Course Diploma in Speech and Drama Level Certificate Level

Module DSDTC 120 Discourse Analysis I Topic Types of discourses and

approaches to discourse
analysis
Types of discourses
1. Spoken discourse
• Verbalized.
• Referred to as speech (speech is involved)
Eg: Casual conversation
Sermon
Classroom discourse etc.
• Two forms

face to face discourse distance

communication
Monologue
• Speech situation in which an individual is doing the talking for a long time
to himself (other people are not responding).
• Used in drama to know the thoughts of a character.
• Known as a soliloquy.

Dialogue
• A conversation between two people.
• Exchange of ideas by participants.
• Two or more people involved.
 Multilogue
• A situation in which too many people are engaged in a conversation at the same time.
• A situation in which many participants communicate using computer mediated forms.
Eg: Chat room on the internet
Online video
Message board

Conversation
• Use of speech for exchange of ideas by two or more people.
• Formal or informal.
• People involved are interlocutors.
• A conversation is built on certain conventions, such as
1. People involved share the common grounds.
2. Conversation is guided by such cultural patterns, norms and beliefs.
3. People involved know that ideas are being shared.
2. Written discourse

• Thoughts of the producers are represented graphically on a surface such

as paper.
• Organized in a way that similar ideas are put together in sections of the
writing called paragraphs and each paragraph is linked to the one before
and after it.
• Contain punctuations.
Eg: Letters
Email
Memorandum
 Approaches to discourse analysis
• Speech act theory (Austin 1962 and Scarle 1969)

• Proposed by John L Austin and developed by J.R. Searle.

• “Language is used to “do things” and to perform acts”.
• Austin (1962) observed that language is a form of action.
• A speech act is an utterance that serves a function in communication.
• We perform speech acts everyday.
Eg: Greeting
Apologizing
Requesting
Complaining etc.
 It’s too I late
hot
ratu
g
con you

Components of speech
• According to Austin the speech
Locution that we perform hasPerlocution
Illocution three components.
propositional statement intended meaning expected response

• Austin argues that speech acts are communicative behaviors used to accomplish
particular purposes. Thus, language has three distinct aspects;
Locutionary act Illocutionary act Perlocutionary act
Locutionary act Illocutionary act Perlocutionary act

• The act of saying • The intended meaning. • The effect and importance
something, refers to the • The action that is of consequences of
meaningful production of performed by speaker in communicative speech
sounds, words and uttering a sentence. acts on the feelings,
utterances. thoughts, or actions of the
listener.
 Types of speech acts
• Austin distinguishes between two main speech acts.
performative constatives

Consatatives Performative

• Used to make a statement which can be either true • Used to undertake an action which is rather
or false. felicitous or infelicitous.
• Declarative utterances that express state of affairs • Used to perform an act.
Eg: She likes pizza Eg: Tom apologized her.
He is driving Open the door.

• For speech acts or performatives to happen, there should be some conditions and those
conditions need to be met. These conditions are referred to as “Felicity Conditions”
Felicity conditions by Austin (1962)
• The conditions which must be fulfilled for a speech act to be satisfactorily
performed or realized.
• There must be a generally accepted procedure for successfully carrying
out the speech act. Also, the circumstances must be appropriate for the
use of the speech act and the person who uses the speech act must be
the appropriate person to use it in the particular context.
Eg: “I now declare you husband and wife”
“I do” vs. “Okay, I suppose so”
• The person must have the required thoughts, feelings, and intentions for
the speech act to be felicitous.
Felicity conditions by Searle (1969)
• “The felicity conditions of an utterance are constitutive rules, because they are not just
something that can go right or wrong. But something which make up and define the act itself.
That is, they are rules that need to be followed for the utterance to work. Thus, they constitute
the particular speech of act”.
1. preparatory conditions
2. propositional conditions
3. sincerity conditions

