DISCOURSE ANALYSIS SESSION 2

DEFINITIONS, LAYERS OF DA

Discourse
Discourse versus text
Text defined
Differences between Discourse and text
Coherence & Cohesion in discourse
Coherence
Cohesion
Text, context, co-text & intertextuality
Context
Intralinguistic context (co-text)
Extra-linguistic context
Situational (huống cảnh)
Social
Cultural
Sociocultural context
Interpersonal
Relational
Historical
Co-text
Context vs co-text
Intertextuality
Discourse Analysis
Layers of DA
Discourse, vocabulary and background knowledge
Rhetorical devices
I. Comparison/similarity-based group
II. Contrast-based group
III. Scalar group
IV. Stylistics Group
V. Logical reasoning group
VI. Sound iteration group
Discourse
Etymology: Refers to written/spoken communication;

Socio-linguistics, applied linguistics: meaningful and unified stretches of language in their context.
These contexts can be:

● textual;
● social;
● psychological.

Other definition: Discourse can be any form of written/spoken language.

● However, not all grammatically correct sentences form part of a discourse.

● They are only considered to be meaningful in the light of other stretches of language
preceding or following them in a specific context.

>> Therefore, discourse involves language produced as the result of an act of communication

Another definition: A discourse belongs to a type of genre (spoken/written;

narrative/descriptive/expository/argumentative/academic/literary, etc.)

One important feature of discourse is its coherence = the quality of being meaningful and unified

Discourse versus text

Text defined
Text: a continuous piece of spoken/ written language, especially one with a recognizable beginning
or ending.

Linguists use “text” very informally to denote any stretch of language they happen to be interested
in.

Texts can be a single sentence or a single word

Differences between Discourse and text

First perspective: Both terms are the same.

2nd perspective:

● Text is physical
● Discourse is an abstract mental process that leads to the construction of a text.

3rd perspective:
 ● Text is primarily defined by its possession of an identifiable purpose
● It is an approach which quickly leads to the classification of texts into a number of kinds
(text-types) differing in purpose &, consequently, also in their linguistic characteristics

4th perspective

● discourse is physical
● text is an abstraction

5th perspective

● text is written;
● discourse is spoken;

6th perspective

● text is any thought that occurs in the mind.

Coherence & Cohesion in discourse

Coherence
● the link between meanings of utterances or discourse
● these links may be based by the speakers’ shared knowledge
● Generally a paragraph has coherence if it is a series of sentences that develop a main idea

Example:

A: Could you give me a lift home?

B: Sorry, I’m visiting my sister.

Even though there is no grammatical/lexical link between A’s question and B’s reply, the utterance
is still coherent, because there is a shared meaning.

Cohesion
● Grammatical and/or lexical links between different elements in a text.
● This may be the relationship between different sentences or between different parts of a
sentence

Text, context, co-text & intertextuality

Context
● that which occurs before and/or after a word, a phrase or even a longer utterance or a text.
● may also be the broader social situation in which a linguistic item is used
Intralinguistic context (co-text)
● Means linguistic materials occurring in the same text
● In other words, it is the relationship between the words, phrases, sentences and paragraphs
within the same discourse.

Example: In a study by Weir (1988), college and university subject teachers indicated that clarity of
expression was (not surprisingly) an essential feature of academic writing. A number of researchers
have suggested that although academics may recognize such features of good writing and demand it
from their students, they do not necessarily praise it in their colleagues.

● Intralinguistic context cannot always make clear the meaning of a linguistic unit.

Example: Their son is working for a multinational company. He is a bachelor.

Extra-linguistic context
Context that is beyond the boundaries of language/linguistics.

These can be:

Situational (huống cảnh)

all of the extralinguistic features that is relevant to the communicative act

Three components of situational context

● Field: Subject matter, or content, being discussed in the discourse;

● Tenor: relationship between speaker and hearer;
○ the participants in a discourse (typically the speaker/writer and the listener/reader),
○ their relationships to each other,
○ their social roles,
○ their role in the interaction,
○ their purposes when engaged in the discourse, etc.
● Mode: the medium in which language is transmitted (spoken, written, telephone,...)
○ This can also refer to its genre/rhetorical mode (narrative, didactic - teaching,
persuasive - sales pitches, phatic communion - greetings,...)
○ Determines the role and function of language in a particular situation
■ A fairy tale may have a didactic or entertaining function;

Social

The specific setting in which social interaction take place

Social contexts includes:

 ● specific, unique meanings
● interpretations

assigned by people within the given group.

