Engl 321/ Elcs 322 Discourse Analysis Laikipia University Department of Literary and Communication Studies

Discourse Analysis notes JN
ENGL 321/ ELCS 322 DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

Laikipia University
Department of Literary and Communication Studies
Core text: George Brown and Gillian Yule (1983) Discourse Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press. Available online @ https://ebooks.cambridge.org/ebook 2012.
Additional books and reading resources are included in the course outline and in specific
sections.
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
Expected Learning outcome:
By the end of this topic, the learner will be able to define discourse analysis.
1. Ref: George Brown and Gillian Yule (1983) Discourse Analysis. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press. Chapter Available online @
https://ebooks.cambridge.org/ebook 2012.
Focus: Preface, pp. viii-x; Chapter 1, pp. 1-25;
2. Deborah Schiffrin (1987) Discourse Markers. Cambridge. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press. Chapter 1
3. Guy Cook (1983) Discourse. Chapter 1
What is Discourse Analysis?
In order to answer this question, we will divide the term discourse analysis into two;
a) Discourse
b) Analysis
(i) Cook (1989) in his book Discourse defines discourse analysis thus;
"DISCOURSE ANALYSIS examines how a stretch of language considered in its textual, social
and, psychological context becomes meaningful and unified for the users".
(ii) DISCOURSE is any language that is used to communicate i.e. language in use and must be
felt to be coherent (hold together). It may or may not correspond to correct language.
ANALYSIS has to do with the search for what gives discourse coherence/unity.
The traditional concern of language study has been the construction of sentences or simply the
description of the structure of a language or the way in which linguistic units such as phrases or
words combine to produce sentences in the language (Richards, Platt and Weber, 1985). In
1
recent years however, there has been an increasing interest analysing the way sentences work in
sequence to produce coherent (unified) stretches of language. This interest has grown out of the
search by scholars for larger linguistic units than the sentence, a search which has led to the
'discourse' level of linguistic analysis. Hatch (1990: 266) defines it as the level of description that
concerns itself with the structure of spoken interaction. In the 1980s two approaches have
developed from this shift in emphasis:
i) Discourse analysis (spoken language)
ii) Text analysis (written language)
Some scholars e.g. Crystal (1987), Hatch (1990), Halliday and Hassan (1976) and Edmondsosn
(1981) maintain this distinction, while others such as Brown and Yule (1983), Levinson (1983)
talk of written and spoken discourse. In other words, the distinction is not a clear-cut one. In the
more contemporary studies particularly in what has been described as the linguistic turn,
discourse analysis has focused more on language, power and ideology particularly the works of
Critical Discourse analysts. The term ‘discourse’ has come to be viewed in terms of the way
language mediates our understanding of the world.
Van Dijk (2001) defines discourse as ‘text in context’, a form of language use and a specific
form of social interaction interpreted as a communicative event in a social action.
In defining discourse, Fairclough (2003: 3) defines a text ‘as any instance of language use’.
Discourse (abstractions of patterned ways of making meaning) in this sense is like practices
(abstractions of patterned ways of acting) which express or manifest the underlying rules that
govern the use of language. Discourse in this sense is abstract in that it refers to the ideological,
habitual recurring ways of speaking and writing that underpin the actual choice of words in
particular events. On the other hand, the language used in a particular event has material reality
in texts. Following this line of thought, discourses are instantiated (exemplified or made
manifest) in texts. Gee’s (2006: vii) definition of discourse is a particularly good one;
Discourses as ways of behaving, interacting, valuing, thinking, believing, speaking and
often ways of reading and writing that are accepted as instantiations of particular roles (or
types of people) by specific types of people whether lawyers, bikers, business people,
church members, men or women …discourses are ways of being, ways of being in the
world …they are thus always and everywhere social and products of social histories.
Gee’s definition brings meaning making and acting in the world together. For Fairclough (2003:
17) ‘a discourse is particular way of representing some part of the (physical, social and
psychological world) there are alternative and often competing discourses associated with different
groups of people in different social positions’. Fairclough (1995) views discourse as a form of
social practice which takes consideration of the context of language use. He conceptualises
language and the social as shaping each other, that is, as having a dialectical relationship. Gee’s
definition emphasizes the notion of ‘social roles’ particularly when he goes on to add that discourse
is ‘a socially accepted association among ways of using language, of thinking, of feeling, of
valuing and acting that can be used to identify oneself as a member of a socially meaningful group
2
(social network). Fairclough (2003: 145) further maintains that discourses differ in how social
events are represented, what is excluded, or included, how abstractly or concretely events are
represented how more specifically, the processes and relations and social actors are represented.
Particularly relevant in his conceptualization of discourse is his clear analysis of how social actors
are represented; active/passive, personal impersonal, named/classified, specific and generic.
Many social researchers would argue that people’s understandings of the world are not merely
expressed in their discourse but actually shaped by the ways of using language which they have
available to them. In other word’s reality ‘is discursively constructed’, made and remade as people
talk about things using ‘discourses’ (Cameron, 2001: 15). While linguists use the term discourse
to refer to ‘language above the sentence’ or ‘language in use’, social theorists use the plural version
‘discourses’. The plural usage reflects the influence of Michel Foucault who defined discourse by
drawing a link between reality and language use.
