, utilization of a large collection of natural texts, known as corpus, extensive use of
computer for analysis and use of both quantitative and qualitative analytical techniques.
Corpora are excellent tools for discourse analysts; they facilitate the investigation of language
in use. Using corpora allows researchers to analyze patterns of use. Corpora allow dealing with
larger and more varied texts bringing about reliability of analysis never reached before.
Computerized corpora permit the storage and analysis of a greater number of natural language
texts.
2.4.1. Computer corpora and concordance programs
The use of computers has allowed for the storage and analysis of a much greater number of
natural language texts. The first computerized corpus in the history of linguistics was the Brown
University Corpus of American English. Ever since 1980s large corpora have been compiled and
used in different fields. For example: The British National Corpus (BNC) The International
Corpus of English (ICE) and The Bank of English. In addition, researchers can now benefit from
concordance programs, programs which turn the electronic texts into databases which can be
searched.
2.4.1. A possible classification of corpora
Once we have decided to use a computer corpus, we have to decide what type of corpora will
best suit our aims. We will not use the same corpus is we want to analyze spoken language as if
we want to analyze written language.

UNIT 2 Interactional Sociolinguistics/Conversation Analysis

CHAPTER 4
INTERACTIONAL SOCIOLINGUISTICS
4.1 Main concepts and methods: The interactional sociolinguistic approach to discourse
analysis is multidisciplinary; it concerns the study of the relationships between language,
culture and society. Interactional sociolinguistics view discourse as a social interaction, the
most important issue is how such interaction depends on culturally-informed and situated
inferential processes which play a key role in the speakers’ interpretations.
One of the main concerns of interactional sociolinguistics is the study of the practices of
CONTEXTUALIZATION. Context is not only provided by interaction but by inferential practices
related to the speakers’ conventions.

4.1.1 John Gumperz: he develops a sociolinguistic approach in relation to the analysis of real
time processes of face-to-face interactions. Cognition and language are affected by social and
cultural forces, therefore we need to understand and analyze the effects of society and culture
on language. A crucial concept is that of CONTEXTUALIZATION CUE or interpretations. Examples
of contextualization cues are conversational code-switching, style switching, facial and gestural
signs. They have an indexical function, they are deictic. However contextualized cues do not
always share the same inferential procedures. Therefore Gumperez’s sociolinguistics of
interpersonal communication is that speakers are members of social and cultural groups.

4.1.2 Erving Goffman’s contribution to Interactional Sociolinguistics: He focuses on aspects of

interaction order such as particular settings, forms of self-maintaining behavior, conduct in
public situations and the role of temporal and spatial activity. He argues that the self is a social
construction through the notion of FACE. One of the conditions of interaction is the
maintenance of face (the self-esteem) Interactants are expected to behave in a manner that is
consistent with this image to maintain face.
Another important concept in relation to interaction is FRAME: the way social actors organize
their experience in terms of recognizable activities.
FOOTING: it refers to the speaker’s shifting in relation to the events. Therefore there are
several roles: Animator: the participant that produces talk. Author: the one who creates talk.
Figure: the one who is portrayed by talk. Principal: the one who is responsible for talk.
He also distinguishes between primary addressee and overhearer.

4.1.3 Similarities in Gumperz’s and Goffman’s approaches: They focus on situated meaning,
they study interaction between self and the other and the context. Language is considered to
be indexical. Gumperz conceives language as an index to the cultural background knowledge.
Goffman views language as an index to the social identities and relationships. Gumperz
considers language as a social and cultural symbol that reflects social and interpersonal
meaning. Goffman tries to describe and understand the form and meaning of the social and
interpersonal contexts.