The status of relationships amongst various people is a crucial facet of the social context.

People usually change the way they communicate in accordance to the status of the person whom
they are engaging with

Cultural

A very elusive term.

Generally, it refers to the environment or situation relevant to:

● the beliefs,
● values,
● practices

of the culture of the participants engaging in a communicative act.

Cultural iceberg:
Examples:

● Germans disagree openly;

● Germans and Finns are blunt, frank;
● French people disagree politely and openly;
● East Asians try to avoid open disagreement;
● SEAsians - hesitant to apologize, sometimes try to terminate apology (no, you don’t have to
say sorry)
● White australians: apologize liberally but don’t really mean it
● .....

Sociocultural context

Social and cultural context are often conceptualized in combination as socio-cultural context;

● The roles individuals play

● general society normalities
● cultural values
● customs

all affect the way various people communicate and engage with each other

Interpersonal

the context of situation in an act of communication between/among different people

Includes the below:

● Psychological: what one brings to the interaction (One’s needs, desires, personalities,...)
● Physical/environmental: the physical where one is communicating

Relational

Historical

Co-text
Linguistic materials occurring within the same text/discourse

Example: Syllogism - a kind of logical argument that applies deductive reasoning to arrive at a
conclusion based on two propositions that are asserted or assumed to be true

All men are mortal. (major premise/general statement)

Socrates is a man. (minor premise/specific statement)

 Therefore, Socrates is mortal. (conclusion)

>> this argument is co-textual

Context vs co-text
A: I went with Francesca and David.

B: Uhuh?

A: Francesca's room-mate. And Alice's- a friend of Alice's from London. There were six of us. Yeah
we did a lot of hill walking.

B: Uhm.

We can see that the personal pronouns ‘us’ and the ‘we’ refer back to Francesca, David, the room-
mate and the friend, who are all mentioned elsewhere in the text.

The interlocutors assume that everyone in the conversation has enough knowledge of what they have
been saying, to be able to infer who the ‘us’ and the ‘we’ include.

Intertextuality
The shaping and understanding of a text’s meaning by another text

These include:

● Allusion: an expression designed to call something to mind without mentioning it explicitly

○ the city that never sleeps - used to refer to New York;
○ good Samaritans - reference to Bible;
○ Is there an Einstein in your class?
● Quotation
● Calque: loan translation
○ phraseological calques: ca va sans dire is a direct translation of “it goes without
saying”
○ semantic calques: mouse
● Plagiarism (copying without due acknowledgements)
● Translation (source language and target language)
● Pastiche/pasticcio: a piece of writing/music in which the style is copied from somewhere
else, or which contains a mixture of different styles
● Parody: An imitation of the style of a particular writer, artist, or genre with deliberate
exaggeration for comic effect
Discourse Analysis
the study of how sentences in spoken and written language form larger meaningful units such as
paragraphs, conversations, interviews, etc.

Tense includes:

● Time: past, present, future

● Aspect - how the speaker views action: simple, progressive, perfect

DA deals with:

● how the choice of articles, pronouns, and tenses affects the structure of the discourse
○ For example: past simple implies a completed and finished action;
○ Past continuous implies incompleteness
○ to-inf implies potential;
○ V-ing implies fulfillment;
● relationship between utterances in a discourse (problem-solution, situation-problem-solution-
evvaluation);
● the MOVES made by speakers to introduce a new topic, change the topic, or assert a higher
ROLE RELATIONSHIP to the other participants

Analysis of spoken discourse is sometimes called CONVERSATIONAL ANALYSIS.

Some linguists use the term TEXT LINGUISTICS for the study of written discourse.

Another focus of discourse analysis is the discourse used in the classroom.

It can be useful to find out about the effectiveness of teaching methods and the types of teacher-
student interactions, including:

● The effects of teacher discourse on students’ discourse, problem-solving and reasoning

during cooperative learning
● Tensions between Teacher’s and Students’ Discourses in the Classroom
● Rich Classroom Discourse: Benefits for Student Learning
● Aspects of Teacher Discourse and Student Achievement in Language Learning

Layers of DA
Formal features of discourse: cohesion and coherence (Vocabulary & grammar)

Information structure of discourse

Discourse in social interactions

Discourse and culture (Discourse in intercultural communications)

Discourse in relation to power/ideologies (CDA/Multimodal CDA)

Discourse, vocabulary and background knowledge
Cohesion & lexical cohesion

Coherence

Background knowledge

Schema - simplified, schematic way of visualizing discourse features

Script - standard ways of speaking in certain situations (greetings when meeting someone,...)