Discourse analysis is one of the levels of linguistic analysis- others include phonetics,
phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics
From the discussion above, we can define discourse using three main paradigms; formalism,
functionalism and formalism and functionalism.
a) Formalism- According to formalists, language is nothing but a mental phenomenon;
Discourse is viewed as a “sentence”. Discourse analysis entails the analysis of language
above “sentence”, i.e. phonemes- Morphemes- Words- Clauses- Sentence- Texts.
Formalists look at language in terms of form/structure. Formalism is also known as
sentence linguistics (Brown and Yule 1983) in related literature
b) Functionalism- Functionalists view discourse as language use. They analyze utterances
that are actually used in a community in specific contexts. Language can be used to
perform an action e.g. in a court of law. Functionalism is also referred to as discourse
analysis in related literature (Brown and yule 1983).
c) Formalism and Functionalism
Was spearheaded by Shiffrin (1994) who viewed discourse as an utterance. She defines
discourse in two ways:
I. It’s a particular unit of language analysis that is above the sentence.
II. It is a particular focus on language use i.e. every utterance gets the meaning from
a context background (who is speaking, what, where at what time and for what
reasons).
Contrasts between Formalism and Functionalism
According to Hymes (1974);
Formalism/Structure Functionalism
View language structure as language View structure in terms of speech
grammar. actions/acts, events.
They use acronym:
S- Setting, scene
P- Participants
E- Ends (purpose, reason)
A- Acts sequence (turn taking)
3
K- Key (manner of speaking, tune of

utterance)
I- Instruments/channel i.e. oral, written, or
telephone
N- Norms/rules of utterance
G- Genre/textual category i.e. song, poem,
etc.
Analyze language code first by analyzing its Analyze language use first by analyzing
use. language codes.
To them, language serves a referential View language as serving a social function
function i.e. it’s used to refer to things. i.e. utterances are not analyzed in terms of
what they mean but what functions they are
likely to perform. Late scholars talk of
language as social practice e.g. Fairclough
2003
All languages are essentially and potentially Languages show differences in terms of
equal. No language is deficient or primitive. varieties, styles which are actually not equal
i.e. British English (BE), American English
(AE), Idiolects, register etc. Some languages
are also associated with more social capital
e.g. the role English as a global language as
compared to most indigenous languages in
Kenya.
View language as Communal and View language e.g. as a speech community, a
homogenous. matrix of code repertoire.
Consider fundamental concepts like speech, Consider those fundamental aspects as
community, speech acts, fluent speaker and problematic and need to be investigated.
function of language as arbitrary.
According to Leech (1985), formalists regard: Regard language as a societal phenomenon
• Language as a mental phenomenon Explain these universals as deriving from the
• Texts to explain language universals universality of the use language is put to in
as deriving. human society.
They explain children’s acquisition of View language acquisition in terms of the
language in terms of a built-in human developments of the child’s communicative
capacity to learn language found in the needs and abilities in society.
Language Acquisition Device (LAD).
View language as an autonomous system Study language in terms of its relations to
devoid of its uses. social functions.
In conclusion: Formalists: Functionalists:
Argue that although language may have social Assume that language has functions that are
and cognitive functions, these functions do external to the language system itself and
not affect the internal organization of such functions influence internal organization
language e.g. grammar, phonology, syntax of the language system.
etc.
4
Discourse therefore can be viewed as follows:

1. Formalist approach:
- In this approach, Discourse is viewed as language above sentence/clause. Van Djik
(1985) says structural description characterizes discourse at several levels (levels- units
and gaps phonemics). Structural analysis focuses on the way different units function in
relation to each other with no regard to functional relations and the context of which
discourse is part: structurally based analysis of discourse uses fine constituents (smaller
language units) when the rules given have a particular relationship with one another and
that can occur in a restricted number of languages. In structural analysis discourse is
viewed as a level of structure higher than the sentence.
Harris (1951) was the first linguist to refer to discourse analysis claiming that discourse is
the next level in the hierarchy of Morpheme- clause- sentence- discourse- text. The
biggest unit is the text which encompasses several sentences. Harris claims that what
distinguishes discourse to a random sequence of sentences is precisely the fact that
discourse has a structure/pattern. What is critical to structural views is that discourse is
Labov (1985), identifies the clause as the basic unit. Polanyi (1988) allows the structure
of this discourse to be comprised of diverse units like sentences, turns, speech actions,
speech events. According to him, the sentence is the minimal unit in discourse analysis
and the turns is in interactional view of language. Things are said in turns which build
into speech acts which are embedded in speech events.
CRITICISM:
There are inherent problems with this approach (which views a sentence as the basic unit
of discourse).
a) Units in which people speak do not always seem as sentences- some researchers
reveal that spoken language is produced in units with intonation as a unit of
analysis and not necessarily a syntactic clause.
b) A sentence is an abstract entity- people do not speak in sentences. Information is
not structured in terms of sentences. The focus on sentences stems from the value
that members of literate culture place on written language.
