Discourse analysis can be defined as a stretch of language consisting of several

sentences which are perceived as being related, not only in terms of ideas, but also in

terms of the jobs they perform. Discourse analysis is fundamentally concerned with

the relationship between language and the contexts of its use. Discourse analysis is a

text forming device. It studies how language can be made coherent and cohesive. The

term Discourse applies to both spoken and written language in fact to any sample of

language used for any purpose. Cook (1989) defines discourse analysis as stretches of

language perceived to be meaningful, unified and purposive. In the study of language,

discourse often refers to the speech patterns and usage of language, dialects, and

acceptable statements, within a community. It is a subject of study in people who live

in secluded areas and share similar speech conventions.

Language helps us communicate. Communication takes place with the help of

symbols, signs, words or body language. Language is a code or a system which has a

lot of signals being transmitted through a medium by a sender to a receiver. This

system is governed by a set of rules. Along with the set of rules there are some social

features that govern the use of language. Context and cultural influences also affect

language in use. Discourse analysis studies the relation between the form and function

of language.e.g Do I have something to tell you?(!)

Context act as the most basic part of of discourse analysis. It is so because Context

affects the performances on language productivity and complexity measures, self-

monitoring strategies, and turn-taking patterns. Role of context is to combine with a

sentence to determine what proposition is expressed by an utterance of that sentence.

You and I both say ‘I am here’, and context determines what proposition each of us

expresses. To further narrow the focus, I shall take the notion of proposition

expressed to be something like Grice’s notion of ‘what is said’ (Grice, 1969), to

exclude what is implicated, or other pragmatic effects dependent on the proposition

expressed. This is not to say that what has been excluded is unimportant, but merely

to focus on one particular aspect of context. To narrow the focus still further,

The understanding of context is crucial in discourse analysis, which often has

been criticized just for its inadequate attention to context (Cicourel, 1981; Fairclough,

1992). Discourses cannot be understood without their context, it should also be clear

that context does not determine a certain discourse (cf. Potter, 2001, p. 318).

“Contexts, just like discourse, are not objective in the sense that they consist of social

facts that are understood and considered relevant in the same way by all participants.

They are interpreted or constructed, and strategically and continually made relevant

by and for participants” (van Dijk, 1997, p. 16). Additionally Contexts functions as

interface between situational and societal structures and discourse structures, because

they subjectively ‘represent’ relevant aspects of situations and society and directly

interferes in the mental processes of discourse production and comprehension.

Context stands at two levels, firstly the linguistic level and the non-linguistic

level. At the linguistic level, context looks to any linguistic interest that occurs before

and after a word, a phrase, or text. At the non-linguistic level, context refers to the

surrounding situation in which an utterance or a discourse occurs. It is the broader

social situation in which a linguistic item is used.

Context is able to greatly influence a discourse. As Gillian Brown and George

Yule say in their book Discourse Analysis, “in order to interpret these elements in a

piece of discourse, it is necessary to know who the speaker and the hearer are, and the

time and place of the production of the discourse” (2000:27). Widely speaking, the

role of context in discourse analysis can find its full expression in the five aspects:

defining reference, establishing and accumulating presuppositions, detecting

conversational implicative, providing clues for doing inference and supporting the

intended interpretation.

Context helps define reference when reference is mentioned, we may recall the

semantic triangle proposed by Ogden and Richards in their book The Meaning of

Meaning. They argue that the relation between a symbol and a referent is indirect. It is

mediated by reference. In a diagram form, the relation is represented as follows:

From this diagram, we can know that reference refers to the relationship between a

symbol and a referent it refers to.

Context helps hearer to detect conversational implicature. The term

conversatioal implicature is to account for what a speaker can imply, suggest, or

mean, as distinct from what the speaker literally says and it is deduced on the basis of

the conversational meaning of words together with the context, under the guidance of

the Cooperative principle and its maxims. The maxims are Quantity, Quality, Relation

and Manner. The violation of a maxims may result in the speaker conveying, in

addition to the literal meaning of his utterance, an additional meaning, which is

conversational implicature.

Context as a concept is encountered in numerous disciplines, often with

different meanings and implications. “Contextualism” departs from knowledge that is

“context-free, abstract, structuralist, formalist,” etc., but implies that phenomena must

be “studied in relation to a situation or an environment” . Among the salient

properties enumerated for contexts is that they are the products of an ongoing
“subjective interpretation,” as opposed to situations, which are given, objective facts

of the world.

The literal comprehension of a discourse includes the identification and the

memorization of the discourse general idea, certain details, etc. Therefore, it should

involve the literal comprehension of words and sentence structures, the outlining of

the storyline as well as the identification of the orientation of the narrative. The roles

of context at discourse analysis level are :

Specifying the orientation of the narrative discourse

The orientation of the narrative consists of time setting, spatial setting, as well

as characters, which are essential to the literal comprehension of a discourse.

