Two views of discourse structure:

as product and as process

1. Introduction
2. Rank structure
3. The Birmingham School of Discourse Analysis
4. Discourse typology: spoken and written; formal and informal
5. Conversation as a discourse type
6. Conversation analysis
7. Turn-taking
8. Turn types
9. Discourse as process
10.Conclusion
 Introduction
• Pragmatics: providing a means of relating
stretches of language to the physical, social,
and psychological world in which they happen
→ like a snapshot of meaning.
• discourse: the totality of all these elements
interacting →like a moving film revealing itself
in time.
 Rank structure
• Definition: one way of representing the
relationship of parts to a whole (figures 4 and
5, p. 45)
The Birmingham School of Discourse Analysis

• Sinclair and Coulthard (1975) of University of

Birmingham provide a model to analyze the
discourse type of school lessons.
• the rank structure for these lessons is: lesson
→ transaction → exchange → move → act.
• Acts (Table 1, p. 47)
• Moves: opening (answering) (Follow-up)
The Birmingham School of Discourse Analysis

• Implications for the language learner: when

we know of the structures of various discourse
types and the way they develop, this
knowledge may enable us to communicate
successfully
• Attention: Such structures are ‘conventional,
and hence culturally variable’ (van Dijk and
Kintsch 1983: 16)
 Discourse typology: spoken and written;
formal and informal
Spoken Written
• often considered to be less
planned and orderly, more
open to intervention by the
receiver.
• difference in production and
• using our hands and eyes
reception: using our
mouths and ears
 Discourse typology: spoken and written;
formal and informal
Formal Informal
• planned • unplanned
• explicit • implicit
• integrated • fragmented
• detached • involved
→ challenge for the foreign
language learner due to the
slow processing of language
knowledge
 Conversation as a discourse type
1. It is not primarily necessitated by a practical
task.
2. Any unequal power of participants is partially
suspended
3. The number of participants is small.
4. Turns are quite short.
5. Talk is primarily for the participants and not
for an outside audience.
 Conversation analysis
• Associated with a group of scholars in the USA
known as ethnomethodologists.
• They proceed from the bottom-up trying to
establish the smallest units first.
→ view discourse as a developing process rather
than a finished product.
 Turn-taking
• the end of one speaker’s turn and the
beginning of the next’s.
• overlap of turns occurs in only about 5% of
conversation or less → speakers somehow
know exactly when and where to enter (Ervin-
Tripp 1979).
• overlap between turns or pauses between
turns often carry particular meaning.
 Turn-taking
• turn-taking mechanisms vary between cultures
and languages.
→ this helps to explain the awkwardness felt by the
foreign learner in conversation.
• efficient turn-taking also involves non-linguistic
factors (eye contact, body position and
movement) and/or intonation and volume.
• the relative status of speakers or the role which
one of them is playing are also important.
 Turn types
• adjacency pair: the utterance of one speaker
makes a particular kind of response very likely.
• in an adjacency pair, there is often a preferred
response (more common) and a dispreferred
response (less common)
Ex: offer acceptance (preferred)
refusal (dispreferred)
 Turn types
• an insertion sequence: the second part of an adjacency
pair is delayed by an alternation of turns occurring
within it.
Ex: A: Did you enjoy the meal?
B: (Did you?
A: Yes.)
B: So did I.
• the topic of an insertion sequence is intimately related
to that of the main sequence in which it occurs.
 Turn types
• side sequence: a type of insertion sequence in
which speakers switch from one topic to another
unrelated one, and then back again.
Ex: p. 54
→ Insertion and side sequences prove that
conversation is discourse mutually constructed
and negotiated in time. In conversation, mutual
formulation of the right amount of information
for communication to take place is very common.
 Turn types
• Repair: participants correct either their own
words or those of another participant to
achieve maximum communication.
→ mutual formulation of the right amount of
information
 Turn types
Ex: A: what have you got to do this afternoon?
B: oh I’m *going to repair the child bar
A: what do you mean CHILD bar
B: uh it’s er metal bar goes acr – has to be fixed
from one side of the car I mean from one side of the
back seat to the other for the BABY seat to go on
A: AH::::
(p. 55)
 Turn types
• Another type of clarification is formulations of
the gist (summary of the locutionary meaning
of what has been said) or the upshot (the
illocutionary or perlocutionary force being
made explicit).
 Turn types
• Pre-sequences: participants in conversation
draw attention to, or prepare the ground for,
the kind of turn they are going to take next.
Ex: A: Are you free tonight?
B: Yes.
A: Like to go to that film?
(p. 56)
 Discourse as process
• Ethnomethodology views conversation as
discourse constructed and negotiated
between the participants following certain
conventions (pauses, laughter, intonations,
filler words, etc.)
• culture-specific rules and procedures of turn-
taking provide ample breeding ground for
misunderstanding.
 Conclusion
• The Birmingham School dealing only with
formal discourse and with large structures
• the ethnomethodologists dealing with local
transitions and only with casual conversation.
• Possibility that the two approaches may be
developed and reconciled?