2. Functionalist approach:
In this approach, Discourse is viewed as language use:
According to Brown and Yule (1983), the analysis of discourse is the analysis of any
language use. As such, it cannot be restricted to any description of linguistic forms
independent of the purpose/function which these forms are designed to serve in human
affairs. Critical discourse analysts argue that language and society constitute each other
such that the analysis of language independent of society would be a contradiction.
Discourse is assumed to be independent with social life such that its analysis intersects
with the management, activities and systems outside of itself.
Discourse is viewed as a socially and culturally organized system- A way of speaking
through which functions are realized. Each culture has norms which organize the way of
speaking, children are socialized and taught customs. This is a functionalist approach.
This approach takes the analyst away from the structural regularities to the way patterns
of talk are put to use for certain purpose in various contexts.
Functionalists rely less on the grammaticality of utterances as sentences but more on the
way utterances are situated in contexts.
5
3. Discourse as utterances:
Schiffrin (1994) argues that discourse is viewed in terms of utterances- This view
captures the idea that discourse is above other units of language by saying that utterances
rather than sentences are the smallest unit of which discourse is composed, discourse
arises not as a collection of decontextualized units of language structure but as a
collection of inherently contextualized units of language use.
This approach looks at both sentence and use. Defining the use of utterances forces us to
attend to the contextualization of language structures in a way that goes beyond the text
sentence to context sentence. This definition demands attention to more than one
utterance so that we look at external patterns and sequential arrangements. This definition
balances both the functional emphasis of how language is used in context and the formal
emphasis on extended patterns.
Formalists- view language as rule-governed. Rules: generate sentence in the analysis;
look at extended patterns.
Functionalists- Emphasis on language use in contexts. Discourse analysis seen as
utterances, this balances the two views. Utterances are viewed as units of language
production whether spoken or written that are inherently contextualized. A definition of
discourse as utterances implies the following goals of discourse analysis:
• Syntactic goals- Are the principles underlying the order in which one utterance
follows another.
• Semantic and Pragmatic goals- How the organization of discourse and the use and
meaning of particular sentences and contrast with certain contexts. How do these
allow people to convey and interpret the communicative content of what is said?
How does utterance and the sequence relationship between influence the
communicative content of other utterances?
CHAPTER TWO: EMERGENCE OF DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

Expected learning outcome:
By the end of this course, the learner will be able to

i) Trace the development of discourse analysis
ii) Identify and discuss various types of discourse.
Refs:
4. Trevis Mcnair Oct 2013 Modes of Discourse Available online on You tube
5. Walter Browne (2018) Modes of Discourse Available online@ You tube
The first known students of language in the western tradition were the scholars of Greece and
Rome. These students were aware of sentence analysis and sentence linguistics, so they divided
the grammar from the rhetoric (art of speaking).
Grammar - was concerned with the rules of language as an isolated object.
Rhetoric - was concerned with how to do things with words to achieve certain effects and
communicate successfully with people in particular contexts. In the 20th century linguistics
6
alongside sentence linguistics, there have been influential approaches which studied language in
its full context as part of the society and the world. In Britain, a similar tradition developed in the
work of J. R. Firth, who saw language not as an autonomous system but as part of a culture
which is in turn responsive to the environment. These traditions have plenty of insights to offer
to discourse analysis. There are many other disciplines like philosophy, psychology, psychiatry,
sociology and anthropology, artificial intelligence, media studies and literary studies which
examine their object of study that is the mind, society, other cultures, computers, the media and
work of literature through language and are carrying out their own discourse analysis. However,
other disciplines study something else through discourse whereas discourse analysis has
discourse as its prime object of study.
The term discourse analysis was coined by Harris in 1952, who was a sentence linguist. He
initiated a search for language rules which would explain how sentences were connected within a
text by a kind of extended grammar. He concluded that in every language almost all the results
lie within a relatively short stretch which may be called the sentence. To find out what gives
stretches of language unity, we look beyond formal rules operating within sentences and consider
the people who use language and the world in which it happens as well, yet before we do so it
will be well to see just how far formal and purely linguistic rules can go in accounting for the
way one sentence succeeds another.
CONCLUSING REMARKS ON DISCOURSE ANALYSIS VS SENTENCE
LINGUISTICS
Discourse refers to language in and out of context. When we receive a linguistic message, we
pay attention to many other factors apart from the language itself. If we are face-to-face with the
person sending the message, we notice: what they are doing with their face, eyes and body, while
speaking, maybe they smiled or shook their fist or looked away- metalinguistics. In a spoken
message we notice the quality of the voice as well, maybe the speaker’s voice was shaking or
they had a particular accent or hesitated or slurred their words. Those are the paralinguistic
features of a spoken message which are lost if we write the message down. They may exist in
written messages to where we may be influenced by handwriting or typography and whether the
message is in an expensive book or on a paper. We are also influenced by the situation in which
we receive the message by cultural and social relationships and by what we know and what we
assume the sender knows. These factors take us beyond the study of language in a narrow sense
and force us to look at other areas of enquiry, for example, the mind, body, society, physical
world. Therefore, what gives discourse its unity includes the world at large, the context, which
is largely the focus of discourse analysis.