• Proposes five basic kinds of action that one can perform in speaking.
1. Assertives/ Representatives
2. Directives
3. Commissives
4. Expressives
5. Declaratives
1. Assertives
• Commit the speaker to the truth of the expressed prepositions
expressing a belief.
Eg: Statements of fact – The Earth is round
Assertions – Chomsky didn’t write about peanuts
Descriptions – It was a sunny day
 2. Directives
• Attempts by the speaker to get the addressee to do something.
• Speech acts that speakers use to get someone else do something.
• Include requesting, questioning, ordering, expressing a wish,
commands, suggestions, etc.
Eg: Give me a cup of coffee.
Could you lend me a pen please
Don’t touch that
3. Commissives
• Commit the speaker to some future course of action.
• Speech acts that the speakers use to commit themselves to some
future action.
• Express what the speaker intends (promising, threatening, offering,
expressing an intention, refusals, pledges)
Eg; I’ll be back
We will not do that
4. Expressives
• Expresses psychological state.
• Speech acts that state what the speaker feels.
• Include expressing pleasure, pain, likes, dislikes, joy, sorrow, thanking,
welcoming, apologizing, congratulating, etc.
Eg; I’m really sorry
Congratulations
Mmmm great!
5. Declaratives
• Affect immediate changes in the institutional state of affairs.
• Speech acts that change the world via utterances.
• Include baptizing, declaring war, christening, firing from employment
Eg; “you are fired” uttered by the boss to an employee
Pragmatics (Grice 1975, Leech 1983,
Brown and Levinson 1987)
• A field of linguistics concerned with what a speaker implies and a
listener infers based on contributing factors like the situational
context, the individual’s mental states, the preceding dialogue and
other elements.
• They focus on;
how do people communicate more than the words or phrases of their
utterances might mean by themselves, how people make these interpretations,
and why do people interpret something in one way rather than the other.
Grice 1975 on Pragmatics
• Proposed Co-operative principle whereby those involved in
communication assume that both parties will normally seek to
cooperate with each other to establish agreed meaning.
• According to this principle, we interpret language on the assumption
that is sender is obeying four maxims.
1. Maxim of quantity
2. Maxim of quality
3. Maxim of relevance
4. Maxim of manner
Flouting the maxims
• The situations where a speaker deliberately fails to observe a maxim,
not with any intentions of deceiving or misleading.
• A cooperative speaker can intentionally disobey a maxim. This is
flouting a maxim.
Flouting the maxim of quality
• Don’t say what you believe to be true.
Eg: What an amazing baseball player Tom is!
(said right after Tom failed to catch the ball)
• Negative comment on Tom’s abilities through irony.
• Maxim of quality is disobeyed.
Flouting the maxim of relevance
• Say things that are irrelevant to the topic under discussion
Eg; A: Is Ann dating anyone these days?
B: Well, she goes to Ontario every weekend

Eg; A: Will you go to that party?

B: Is Pope catholic
Flouting the maxim of manner
• obscurity of expression, ambiguity, not being brief and not being
orderly.
• Relate to the form of speech you use and state events briefly and
following the natural order of events.
Eg; Postman : Here’s your five cent stamp
Shopper : with arms full of bundles: Do I have to stick it on
myself
Postman: Nope. On the envelope.
Flouting the maxim of quantity
• Make your contribution as informative as is required. Do not make
your contribution more informative than is required.
• We usually assume that people are telling us everything we need to
know. If they don’t say something, then we assume they simply don’t
know that information. *Not being informative as is required.
Eg; A: I met Tom and Mary the other day.
B: Are they planning on having a third?
A: Well actually, they already have a third child.
 • Concept of politeness. Leech on Pragmatics
• Politeness is another level to conversational interaction besides the rules of the cooperative
principle.
• Leech’s view of politeness involves a set of politeness maxims.
Tact maxim Generosity maxim Approbation Modesty maxim Agreement maxim Sympathy maxim
maxim
• Minimize cost to • Minimize • Minimize • Minimize praise • Minimize • Minimize
others. benefit to self. dispraise of of self. disagreement antipathy
• Maximize • Maximize cost other. • Maximize between self between self
benefit to to self. • Maximize praise dispraise of self. and other. and other.
others. of other. • Maximize • Maximize
Eg: You must come Eg: How stupid of agreement sympathy
Eg: Have another and have dinner Eg: Her me! between self between self
sandwich with us. performance was How clever of me! and other and other.
Hand me the We must come and outstanding. Eg: A: It is an Eg: I'm terribly
newspaper have dinner with Her performance interesting sorry to hear that
you. was not so good as exhibition, wasn’t your cat died.
it might have been. it? *I'm terribly
B: Yes, definitely. pleased to hear
C: *NO, it was that your cat died.
uninteresting.
 Brown and Levinson on pragmatics
• Theory of “face” into a theory of politeness: “positive and negative faces”
• Having regard for another person’s “face” or image is an important aspect
of politeness.
• We want to guard our face against possible damage when we interact with
others. So, they distinguish between ‘positive and negative face’
• Negative face is the want of every competent adult member of a
community that their actions be unimposed by others.
• Positive face is the want of every member that their wants be desirable to
at least some others.
• It is useful to distinguish two types of politeness.
1. Negative politeness
2. Positive politeness.
Negative politeness
• An action, phrase or utterance that indicates attention is being paid to
the negative face wants of an interlocutor.
Eg; saying “excuse me” before asking for something.

Positive politeness
• An action, phrase or utterances that indicates attention is being paid
to the positive face wants of an interlocutor.
Eg; what a lovely dress!
THANK YOU!