4.2 Politeness: Georgia Green says that politeness is the term we use to refer to strategies for
maintaining or changing interpersonal relations. The goals of the speakers are ends in
themselves or to influence someone’s behavior or attitude.
4.2.1 Approaches to the phenomenon of Politeness: Bruce Fraser reviews 4 approaches:
-The social-norm view: each society has certain rules and norms that prescribe a particular
behavior.
-The conversational-maxim view: based on Grice’s work based on the Cooperative principle.
-The face-saving view: based on Goffman’s concept of face (the individual’s self-esteem) which
can be lost, maintained, enhanced or threatened. The facts that some acts can threaten face
lead us to some kind of softening.
-The conversational-contract view: adopts Grice’s notion of the Cooperative Principle and it
suggests that all participants of an interaction enter into a conversation and continue within it
with the understanding of a current conversational contract at every turn.
4.2.1.1.1: Leech’s approach to politeness: The cooperative principle and the politeness
principle do not operate in isolation. They often create a tension in a speaker who must
determine which message to convey and how to do it. The role of the politeness principle is to
maintain the social equilibrium and the friendly relations which enable us to assume that our
interlocutors are being cooperative. Fraser summarizes Leech’s principle of politeness as
follows: minimize the expression of beliefs which are unfavorable to the hearer and at the
same time maximize the expressions of beliefs which are favorable to the hearer.
Leech distinguishes between Relative Politeness: politeness vis-à-vis and Absolute Politeness:
the degree of politeness associated to specific speakers actions.
Negative politeness: minimizing impoliteness of impolite illocutions and Positive Politeness:
maximize the politeness of polite illocutions.
4.2.1.1.2: Robin Lakoff’s approach to politeness: describes politeness as a device used to
reduce friction in personal interaction and proposes two rules: BE CLEAR and BE POLITE. These
two rules are at times in conflict. When clarity is in conflict with politeness, politeness
supersedes. In addition she posits three rules of politeness:
-Don’t impose.
-Give options.
-Make A feel good.
4.2.1.2 The face-saving view: Brown & Levinson’s theory of politeness: Their study is based
on Goffman’s concept of face in social interaction. They say there is a direct relationship
between the face of the speaker and certain variables called Sociolinguistic Variables: The
social distance, the relative power of S and H, and the absolute ranking of imposition in the
particular culture.
All the speaker of a language have a positive and negative face. There are acts that threaten
the interlocutor’s face called Face Threatening Acts. In general speakers try to minimize the
face threat using the following strategies:
Do the FTA
On record: 1. Without redressive action, baldly - Urgency, desperate
2. With redressive action – 2 Positive politeness or 3 Negative Politeness
4 Off record – to avoid the responsibility for doing it.
5 Don’t do the FTA
4.2.1.2.3 Criticisms of Brown and Levinson’s model of politeness: It has been criticized
because the theory claims to have a universal value, for being ethnocentric and for assuming
and individualistic concept of face.
CHAPTER 5
CONVERSATION ANALYSIS
5.1 Conversation Analysis: an approach to DA: originated within Sociology as an approach to
the study of the social organization of everyday conduct. The origins of Conversation Analysis
begun with the Ethnomethodology approach which stated that knowledge is neither
autonomous nor decontextualized, it avoids idealizations and argues that what speakers
produce are categories that are continuously adjusted. These categories are called
TYPIFICATIONS. Language is one the typifications of social conduct. Interaction is structurally
organized.
Conversation analysts attempt to explicate the relevance of the parties to an interaction. They
normally use tape-recorded conversations, however they do not engage in analysis of ordinary
conversations.
5.2 Methods and central concepts of Conversation Analysis: the main assumption is that
INTERACTION IS STRUCTURALLY ORGANIZED: conversational analysts search for patterns and
forms of organization. They explore sequential structures of social action. Sequential analysis is
not interested in single utterances, but in how utterances are designed to fit prior utterances.
One of the central structures of interaction is the ADJACENCY PAIR closely connected to TURN
TAKING.
5.2.1 Linear sequences: Turn-taking and adjacency pairs: turn-taking is used for talking in
different speech-exchange systems such as interviews, meetings. Most analysts state that there
is a basic set of rules governing turn construction. Turn-taking is a form of social action and it
operates in accordance with a local management system. This system is known by members of
a social group. A TRANSITION RELEVANCE PLACE or TPR refers to a change of turn for example
a pause. There are certain vocal indications such as uh-uh, hmmm, yeah called BACKCHANNELS
which provide feedback to the speaker regarding the positive reception of the message.
ADJACENCY PAIR is a sequence of two utterances which are adjacent and produced by
different speakers. For example when someone says hello and another person greets back:
hello. We speak of NESTED ADJACENCY PAIRS when a question-answer is embedded within
another.
5.2.1.1 Preference organization: it implies the idea that there is a hierarchy operating over the
potential second parts of an adjacency pair. There is one PREFERRED and one DISPREFERRED
category of response to first parts. Preferred are unmarked and dispreferred are marked.
Dispreferred seconds normally exhibit delays, prefaces, accounts and declination components.
5.2.2.1 REPAIR: another conversational device which shows how preference organization
operates is Repair. Repair is a device for the correction of misunderstanding, mishearing or
non-hearing. Self-initiated repair is differentiated from other-initiated repair.
5.2.2.2 PRE-SEQUENCES: some sequences prefigure a turn which contains a reason for the
sequence: For example if I say Jim and Jim is in front of me, it is quite likely he will reply yes?
Thus summonses are pre-sequences. Pre-sequences prefigure a specific kind of action. Pre-
sequences are pre-closings, pre-invitations, pre-arrangements, pre-announcements.
5.2.2.3 INSERTION SEQUENCES: at times we may find insertion sequences which may be
concerned with repair or establishing a temporary hold.
5.2.2.4 OVERALL ORGANIZATION: it organizes the totality of the exchange within some specific
kind of conversation. There are some verbal interchanges for example telephone calls that have
some special features in their opening or closing sections.