SENTENCE LINGUISTICS
In linguistics in the English-speaking world between 1930s-1960s, there were several schools of
thought which believed that context, the knowledge of the world outside language which we use
to interpret it (language), should be ruled out through language analysis. In this way, linguistics
will be able to make discoveries about the language itself and its system of rules which exists
quite independently of particular circumstances. This is sentence linguistics because it confines
what happens within sentences. Sentence linguistics invent their examples for analysis using
their intuitive knowledge as native speakers as a yardstick. They take language which people
actually use and remove all the features which they believe to be irrelevant to their purposes,
their objective being to analyze the rules of the actual meanings which are being conveyed in a
7
particular situation. They will omit any individual idiosyncrasies (what makes one speech
different from another one’s), an individual language (idiolect) or any physiological interference.
They would remove the single important feature needed to understand what is being said by
removing hesitations, false starts, social and regional dialects, idiolects, inferences of what
people are doing and who they are. Sentence linguists argue that they take away what is
incidental and variable in language and leave what is permanent and invariable. For discourse
analysis these variable features enable us to understand the meaning of what is said and the
reason why the order of sentences proceeds in the way it does.
Types of discourse:
Every act of communication can count as an example of discourse; there are 4 identifiable
primary types of discourse;
i) Argument: Writing used to persuade. It is the most sophisticated mode which relies
on the other three modes. Opinion
ii) Narration: used to relate a series of events e.g. in drama fiction, poetry etc.
iii) Description: focuses on writing used to describe a person, place or thing. E.g. use of
imagery, metaphor, symbolism e.t.c. to make the reader/audience to fully understand
the Writing can be objective (giving facts) or impressionistic (focuses on moods the
text evokes
iv) Exposition: this is analytical writing that involves informing and explaining.
These define the 4 different aims of writing that originated in 19th Century till the 1970s and
they help us to understand how a text is put together. The important thing is that these modes
overlap; for instance it is not possible to write an assignment using only argumentation, it is
likely that some explanation will be involved.
Within these traditional modes of communication emerge different specific sub types of
discourse such as; classroom discourse, academic discourse, courtroom discourse,
organizational discourse etc. Each of these have a unique discourse structure.
CHAPTER THREE
By the end of the lesson, the learner should be able to describe the different approaches
to Discourse Analysis and understand the relationships among them.
References:
1. Susan Van Zyl (2016) workshop notes. Egerton University - Kenya.
2. Deborah Cameron (2001) Working with spoken Discourse. 1st Edition. London: Sage
Publications.
3. Ndambuki, J.M. & Janks, H. (2010) ‘Political Discourses, Women’s Voices: Mismatches in
Representation?’ In Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis Across Disciplines
(CADAAD) Journal. Vol. 4 (1): 73-92. Available online@http://cadaad.net/ejournal Vol 4 (1)
73-92.
4. Fairclough Critical Discourse Analysis. 2017 Available online @www.fixabout.com
8
APPROACHES TO DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

The term discourse analysis usually applies to a number of ways of analysing qualitative data in
the form of written, spoken and visual which can also be described as discourses. When
considering a number of varieties of discourse analysis, it is important to distinguish all of these
ways of analysing qualitative data from those methods described as content or thematic content
analysis. The most general way of doing this is to consider the significance attributed to style (how
something is signified or represented) and content (what is signified or represented) in each case.
While good textual analysis in the qualitative tradition must be sensitive to how content or meaning
is conveyed, the methods described as varieties (approaches) of discourse, regard the particular
words (signs) used as essential to understanding the texts and therefore as warranting special and
focused attention. Within the broad group of discourse analytic methods (these pay special
attention to the concept of texts), it is possible to distinguish two broad types of discourse analytic
methods.
(i) The first type is made up of those methods that focus on language or signification as
‘rule-governed systems’. These aim to uncover the elements that make up the system.
(ii) Those in the second category are concerned with language or signification as forms of
rhetoric (persuasion) or power (ideology) and set out to identify how these persuasive
or ideological effects are achieved.
Although most discourse analytic methods emphasize one or other of these aspects, the two
approaches sometimes overlap or work in conjunction with each other as will be seen in the
discussion of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and discourse analysis in the social science
tradition.
The Approaches
1. DISCOURSE ANALYSIS IN THE LINGUISTIC TRADITION
This approach aims to identify textual systems and organizations (especially cohesion and
coherence) above the level of the sentence, i.e. it is concerned with how ‘textuality’ of texts
is established and or how a text differs from a random collection of words or sentences.
This tradition includes studies of linguistic behaviour as rule-governed or normative.
The approaches in this tradition include Conversation Analysis, Semiotics and Ethnomethodology.
These aim to uncover the ways in which meaning-making systems are manifest in a variety of
forms of talk or in visual or written texts. Conversation Analysis for example is often used to reveal
the ways in which natural or informal conversations happen as well as to look at the features (such
as the structure of conversations) and functions of more structured exchange or ‘conversations’
such as doctor-patient communication.
2. DISCOURSE ANALYSIS IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCE TRADITION
This is the rhetorical or ideological tradition and is characterised by the following;
9
A concern with the social and political consequences of language (signification).

• The view that discourses are social practices which do not merely reflect or represent the
social world but also construct it. A good example of this is the notion of gender which is
a social practice in the way it is represented as socially constructed and not simply as
dictated by biology. For example, through socialization, male and female get to having
different roles in society.