Generally speaking, the expressions of time, locations and the characters are realized

by the use of deictic words and expressions. Consequently, the understanding of these

deictic expressions is crucial to the identification of the orientation of the discourse,

thus completing the literal comprehension of narratives. For instance, the specification

of reference of person deixis like “I”, “you”, “his”, “our”, etc. is essential to clarify

the characters in the discourse. In addition, in order to specify the location of the

events described in the discourse, the reader is supposed to understand such space

deixis as “here”, “there”, “at the place” and so on. Co-text, the knowledge of what has

been written preceding a certain deictic expression, is able to undertake the task of

specifying the references of these expressions. With the help of co-text, it does not

prove difficult for the reader to come to the correct understanding of the person deixis

in a discourse. By specifying the references of person deixis, context can help us to

identify all the characters and their interrelationship in the narrative discourse, which

is fundamental to its literal comprehension.

Outlining the storyline of the narrative discourse

 In addition to person deixis, the understanding of time deixis is equally

important to the literal comprehension of a discourse since the outlining of the

storyline of a narrative relies largely on the specification of time deixis, the

understanding of which will also be impossible without our co-text knowledge. As

analyzed by Gillian Brown and George Yule (2000, p. 49) in their book Discourse

analysis, additional information should be given that the narrator (also the writer) is

telling a story in the whole book, which is demonstrated by the expression “the time I

am writing of”. Only by referring to the co-text of each time deixis can we specify

their deictic centers and find their points in the storyline of the narrative discourse. In

this way, we are able to outline the storyline of a narrative discourse.

Determining the literal meanings of expressions

Every discourse is constructed with words and sentences. Therefore, the

understanding of words and sentential expressions lays a foundation for the further

interpretation of the discourse. However, the specification of meanings has proved to

be far from an easy task by many linguists due to the fact that words and expressions

can have multiple meanings, which can cause ambiguities in expression and

understanding. This happens because our understanding of words and sentences is

decontextualized, that is, detached from their context. With the help of context, we

can effortlessly solve this problem.

The roles of context at the inferential comprehension level

 The inferential comprehension mainly refers to “digging out” what has not

been stated directly by the author in the discourse. It involves understanding the

implied meanings of certain structures in the discourse, inferring the writer’s purpose

of writing, etc.

Filling in the gaps in narratives

In a narrative discourse, while the narrator is constantly presenting

information to his readers, he is at the same time leaving out some information of the

events being narrated, which is left for readers to infer themselves. Informational

omissions of this kind are sometimes referred to as “gaps”. Literary gaps were

identified by Wolfgang Iser in 1974 (p. 64) as “vacant pages” that invite the reader to

reflect and enter into the text thereby motivating them to experience the text as reality.

He argues that as no story can ever be told in its entity, the text itself is punctured by

blanks and gaps that have to be negotiated in the act of reading. In Abbott’s (2002, p.

83) words, in some sense, narratives by their nature are riddled with gaps. However,

in order to achieve the complete comprehension of the narratives that we read, the

task of “filling in the gaps” in narratives is inevitable.

Understanding figurative language

In addition to merely presenting facts and events in a narrative discourse, the

author also employs a great many figures of speech in his narration to make his

writing more vivid and forceful. For example, Berger (1996, p. 11) once states that

“metaphors and metonyms are found in all kinds of narratives”. Figurative language is

the use of words and expressions in a transferred sense. It departs from the common

literal meaning of words and expressions, and gives them other mental pictures in

readers’ mind so as to make the speech or writing vivid, expressive and interesting.
Because of their department from the literal meanings, the understanding of figures of

speech is largely context-dependent. This is particularly true of pun, metaphor and

irony, whose meanings in the context are usually more than, or different from, or even

opposite to what they literally mean. Only by knowing what has been written

previously (co-text) as well as the situation the figure of speech is used (the situational

knowledge) can a reader come to its correct understanding?

Recognizing the author’s intention of writing

In the process of writing, the author is simultaneously embedding his purpose

of writing in the discourse. This includes his attitudes towards a certain character, his

opinion of certain behaviors and his judgment of some events. In order to comprehend

these attitudes, opinions and judgments of the author, and accordingly interpret the

author’s intention of writing, we should again resort to our general knowledge of the

world and our knowledge of the author.

The roles of context at the evaluative comprehension level

At this level of comprehension, the reader, with reference to his previous

reading experience, his language knowledge as well as his general knowledge of the

topic discusses in the narrative, judges the accuracy of the information presented,

evaluates the effectiveness of the narration, and even compares his own opinion of the

topic of the narration with that of the author expressed in the discourse. In order to

check whether the information in the narration is presented accurately, we often talk

about the writing techniques employed in the discourse, and we, as readers, will

usually compare the techniques in the discourse with those that have been

acknowledged as effective in narrative writing to see whether the narration in the

discourse is effective or not. Apparently, language knowledge is also involved in this

process.

Conclusion

In a word, the context plays a very important role in discourse analysis. A

discourse and its context are in close relationship: the discourse elaborates the context

and the context helps interpret the meaning of utterances in the discourse. The

knowledge of context is a premise of the analysis of a discourse. When we study and

analyze a discourse, we should bear in mind that no context, no discourse and not

neglect the related context, both linguistic and non-linguistic.