UNIT 3 Variation Analysis and Narrative Analysis

CHAPTER 7
7.1 Variation Analysis: The study of linguistic change: The origins are solely in the field of
Linguistics. Variationists state that there are patterns of language which vary according to the
social environment and such patterns can only be identified by studying a given speech
community. Therefore Variation Analysis is concerned with the variation and changes observed
in language along different speech communities. William Labov is the most important figure.
Data collection and field work play an important role in Variation Analysis. Lavob vies language
as a property of the speech community, an instrument of social communication that evolves
throught human history.
Variation Analysis combines qualitative and quantitative techniques. Quantitative analyses
require the definition of the variants and a classification of the conditions under which those
variants may be found, and the frequencies of occurrence of the different variants.
Variationists generally focus on general trends or patterns.
An important notion in Variation Analysis is that of CONSTRAINT: sometimes the structure of a
text imposes certain constraints on its parts: for example recipes, medical texts, etc.
Variation or linguistic change cannot be studied at the level of semantically equivalent words,
but also at other levels such as phonological, the syntactic and textual levels.
7.1.1 The Vernacular: sometimes it is difficult for researchers to collect data because people
know that their language is being recorded and observed, they may alter their register and use
different forms and structures. This fact made variationists seek a mode of speech called
VERNACULAR: a variety acquired in pre-adolescent years that is used by speakers of a given
language when they pay minimum attention to speech. Variationists resort to SOCIOLINGUISTIC
INTERVIEWS which allow them to discover regular rules of language and the social distribution
of variants.

7.2 Narrative Analysis: Lavob considered the vernacular to be the form of language first
acquired, perfectly learned and used only among speakers of the same vernacular. He studied
the verbal behavior of black people in narratives of personal experience. Labov realized of the
so-called OBERVER’S PARADOX: the effort made by researchers to observe how speakers talk
when they are not being observed. The elicitation of narratives of personal experience within
face-to-face interview was found as a partial solution.
Labov provided a framework for the analysis of oral narrative. He defined a narrative a
particular unit in discourse which contains smaller units having particular syntactic and
semantic properties. The skeleton of a narrative consists of a series of temporally ordered
clauses called NARRATIVE CLAUSES. Narratives contain a beginning, middle and an end. The
most important elements are:
1-ABSTRACT: one or two clauses summarizing the story.
2-ORIENTATION: a clause or clauses giving information about the time, place, persons or
situation.
3-COMPLICATING ACTION: sequential clauses describing the different events.
4-EVALUATION: they are clauses that make reference to events that didn’t occur or might have
occurred. Those means used by the narrator to indicate the point of the narrative. What the
narrator is aiming at.
5-RESULT OR RESOLUTION: the set of complicating actions that follow or coincide with the
most reportable event.
6-CODA: a final clause
The basic characteristic of all narratives is the temporal sequence.
A SEQUENTIAL CLAUSE is a clause that can be an element of a temporal juncture and two
clauses are separated by a temporal juncture if it results in a change in the listener’s
interpretation of the order of the events described.