Discourse and vocabulary

Applications in language teaching

Rhetorical devices
I. Comparison/similarity-based group
Analogy - comparison between two similar things, typically using figurative language

● Metaphor - implicit, hidden comparison.

○ Conceptual metaphor: something is similar to another thing conceptually: argument is
war (target domain is source domain)
● Simile - explicit comparison - something is said to figuratively be like something else
○ As busy as a bee;

Allusion - referencing something, usually from popular culture;

Parody - imitation with an intention of poking fun;

Connotation - Using words to suggest a social or emotional meaning rather than a literal one

● It is a house, but I want a home;

Parallelism - Using grammatically similar phrases or sentences together

● One small step for a man, one giant step for humanity;

Metonymy (hoán dụ) - when the name of something is replaced with something related to it

● He loved music from the cradle (birth) to the grave (death).

Eponym - A word based on or derived from a person’s name, such as Reaganomics

Epithet - Nickname or descriptive term used to refer to someone - Richard the Lionheart

Synecdoche - when a part of something is used to refer to a whole

● The commander had an army of 10,000 swords

Onomatopoeia - An onomatopoeia is a word that imitates the sound it refers to

● The thunder boomed and the lightning crashed

Personification - Personification is the act of giving human elements to non-human things

● The beautiful valley spread its arms out and embraced us

II. Contrast-based group

Oxymoron - a figure of speech that uses two opposite words together

● The treaty led to a violent peace

● Only choice;
● Joyful sadness;

Antithesis - Using parallel sentences or clauses to make a contrast

● No pain, no gain

Paradox - Making a statement that seems self-contradictory or impossible but actually makes sense

● The more you learn, the more you realize how little you know

Chiasmus - reversing the grammatical order in two otherwise parallel phrases or sentences

● You forget what you want to remember, and you remember what you want to forget

III. Scalar group

Hyperbole - intentional exaggeration

Climax - Ordering words so that they build up in intensity

● of the people, by the people, for the people

Euphemism - Using alternative language to refer to explicit or unpleasant things

● He's big boned

Meiosis - euphemism to minimize the importance or significance of something

● Our area is prone to flooding, so you might see a few puddles after a heavy storm

Understatement - language to intentionally lessen a major thing or event

● You scrape the entire side of your car. A comedic understatement would be: "It is only a
small scratch."
IV. Stylistics Group
Irony - use words to mean the opposite of their literal meaning

● A traffic cop gets suspended for not paying his parking tickets

Satire - Using humor to criticize public figures

● If voting changed anything, they would make it illegal.

Sarcasm - Using irony to mock something or to show contempt

● I work 40 hours a week for me to be this poor.

Apostrophe - when a writer or speaker directly addresses an absent person, a concept, or an

inanimate object

● Twinkle, twinkle little star

● You have made a fool out of me for the last time, washing machine!

Rhetorical question - A question that is not intended to be answered.

Colloquialism - An instance of informal language or a local expression.

● Philly = Philadelphia

Pun - Play on words

● Ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a grave man

Parenthesis - An interruption used for clarity

● Andrew Jacklin (last year's losing finalist) is expected to win this heat.

Expletive - An interrupting word or phrase used for emphasis

● The eggs were not, in any sense of the word, delicious.

Metanoia - Instance of self-correction

● To help or, at least, to do no harm

Anecdote - An anecdote /ˈænɪkˌdoʊt/is a brief story about something that happened to the speaker,
usually something funny or interesting

● Five years ago, I went to the store and met some clowns. Those clowns gave me the advice I
am sharing with you now.

V. Logical reasoning group

Syllogism - An argument based on deductive reasoning that uses generalizations to reach specific
conclusions
Asyndeton - removal of conjunctions from a sentence

● Read. Learn. Enjoy.

Aphorism - cách ngôn - a short sentence that presents truth or opinion, usually in a witty or clever
manner

● A penny saved is a penny earned.

● Actions speak louder than words.

VI. Sound iteration group

Alliteration - Repeating the same or similar sounds at the beginning of words

● She sells seashells by the sea shore.

Consonance - a repetition of consonant sounds

● It will creep and beep while you sleep.

Assonance - The repetition of the same vowel sound with different consonants

● She and Lee see the bees in the tree.

Anaphora - The repetition of a word or words at the start of phrases, clauses, or sentences

● I came, I saw, I conquered.

Cacophony - The act of purposefully using harsh sounds

● Klarissa Klein drives an old, grumbling Cadillac which has a crumpled bumper and
screaming, honking horn.