• Discourses have power over more than themselves, i.e. effects and are affected by other
things, aspects of human action and experience.
• A relation to language/signification that believes it must be;
i) respected and carefully examined as language
ii) interpreted – it is not all it seems, it does more than it appears to.
iii) Treated with suspicion, hides many things form individual prejudices to unacceptable
ideologies (concerned with that which underlies the words people use in everyday
communication for example tribalism, domination, racism, marginalization etc. Ideologies
are common-sense assumptions that are held by speakers and writers.
3. CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALSYSIS (CDA)

This approach is located broadly in the social science tradition but drawing from linguistics
(discourse analysis in the linguistic tradition). CDA is a multidisciplinary approach drawing from
critical theory, semiotics and socio-psychology and borrows its conceptual and analytic apparatus
from structural linguistics and critical theory. From a CDA perspective, social reality is constructed
in and through discourse with language viewed as a means of control and communication
(Fairclough, 1995). CDA and is concerned with how power is exercised through language; views
discourse as a form of social practice. His assumption is that any case of language use is a
communicative event.
According to Meyer (2001: 28) CDA, is a pragmatic problem-oriented approach where the first
step is to identify and describe the social problem to be analysed. For Fairclough (1989), CDA is
an approach that advocates increased awareness in the use of language to promote the welfare of
marginalized groups. It is critical in the sense that ‘it aims to show non-obvious ways in which
language is involved in social relations of power, domination and ideology’ (Fairclough; 2001:
229), what Cameron (2001) calls ‘the hidden agenda of discourse’. Fairclough and Kress,
(1993:2ff) characterize the critical nature of CDA thus: ‘CDA focuses not only on texts, spoken or
written as objects of inquiry. A fully ‘critical’ account of discourse would thus require a
theorization and description of both the social processes and structures which give rise to the
production of a text, and of the social structures and processes within which individuals or groups
as social historical subjects create meanings in their interaction with texts’ (cited in Wodak 2001:2-
3). There are three main approaches to CDA in the literature; language as social practice (Gee,
1992: Fairclough, 1989; 1992; 1995; 2001); 2) the socio-cognitive approach Van Dijk (1997;
1995); and 3) the discourse – historical approach (Kress, 1985; Van Leeuwen and Wodak, 1999;
Wodak 2001).
CDA as a practice endeavours to explain the relationship between language, ideology and power
by analyzing discourse in its material forms making it a useful tool for analysis of multimodal
discourse, i.e, an approach which focuses on how meaning is made through the use of various
10
modes of communication as opposed to just language. Multimodal texts include text books, picture
books, newspapers, posters, comics etc.
Figure 1: A three dimensional view of discourse analysis
Dimensions of discourse Dimensions of discourse analysis
(Adopted from Fairclough, N. 1995. Critical Discourse Analysis, p. 98. London: Longman).
Briefly,
Dimensions
i) Dimension 1: is called Text which can be speech, writing, visual and the analysis is at
word level. Which words are used in the text? By choosing certain words we express
certain attitudes to the subject/topic. For example language as a community, the
words we choose make us feel that we are part of a community; e.g. If we talk of a
foreigner vs. a refugee or if we talk of a terrorist as opposed to freedom fighter will
depend on our view of the action that has taken place. Discourse is about language as
a community. The words we choose make us feel that we are part of a community. A
person from a different community discourse analysis involves text analysis and
involves interpretations.
ii) Dimension 2: Discourse practice (discursive practice) – CDA - Language is not
involves production of text or constitution of text: analysis takes place at the text
level. Language can be a bearer of change. The way we compose our sentences and
the way we talk about the subject can change our view of the subject. Language is not
neutral but contains values, attitudes that the sender conveys to the recipient.
iii) Dimension 3: Social practice – concerned with structure of society i.e. social
structures also known as the norm level. Language contains opinions and
11
characterizes our attitudes. It creates social relations and practices. Languages are
associated with power. Languages are part of our communication which is a social
event and the language and the choice of words forms the context of our social
community. Society is an organization with certain norms and traditions. Some
organisations are local and others are transnational. E.g Kenya power, Nakumatt,
KFC etc. Communication within the organization is supposed to create change.
iv) Language helps create change and becomes a power tool – DA. Language contains
create relationships they are part of our communication. Languages and
communications closely linked with the society.
ACTIVITIES:
1. Class discussion on the four modes of discourse as realized in different types of discourse:
classroom discourse, academic discourse, media discourse, courtroom discourse.
CHAPTER FOUR: FORMS AND FUNCTIONS OF LANGUAGE

By the end of the lesson, the learner will be able to discuss the differences between
spoken and written language.
Ref: George Brown and Gillian Yule (1983) Discourse Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press. Chapter Available online @ https://ebooks.cambridge.org/ebook 2012.
Focus: Chapter 1 pp. 1-25.
The analysis of discourse entails the analysis of language in use the; the analysis includes the
forms and functions which those forms are designed to serve. While some linguists may
concentrate on the formal properties of language, discourse analysis is concerned with an
investigation of what language is used for.
Two major functions:
1) The transactional function- Basically concerned with the expression of content.
