SEMINAR 5. DISCOURSE.

DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
Summing Up
Thematic Structure: Theme vs. Rheme

The thematic structure of a clause contains two main elements: theme and rheme. The theme of
a clause is what speakers/writers use as the ‘point of departure’. The rest of the message
constitutes the other element of the thematic structure, namely, the rheme. Different elements
can be chosen as the point of departure or initial constituent of a clause, as illustrated in the
following examples:

When two or more clauses are joined together in a complex clause, the clause that is placed first
is said to be thematic with respect to the whole complex clause. This applies for cases of
coordination as well as for cases of subordination:

Clauses related by coordination are said to be paratactically related. Clauses related by

subordination are said to be hypotactically related. Paratactically related clauses are typically
placed in the chronological order in which the events described occur.

Task 1.
What is the topic of the text?
The commonest kind of missing person is the adolescent girl, closely followed by
the teen-age boy. The majority in this category comes from working-class homes,
and almost invariably from those where there is serious parental disturbance. There
is another minor peak in the third decade of life, less markedly working-class, and
constituted by husbands and wives trying to run out on marriages or domestic
situations they have got bored with. The figures dwindle sharply after the age of
forty; older cases of genuine and lasting disappearance are extremely rare, and
again are confined to the very poor — and even there to those, near vagabond,
without close family.
When John Marcus Fielding disappeared, he therefore contravened all social and
statistical probability. Fifty-seven years old, rich, happily married, with a son and
two daughters; on the board of several City companies (and very much not merely
to adorn the letter headings); owner of one of the finest Elizabethan manor houses
in East Anglia, with an active interest in the running of his adjoining eighteen-
hundred-acre farm; a joint — if somewhat honorary — master of foxhounds, a
keen shot ... he was a man who, if there were an areum of living human
stereotypes, would have done very well as a model of his kind: the successful City
man who is also a country landowner and [in all but name] village squire. It would
have been very understandable if he had felt that one or the other side of his life
had become too time-consuming ... but the most profoundly anomalous aspect of
his case was that he was also a Conservative Member of Parliament. (J. Fowles)

TOPIC:

John Marcus Fielding unexpectedly disappeared.

Summing Up
Reference, Diexis, Presupposition
1. Many terms or expressions used in discourse have a referring function. Some types of
reference depend on mutual knowledge; thus, the process by which referring expressions refer
to an entity is not strictly semantic or truth-conditional; it is also pragmatic.
2. The relationship between language and context is clearly observed through the phenomenon of
deixis. Linguistic items such as demonstratives, pronouns, tense, place and time adverbs such as
now and here, some verbs like bring and take, as well as other grammatical features which are
tied directly to the context of utterance, are prototypically deictic. Traditionally, deixis has been
divided into three main categories: a) person, b) place and c) time. But two more types are
considered: Discourse and social deixis. There are also three main kinds of deictic usage:
gestural, symbolic and non-deictic.
3. Presuppositions are a kind of linguistic inference which is based more closely on the actual
linguistic structure of sentences than on implicatures. Presuppositions seem to be tied to
particular words or aspects of surface structure in general, and these particular words or
expressions are the presupposition triggers.
Task 2.
The expressions in bold type are presupposition triggers. Study the triggers, write
the presuppositions and find out the type of presuppositions.
Joanne, 47, had worked her way through college (1) as a bank teller, and
by age 34 was a manager at the Bankers Trust Company in Manhattan (2).
After her first (3) child was born, she continued (4) to commute three hours a day
from her (5) Rahway, New Jersey, home. But when she was told (6) she had to
travel repeatedly to Asia, she negotiated a severance package. […] Her career
counselor (7) inspired Joanne to think about how her skills could translate outside
the banking industry – and Joanne started (8) to imagine becoming an
outplacement expert herself. When she was no longer (9) a client, the
outplacement firm, Lee Hecht Harrison, hired her as a part-time consultant.
From: “Recipe for Resilience”, The Oprah Magazine

(1) Joanne once went to college (lexical presupposition).

(2) There exists a Bankers Trust Company in Manhattan (existential
presupposition).
(3) Joanne has more than one child. (lexical presupposition).
(4) Joanne had been commuting before (lexical presupposition).
(5) Joanne has a house in Rahway New Jersey, and that house exists (factual and
existential presupposition).
(6) Someone told Joanne she had to travel repeatedly to Asia (factual
presupposition).
(7) Joanne had a career counsellor and this counsellor existed (factual and
existential presupposition).
(8) Joanne hadn’t imagined becoming an outplacement expert before (lexical
presupposition).
(9) Joanne was once a client of the outplacement firm (lexical presupposition).