Social context influences the construction of speech actions and becomes an important part of
the study of discourse units. Narrative is a social phenomenon and it varies with social context.
The data extracted from narratives will vary depending on the social context.
An essential concept within narrative analysis is that of REPORTABILITY: it has to do with the
fact that telling a narrative requires a person to hold the floor longer, and the narrative to carry
enough interest for the audience to justify its telling. Thus a REPORTABLE EVENT is defined as
the automatic reassignment of speaker role to the narrator and a MOST REPORTABLE EVENT as
the event that is less common that any other in the narrative and has the greatest effect on the
needs and desires of the participants in the narrative.
CREDIBILITY: it is the extent to which listeners believe the events described by the narrator.
Credibility is connected to CAUSALITY: the sequence of events is explained by implicit or
explicit causal relations.
The narrator’s POINT OF VIEW is reflected in the ASSIGNMENT OF PRAISE OR BLAME to the
actors or actions involved in the narrative.
OBJECTIVITY: and objective event is one that became known to the narrator through sense
experience and subjective event is one that the narrator became aware of through memory or
emotional sensation.
7.2.1 Information Structures: TEMPORAL STRUCTURE is a central criterion for the definition of
narrative, the linear presentation of event clauses.
DESCRIPTIVE STRUCTURES: form part of narratives, but they are not central to them. They may
preface the narrative action or may be embedded within the complicating action.
EVALUATIVE STRUCTES the important in the construction of narratives, evaluation is required in
stories but it is option in other types of text like recipes.
The different information structures or texts display the arrangements of units in recurrent
patterns and they are related to one another to make texts coherent.
7.2.3.1 Narrative and identity: Social and discourse practices constitute a frame within which
individuals and groups present themselves to other, and in doing so they find themselves in the
process of building their identity. Narrative discourse provides a fertile ground for the study of
the construction of both individual and social cultural identity.
Narratives are privileged forms of discourse which play a central role in almost every
conversation and they also play an important role in people’s construction of identity.

UNIT 4 Functional Sentence Perspective

CHAPTER 8

FUNCTIONAL SENTENCES PERSPECTIVE: THEMATIC AND INFORMATION STRUCTURES

8.1. FUNCTIONALISM
Functionalism was one of the great linguistic paradigms of the 20 th century, an alternative to
the abstract view of language presented by the Transformational Grammar.
Functionalism focuses on a pragmatic view of language as social interaction and focuses on the
rules which govern verbal interaction. Functionalism’s studies help describe the linguistic
structures of language in relation to the context in which they occur. One of the most
important aspects of functionalism was the organization of information. FUNCTIONAL
SENTENCE PERSPECTIVE studies the distribution of information in more or less dynamic
elements called THEME and RHEME.
8.1.1 FUNCTIONAL SENTENCE PERSPECTIVE: is a theory of linguistic analysis and it refers to an
analysis of utterances or texts in terms of the information they contain. The role of each part of
an utterance is evaluated for its semantic contribution to the whole. The notion of
COMMUNICATIVE DYNAMISM is a key concept because it attempts to rate the different levels
of contribution within a structure in particular those related to the THEME and RHEME.
Therefore Firbas states that Communicative dynamism is the extent to which a linguistic
element contributes to the further development of the communication.
When speakers say something, they have a communicative purpose and the elements of the
language contribute to that purpose.
Functional sentence perspective provides a explanation for word order. There are 4 factors that
determine communicative dynamism: LINEAR MODIFICATION. CONTEXTUAL FACTOR – context-
dependent versus context-independent. THE SEMANTIC FACTOR – deals with the dynamic
functions. The THEME is considered to be the part of a sentence which has the lowest degree
of communicative dynamism and the RHEME has the highest degree of communicative
dynamism AND PROSODIC PROMINENCE which can be studied only in spoken language as it
focuses on aspects such as intonation..
8.1.1.1 THEMATIC STRUCTURE: THEME VS RHEME: the thematic structure of a clause contains
two elements the theme and the rheme. Theme is the point of departure, and the rheme is the
rest of the message. Peter- theme doesn’t like that car- rheme. The theme contains an
ideational elements which functions as subject, object, complement or circumstantial adjunct,
that is why it is called TOPICAL THEME. The ideational function represents our experience of
the world so it is also called EXPERIENTIAL THEME.
NON-EXPERIENTIAL THEMES are divided into
-INTERPERSONAL THEMES
-CONTINUATIVE THEMES such as markers of attention such as well, oh, please, hey.
-ADJUNCTS OF STANCE such as apparently, surely, certainly
-VOCATIVES AND APPELLATIVES: such as Dad! MR. Wilson! Ladies and gentlemen!
-TEXTUAL THEMES
-CONNECTIVE ADJUNCTS/DISCOURSE MARKERS such as anyway, however, first, finally which
connect a clause to the previous part of the text.
Example:
TYPES OF THEMES
EXPERIENTIAL
Subject Tom is coming for dinner.
Object No, I said.
Circumstantial adjunct This morning at the cafeteria we had a lot of
fun.
Complement A terrible fiasco it was
Verb Coming up is the latest news.
NON-EXPERIENTIAL
INTERPERSONAL
Continuative markers Well, see you tomorrow.
Adjuncts of stance Frankly, I don’t understand your point.
Vocatives Peter, call your mom, please.
TEXTUAL – connective adjuncts She is sick. Consequently, she won’t come.