2) The interactional function- Involved in expression of social relations and personal
attitudes;
Other scholars refer to the two distinctions using other terminologies. For example:
Buhler (1934) refers to the transactional as representative and to the interactional as
expressive.
Jacobson (1960) Transactional- Referential.
Interactional- Emotive
Halliday (1970) Transactional- Ideational
Interactional- Interpersonal
Lyons (1977) Transactional- Descriptive.
12
Interactional- Social-expressive
1. TRANSACTIONAL VIEW
Some linguists and linguistic philosophers make the general assumption that the most important
function of language is the communication of information. Lyons (1977) observes the
notion of communication is already used “of feelings, moods and attitudes” but suggests
that its concern is in the intentional transmission of factual or propositional information.
Binnet (1976) remarks that it seems likely that communication is primarily a matter of
speaker’s seeking either to inform the hearer of something to enjoy some action upon
him. The value of the use of language to transact information is well embedded in one
cultural mythology that is the faculty of language which has enabled the humans to
develop diverse cultures each with its distinctive social customs, religious observances,
laws, oral traditions, patterns of trading etc. It is believed that it is the acquisition of
language which has permitted the development within some of these cultures e.g. of
philosophy, science and literature that it is made possible by the ability to transfer
information through the use of language which enables man to utilize the knowledge of
his forerunners and share in other cultures. According to the transactional view, language
used to convey “factual or propositional” information is viewed as transactional
language. His implies that language use thus is essentially message-oriented. Its
importance is that the recipient gets the information correctly e.g. if a policeman gives
directions to a traveler, a doctor gives the wrong dose to a patient, etc. In this case, what
matters is that the speaker should make what they say clear. There will be unfortunate
consequences in the real world if the message is not fully understood by the recipient.
2. INTERACTIONAL VIEW
While some linguists have paid practical attention to the use of language, through transmission
of “factual or propositional information”, sociologists and linguists have been particularly
concerned with the use of language to establish and maintain social relationships. In sociological
and anthropological literature, language is used to open talk-exchanges and to close them.
Conversational analysts have been particularly concerned with the use of language to negotiate
relationships, press solidarity, exchange of turns in a conversation, saving face of both speaker
and hearer. It is clear that a great deal of everyday human interaction is led by the primarily
interpersonal rather than the primarily transactional use of language e.g. when two strangers are
standing at a bus stop on an icy windy morning and one turns to the other and says “My! It’s
cold!”, it is difficult to suppose that the primary intention of the speaker is to convey
information, the speaker is indicating a readiness to be friendly and talk. A great deal of ordinary
everyday conversation appears to consist of individual comments on things present to speaker
and listener. A lot of casual conversation contains phrases and echoes of phrases which appear
more to be intended as contributions to a conversation than to be taken as instances of
information giving. Thus e.g. a woman on a bus describing the way a friend has been behaving,
getting out of bed too soon after an operation, concludes her turn by saying “Aye, she is an awry
woman.” Her neighbour then says reflectively (having been supportively uttering “Aye! Aye!”
throughout the first speaker’s turn) “Aye! She is an awry woman!”
The conversation isn’t intended to go anywhere but just to fill the time of the day. The issue here
is the sharing of a common point of view. Speakers in different cultures will go a long way to
13
maintain an appearance of agreement and to show agreement, and in doing this, speakers may
repeat part or all of what the preceding speaker has said.
Spoken and written language

1. Spoken language: In spoken language, the speaker has the full range of voice quality,
facial expressions, posture, and gestural systems. Armed with these, he can always
override the effects of the words he speaks. These paralinguistic cues are denied to the
writer. The speaker not only controls the production of communication but also processes
that production. The speaker must monitor what it is they’ve just said and determine
whether it matches their intentions. While they’re uttering the current phrase and
monitoring that, they simultaneously plan the next utterance and fit that into the overall
pattern of what they want to say. The speaker has no permanent record of what he has
said earlier. Only under some circumstances does he/she have notes to remind them of
what to say next.
2. Written language: The writer may look over what he has already written, pause over each
word with no fear of his interlocutor interrupting him. Writers can take time in choosing a
particular word even looking it up in the dictionary. They can check the progress with
their notes, re-order what has been written and even change one’s mind about what they
want to say. While the speaker is under pressure to keep talking during the period allotted
to him, the writer is under no such pressure. Whereas the speaker knows that his words
will be heard by his interlocutor and if they’re not what he intends he will have to
undertake active public repair, the writer can cross out and re-write in the process of his
study. The speaker can observe his interlocutor and if he wants to modify what he is
saying to make it more acceptable to the hearer. The writer has no access to immediate
feedback and has to imagine the reader’s reaction. In spoken interaction, the speaker has
the advantage of being able to monitor his/her listener’s reaction to what they say, he also
suffers from the disadvantage of exposing his own feelings and of having to speak clearly
and concisely, make immediate response to whichever way his interlocutor reacts
DIFFERENCES IN FORM BETWEEN WRITTEN AND SPOKEN LANGUAGE
1. The syntax of spoken language is less structured than that of written language. It contains
many incomplete sentences and may have sequences of phrases. Spoken language
contains little subordination as in subordinate clauses. In conversation speech, where
sentential syntax can be observed, active declarative forms are normally found.