8.1.1.1.1 Multiple Themes: Two or three types of theme may be concurrent in the same
utterance in such cases we may talk of MULTIPLE THEMES: the typical sequence is
textual/interpersonal/experiential. Example:
Well then you little brat what do you want?
Int. Text. Int. Vocative Exp. Obj.
THEME ----------------------------RHEME

Unfortunately though she rejected my offer

Int. Adjt Sta Text con. Ex.S
THEME------------------------ RHEME
8.1.1.1.2 Detached Themes: Some themes are detached from the main clause. They are
normally detached lexical noun phrases which stand outside the clause and are called
ABSOLUTE THEMES: The financial crisis, (AT) we are all aware that some measures have to be
taken. It doesn’t have any grammatical relation with the second part of the message.
DISLOCATIONS are another subtype of detached themes; a dislocated element is a detached
element which is a constituent of the clause, frequently the subject. When the dislocated
element is placed at the beginning of the clause is known as left-dislocation and when it is
placed at the end of the clause is called right-dislocation. Examples:
That scream (left-dislocation), where did it come from?
That house (left-dislocation) that is the one I’ve always dreamed of
Is it yours, that jacket? Right-dislocated theme
It’s fantastic, this book. Right-dislocated theme
Your friend (Absolute theme), the car outside her house (left-dislocated theme), they have
stolen it.
8.1.1.1.3 Thematic clauses: when two or more clauses are joined together in a complex clause,
the clause that is place first is said to be thematic. This applies for cases of coordination and
subordination. Examples:
Coordination: Tommy hit his sister (theme) and she burst into tears (rheme)
Subordination: When I saw her (theme) I realized she had been crying (rheme)
8.1.1.1.4 Theme, subject and topic: it is important to note that Theme is a different category
from syntactic subject and from topic (what the text is about). Even though these three tend to
coincide in one wording sometimes they don’t coincide. Example:
The new president has been strongly criticized
Subject, theme, topic
In Spain, the people criticized the new president for his foreign policy.
Theme Subject Topic
8.1.1.1.5 Marked and Unmarked themes: when the theme does not coincide with the
expected first constituent of each structure we speak of MARKED THEME. On the contrary,
when the theme co-exists with such a constituent it is an UNMARKED THEME. For example the
expected first constituent of a declarative clause is the subject. Examples:
Sally (Unmarked theme) will never pass that exam (rheme)
Never (Marked theme) will sally pass that exam (rheme)
He (Unmarked theme) popped the question (rheme)
The question (Marked theme) he popped (rheme)
8.1.1.1.6: Thematization/Staging: sentence word order is vital for the organization of the
information. The speaker or writers always has to choose a beginning point: what he or she
puts first will influence the interpretation of the texts which follows it. This process has to do
with the LINEAR ORGANIZATION of sentences and text has been called THEMATIZATION.
STAGING is another term used to refer to the previous fact.

8.1.1.2 Information Structure: Given Vs. New: Spoken discourse takes the form of a sequence
of information units, and the term information is a process of interaction between what is
already known or predictable and what is new or unpredictable. The information unit is a
structure made up of two functions THE NEW AND THE GIVEN. The given information precedes
the new and the new is always marked by tonic prominence called INFORMATION FOCUS.
8.1.1.2.1 Marked and Unmarked Focus: The principle of END-FOCUS is that the unmarked
distribution starts with the given and progresses towards the new. The principle of end-focus
allows us to say that the unmarked option for the focus is to fall on the last lexical item of the
clause. The focus will be marked when it does not fall on the last lexical item. Examples:
Unmarked focus: It sounds ODD. She is SHY. You will see me in the Future.
Marked: It DOES sound odd. She IS shy. You WILL see me in the future.
8.1.1.2.1.1 How do we identify the focus?: Speakers divide their messages into segments of
information: information units. The syllable which contains the intonation nucleus of the unit
constitutes the focus of information.
8.1.1.2.1.2 Cleft Constructions: it-cleft and wh-cleft: speakers re-organize the content of a
single clause into two related parts or units in order to place the focus on a new element. This
process is called clefting. Examples:
It’s a HAMBURGUER that I want (It-cleft)
NEW GIVEN
What I want is a HAMBURGUER (Wh-cleft)
GIVEN NEW
8.2 Information Structure and Thematic Structure: Given+New and Theme+Rheme:
Information and thematic structures are closely related from the semantic point of view. The
speaker will choose the theme from within what is given and will locate the new within the
rheme. Notwithstanding neither given and theme nor new and rheme are the same. Theme
and rheme is speaker-oriented while given and new is listener-oriented. The speaker can use
thematic and information structure to produce a wide variety of RHETORICAL EFFECTS.

8.3 Some considerations related to Halliday’s information structure analysis: some authors
note that Halliday focuses on the sole function of pitch prominence to mark the focus of new
information. However it has several other discourse/pragmatic functions such as marking the
beginning of a speaker’s turn or the beginning of a new topic.
Information structure is not only realized by the phonological system, but also the syntactic and
textual systems.

UNIT 5 Post-Structuralism and its derived approaches/ Critical Discourse Analysis and
Positive Discourse Analysis/ Mediated Discourse Analysis
CHAPTER 9
9.1 Post-structuralism: is a reaction against structuralism. The basic assumptions are:
-the concept of self as a singular and coherent entity is a fictional construct.
-the idea of a text having a single purpose or a single meaning is rejected. The author’s
intended meaning is secondary to the meaning that the reader perceives. Decentering of the
author.
-It is crucial to analyze the way in which the meanings of a text shift in relation to the variables
related to the reader’s identity.
Post-structuralist thinkers believe there is nothing outside the text.
A basic tenet of the post-structuralist theory of discourse is that the process of meaning-
making in relation to people and objects is never fixed, on the contrary is viewed as an unstable
flux. There is an underlying relativism and reality is considered as fragmented and diverse.
There is a deep sense that we live in a linguistic universe that rejects the idea that language is a
transparent medium. Reality in a linguistic universe is only mediated reality which is governed
by things such as ideology, the world of discourse, the various cultural codes. All meaning is
textual and intertextual
The major weakness of post-structurlaist discourse analysis is its failure to present an explicit
method for the analysis of actual instances of text or social interaction in context.

9.2 Social Theory: is a generic term to describe an attempt to theorize the modern social
world. It doesn’t follow the scientific method. Social theory is different from Sociology in that
the sociologist looks for neat problems to which he or she can apply neat methodologies while
social theorists place emphasis on the less objective and brute fact of human suffering.

9.3 Michel Foucault: his main contribution is the relationship of discourse and power. His work
is divided into 3 main stages:
-Archaeological work: conceives discourse as an active constituent of society on diverse planes.
Speaking is de-centered. Social identity is dispersed and fragmented. The acquisition of social
identities is a process of immersion into discursive practice.
-Genealogical studies: discourse is put on a secondary plane. He shifts his focus to truth/power
regimes and how they affect bodily disposition. There are two major technologies of power:
discipline: is a technology for handling masses of people and confession is a ritual of discourse.
-Ethics: an ethical orientation
Foucault did not focus on language, but on discourse as a system of representation, the rules
and practices that produce meaningful statements
Discourse is a way of representing the knowledge about a particular topic.
All practices have a discursive aspect. All discursive practices are defined in terms of their
relations to others.
Discourse has a political nature. Social change is discursive in nature.

9.4 Pierre Bordieu: his key concepts are:

-The metaphor of Symbolic Capital: establish an analogy between financial capital and symbolic
resources.
-The notion of habitus: the individual differences in practical linguistic competence. The notion
of habitus presupposes a theory of linguistic practice.
-The notion of bodily hexis: which associates linguistic practices with deep-rooted dispositions.
Comprehension is not the primary goal of communication.
The idea that authority and credibility in a particular situation do not necessarily imply an
impeccable use of a standard language.
He replaces the concept of grammaticalness by the notion of acceptability
He speaks of relations of symbolic power than of relations of communication.
Instead of linguistic competence, he uses the term symbolic capital which is inseparable from
the speaker’s position in the social structure.