2. In written language an extensive set of metalingual markers exist to mark relationships
between clauses e.g. THAT complementizes, WHEN/WHILE temporary markers, logical
connectors like besides, moreover, in spite of. In spoken language, larger chunks are
related by the use of AND, BUT, THEN, IF. The speaker is less explicit than the writer.
In written language, larger stretches of discourse are characterized by: First, Firstly
second, secondly, in conclusion etc.
3. In written language it’s common to find heavily pre-modified noun phrases.
EXAMPLE: A man who turned into a human torch ten days ago after smoking in his car
while smoking his pipe has died in hospital.
14
4. In written language, sentences are generally structured in subject predicate form whereas
in spoken language, it is common to find topic comment structure e.g. The cats + did you
let them out.
5. In Informal speech, passive constructions are not common but the written language uses
the passive frequently.
E.g.
Passive: The decision to open the University has been arrived at by the stakeholders.
Active: The stakeholders have arrived at the decision to open the University.
6. In speech, the speaker may rely on the immediate environment and so use gaze direction
to supply a referent e.g. a person looking at the rain can say ‘Frightful!’ And the one with
him would say ‘Frightful! Yeah! Frightful!’
7. In speech, the speaker may replace or refine expressions as he goes along e.g. a person
can say “this man + this chap she was going out with.”
8. The speaker uses a good deal of generalized vocabulary e.g. a lot of nice stuff and so
forth, things like that.
9. In speech, repetition of the same syntactic form is frequent e.g. I looked at the fire
extinguisher, I looked at her, I looked at him, I wondered
10. The speaker may produce a large number of “prefabricated fillers” e.g. well you see, sure,
you know, pardon, as in, of course.
LANGUAGE TEXTS
SENTENCE AND UTTERANCE
Utterance: an utterance is any stretch of talk by a person, before and after which there is a silence
on the part of that person. It may consist of a single word; yes, no, hallo, a single phrase; come
in, not at all; a sentence e.g. George does not like ugali. It may consist of a short conversation or
scribbled notes or a movie like Gone with the Wind or a lengthy legal case. We can say that
utterances are ephemeral events in time produced by someone at some particular time and that is
all about that utterance that events end there.
Sentence: refers to an abstract entity that cannot be said to have an existence in time. It can be
conceived as a string of words put together using the grammatical rules of a language. A
sentence is part of the language system of a language.
The distinction between a sentence and an utterance is that: a sentence is written down with all
the conventions of spelling and punctuations that go with writing while an utterance strictly
belongs to the spoken language. The best way to capture utterances would be to record them on
tape. An utterance is placed in quotation marks e.g. “hello”
Utterances are said in a particular accent or in a loud voice etc. here we can make some
observations about sentences. Lyons (1977) Sought to distinguish between two types of
sentences i.e.
1. System sentences- Donkeys! *
2. Text sentence- Donkeys*
SYSTEM SENTENCES
15
Are abstract theoretical construct correlates of which are generated the language models of the
language systems. These are the well-formed strings that are generated by the grammar. They
never occur in actual contexts. Construct (ions) refer to the overall process of internal
organization of grammatical units e.g. a sentence being constructed to a set of rules such as S+
V+O
The linguist’s model explains the notion of grammaticality in such a construct
TEXT SENTENCES
Are context dependent. These are utterances which may occur in particular contexts. A text
sentence is part of an integral number of sequentially ordered sentences. Lyons (1977)
Distinction allows discourse to be comprised of text sentences and system sentences. He claims
that there is no reason to suppose that system sentences play any role in the production and
interpretation of utterances.
Defining discourse as text sentences helps to explain the source of dependencies that we expect
texts to have. We expect coherencies i.e. the information presented in one utterance presupposes
the information in another utterance.
If a speaker of a language hears or reads a passage of a language he can normally tell* whether it
forms a unified whole or just a collection of unrelated sentences. Text is used in linguistics to
refer to any passage of whatever language which forms a unified whole. A text sentence will
form part of a text, a system sentence will not.
CHAPTER FIVE: SPEECH ACTS

By the end of the lesson, the learner will be able to explain the role of speech acts in the
interpretation of discourse.
Focus: Chapter 7: pp. 231-234.
The Speech Act theory originates in Austin’s (1962) observation that while sentences can often
be used to report certain states of affair, the utterances of some sentences can be seen as the
performance of an act e.g.
1. I bet you twenty shillings it will rain.
2. I name the ship The Queen Elizabeth.
3. I pronounce you wife and husband.
Speech acts suggest that people can use language to do things: - Such utterances in the examples
above can be described as performatives.
16
a. PERFORMATIVES
A performative utterance us one which describes the act it performs i.e. it performs some act and
describes that act at the same time e.g.
1. I admit that I took a book from your office.
2. I promise to take you out tomorrow.
3. I congratulate you on your beautiful performance.
4. I sentence you to be hanged by the neck.
Most performative utterances contain the first-person pronoun “I” followed by a particular type
of verb in the present tense.
These are verbs which describe speech acts and are classified as performative verbs. Although
most performative utterances have the first-person singular subject, there are few exceptions to
this rule. To determine whether an utterance is performative or not, insert the word “hereby” and
see if the modified utterance is acceptable or not. If it is acceptable then it is likely to be
performative e.g.