9.5 Mikhail Bakhtin: he argues that language should be studied not as an abstract system but
as a concrete reality. Some of his basic ideas are:
Language is dialogic: the utterance is the basic unit of language.
Discursive practice is essentially heteroglossic language is patterned into speech genres.
Texts contain various voices.
The internal struggle in language is a conflict between centripetral and centrifuforces.
Genres indicate social changes.

CHAPTER 10
Critical Discourse Analysis and Positive Discourse Analysis
10.1 The Scope of Critical Discourse Analysis: Critical Discourse Analysis is an approach to
discourse that emerged as a reaction against the dominant formal paradigm of the 60s. The
main aim for Critical Discourse Analysis is the analysis of language as Text or Discourse.
According to critical Linguistic studies grammar is an ideological instrument for the
categorization and classification of things that happen in the world.
From Fairclough’s perspective, discourse is a three-dimensional concept which involves: TEXTS
the object of linguistic analysis, DISCOURSE PRACTICES the production, distribution and
consumption of texts and SOCIAL PRACTICES the power relations, ideologies that discourses
reproduce, challenge or restructure.
CDA is multidisciplinary and does not have a unitary theoretical framework. There are many
types of CDA; however a common perspective is that they all try to answer questions about the
way certain discourse structures are deployed in the reproduction of social dominance thus
featuring notions such as power, dominance, hegemony, ideology, gender, race, etc.
The role in society is crucial for critical discourse analysts. Thus CDA tries to explain discourse
structures in terms of the properties of social interaction and social structure. CDA pays special
attention to the ways discourse structures reproduce relations of power and dominance in
society. Fairclough says that the main tenets of CDA are the following: CDA addresses social
problems, power relations are discursive, discourse constitutes society and culture, discourse
does ideological work, discourse is historical, the link between text and society is mediated,
discourse analysis is interpretative and explanatory and discourse is a form of social action.

CDA intends to bridge the gap between micro and macro levels of social order. Power and
dominance are terms that belong to the macrolevel of analysis, discourse, verbal interaction or
communication belong to the microlevel.
DA and Critical Linguistics neglect social cognition.
IDEOLOGY is a key term in CDA. It is the belief that language never appears by itself, it always
manifests itself as the representative of an ideological system. Most discourses within CDA deal
with different aspects of power, domination and social inequality.

10.2 Discourse and Power: Discourse has been regarded as an important site for constructing
and maintaining power relations. CDA views power as a condition determined by their
institutional role. Thus power and in particular social power of groups is a central concern in
most critical works on discourse. Van Dijk says that Social power is defined in terms of control,
for example: the members of a social group will have power if they are able to control the acts
and minds of member of other groups. There are different types of power.
Van Dijk summarizes the issue of discursive power into two basic questions:
-How do powerful groups control public discourse?
-How does such discourse control mind and action of less powerful groups, and what are the
social consequences of such control?
CDA intends to show results that will distinguish POWER ABUSE from legitimate and acceptable
forms of power. Hegemonic groups constitute the POWER ELITES and they have special access
to discourse, since they are the groups who have the most to say. Thus CDA defines elites in
terms of their SYMBOLIC POWER. The symbolic power is measured by the extent of its
members’ discursive and communicative scope and resources.
10.2.1 Powerful discourse structures: How speakers say what they say, and what it is that they
say. CDA is concerned with those forms of context control, for example: the restrictions put on
black people. These modes of context control and discrimination are also manifested at the
level of discourse structures. The use of impoliteness or politeness may be a way of expressing
dominance. Other linguistic strategies to express power are the use of hedges, hesitations,
interruptions, pauses, laughter, the choice of topics and topic change.
Controlling the topic generally results in mind control. This is one of the reasons why CDA
focuses on how discourse structures influence mental representations, since topics influence
what people see as most important.

10.3 Ideology, social cognition and discourse: Ideology is a key notion in CDA. Ideology
establishes the link between discourse and society. According to Van Dijk ideologies are
developed by dominant groups.
Discourse is the medium by which ideologies are communicated in society.
Ideologies serve not only for internal coordination but also to coordinate interaction with
members of other groups.
In short, ideologies are both social systems and mental representations. This means that they
not only have a social function but also cognitive functions of belief organization. Ideologies are
the mental representations that form the basis of social cognition: the shared knowledge and
attitudes of a group.

10.4 Steps to follow when doing CDA: Wetherall et all propose an analytical framework for
doing CDA:
-Focus upon a social problem that has a semiotic aspect.
-Identify obstacles to the social problem being tackled.
-Consider whether the social order needs the problem.
-Identify possible ways past the obstacles.
-Reflect critically on the analysis.

10.5 Major criticisms leveled at CDA: it is said that the type of research carried out by CDA
does not include a detailed and systematic analysis of discourse. CDA presupposes
contextualization.
10.6 Positive Discourse Analysis: the aim is to focus on constructive social action rather than
on the deconstruction of negative social action. It is based on positive values and intentions.

CHAPTER 11
Mediated Discourse Analysis
11.1 What is Mediated Discourse Analysis? It is an approach based on the study of discourse
focusing on human social action rather than on texts or discourses. Language is not considered
the only meditational means: non-verbal communication and physical objects used by an agent
are meditational means as well. Discourse and human action in social change are its main
concerns, and MEDIATED ACTION is used as the basic unit of analysis.
MDA is interdisciplinary. Mediated discourse analysts work with social problems in our
contemporary world.

11.2 Central concepts in MDA:

-MEDIATED ACTION: is the unit of analysis in MDA. Analysts focus on the acting of social actors.
-SITE OF ENGAMENT: the social space where mediated action occurs. The interpretation of a
mediated action is located within the social practices which are related in that unique place
and moment.
-MEDIATIONAL MEANS: the material means, for example the body, dress and movements of
the material actors, through which mediated action is carried out.
-PRACTICE: mediated action is only interpretable within practices. For example having lunch at
a restaurant is interpreted as a different action from having lunch at home, the difference is the
practice. For example, who prepares the coffee and in the meditational means, such as the
decoration of the room, the type of kitchen, etc.
-NEXUS OF PRACTICE: the different types of practices are interrelated and linked to form the
nexus of practice. So, for instance, an Italian restaurant nexus of practice would include
different things such as ordering practices, eating practices, etc.

11.3 MDA as a theory of social action: Much of what we say is accompanied by action and
most of our actions are accompanied by language.
Thus the most important principle in MDA is the principle OF SOCIAL ACTION. All social action
is based on unconscious actions which form the different practices. An individual’s
accumulated experience of social action is what we call the HABITUS or the HISTORICAL-BODY.

11.5 Mediated social interaction: All discourse is mediated and all mediations are discursive.
The difference between this approach and any other approach to discourse lies in the focus of
attention, which for MDA is place on the actions of social actors in using the texts of
communication.

11.6 Interdisciplinarity: MDA is an interdisciplinary approach to discourse.

11.8 Geosemiotics: Mediated discourse analysts have developed an analysis of how language
appears in the material world called GEOSEMIOTICS. The basic principle is that a very
important aspect of the meaning of all language is based on the material, concrete, physical
placement of that language in the world.
The key to the analysis of any human action is INDEXICALITY, the meaning of signs based on
their material location.
All language takes a major part of its meaning from how and where it is placed.
Geosemiotics entails a broad analysis of discourse, and therefore not only applies to signs, or
other symbols posted in different places, but also to signals and messages such as those sent
off by our bodies whose meaning depends on where they are and what they are doing in place.
11.8.1 Indexicality: in order to understand the meaning of any sign we need to ask the
following questions: Who has uttered this? Who is the viewer? What is the social situation? Is
that part of the material world relevant to such a sign?
Indexicality is a universal characteristic of language and it is defined as the property of the
content-dependency of signs, especially language, hence the study of those aspects of meaning
which depend on the placement of the sign in the material world.
For MDA it is not that important the indexicality in language as the indexable worlds, that is to
say the ways in which the sign system of language indexes the other semiotic systems in the
world around language.
We signal our meaning by means of ICONS: signs that resemble the objects being signaled,
INDEXES: signs which point to or attached to the object and SYMBOLS: signs which are
arbitrary or conventionally associated with the object.
For example an arrow is an index, the signs of written language are symbols and the picture of
a man beside a door at a public place is an Icon.
11.8.2 Central elements in Geosemiotics: there are four central elements:
-SOCIAL ACTOR: a person who moves and acts in the physical world.
-INTERACTION ORDER: the set of social relationships we take up and try to maintain.
-VISUAL SEMIOTICS: the visual frame of the social action. It deals with aspects such as how the
interaction order is presented visually and how placement of visual symbols affects their
interpretation.
-PLACE SEMIOTICS: any human action takes place somewhere in the physical universe. Semiotic
spaces are those spaces which provide pictures and non-semiotic spaces are those spaces
where signs are forbidden.