1. I hereby pronounce you husband and wife.
2. I hereby promise to take you out today.
b. ASSERTIONS
An act of assertion is carried out when a speaker utters a declarative sentence and undertakes a
certain responsibility or commitment to the hearer that a particular state of affairs or situation
exists in the world e.g.
The ball is in the court.
If one says this sentence he is asserting to the hearer that in the real world, a situation does exist
in which a thing identified as “the ball” is in a place identified by the referring expression “the
court”.
Some linguists hold the view that the purpose of a statement or an assertion is to describe some
state of affairs. This is known as the descriptive fallacy.
More recently, they came to realize that this was not always the case. There are sentences which
look like statements or as Austin (1962) prefers to call them.
c. CONSTANTIVES
These are not intended to record information about facts e.g. I am trying to get this nail out.
A constative utterance is one which makes an assertion but does not perform an act e.g. the one
above. While it may be true that a certain element of description is involved in many utterances,
there is always a more basic purpose behind an utterance e.g.
1. There is a bee on your skirt.
2. Someone has broken a knob on my cassette recorder.
3. He is an idiot.
17
The correct answers to those statements should be mentioning acts of one before another i.e. for
statement
1. It is an act of warning.
2. It is an act of complaining.
3. It is an act of insulting/abusing.
These are all things we do using language: an important part of the meaning of utterances is what
speakers do by uttering them.
d. DECLARATIVE AND NON-DECLARATIVE SENTENCES
The term declarative is used in the grammatical classification of sentence types. It is normally
used in contrast to other types like imperative and interrogative. It refers to the sentence types
used in the expression of statements. Imperative and interrogative sentences are non-declarative
sentences.
All these types of sentences can perform acts e.g.
1. I command you to attack the enemy- performs an act of assertion.
2. Don’t go there- performs an act of warning. It is an imperative.
3. Get lost- performs an act of ordering.
4. Why don’t you check in Spears? - performs an act of suggestion or advising.
5. Do you think I am a fool? - performs an act of asking a question.
Previously, there were two classes of utterances:
1. Performative
2. Constative
Austin asserts that, in saying anything, one is performing some kind of act. This demonstrates
that all utterances are performative. He concludes that in issuing an utterance, a speaker can
perform three acts simultaneously. These are:
1. Locutionary act: act of saying something in the full sense of ‘say’ e.g. if A says to B ‘You
are an idiot’.
These are the actual words uttered- words uttered- words uttered in the literal sense of
saying.
2. Illocutionary act: Act performed by the explicit performance*. This is the force or the
intention of the speaker.
3. Perlocutionary act: this is performed as a result of saying something i.e. the effect of the
illocution on the hearer.
Example:
You are an idiot- locution
Insult – illocution
Effect makes one angry- perlocution
PERLOCUTION
18
A perlocutionary act refers to an act performed when an utterance achieves a certain effect on the
hearer. This includes the effects of utterances which frighten, insult, ridicule, sympathize,
persuade etc. If someone shouted “There is a snake near your foot”, this will cause one to jump,
scream, panic (perlocutionary acts) causing these emotions and actions are the perlocutionary
acts
ILLOCUTION
The illocutionary act carried out by a speaker is the act viewed in terms of the utterance’s
significance within a convention system of social interaction. These are acts defined by social
conventions like apologizing, complaining, promising, requesting, congratulating, greeting,
praising, toasting etc.
An utterance like “I am very grateful for all you’ve done for me” performs an illocutionary act
which is defined by the social convention of thanking, “Good morning”- greeting, “Would you
like a cup of coffee?”- offering.
Conditions to be fulfilled for an utterance to perform an act i.e.
Felicity conditions
The success of any utterance depends on the fulfilment of some conditions called felicity
conditions. They are four which must be satisfied if the performative act is to succeed.
1. There must exist an accepted conventional procedure, having a certain conventional
effect that procedure* to include the uttering of certain words by certain persons in
certain circumstances e.g. sentencing someone to death is only performed within the legal
system. The words must be uttered by someone with the necessary authority in a country
in which there is a death penalty to a person who has been convicted for a particular
crime. The words must be spoken and not written, at the end of the trial (right time) and
right place (court).
2. The particular persons and circumstances in a given case must be appropriate in the
invocation of the particular procedure e.g. the judge must do the sentencing.
3. The procedure must be executed by all the participants both correctly and lastly,
4. Completely e.g. the marriage ceremony includes Yes and No answers, like “Do you take
this woman?” the answer “yes” is not an acceptable answer because the ceremony has a
fixed point at which the answer must be given and for the ring to be placed on the finger.
Failure to produce the ring or placing the ring on the finger at a different point in the
ceremony will cause the act not to succeed.
However, Austin noticed that the concept of the performative utterance of doing something by
saying something had a more general application e.g. I promise, I apologize, I warn you etc. are
all performative acts but they are different from the examples shown above because there are no
rules of conventions restricting their use. Anyone can make a promise to anyone in any place at
any time.
RULES WHICH GOVERN THE LINGUISTIC REALIZATION OF ILLOCUTIONARY ACTS
There are two major types:
1. Regulative
19
2. Constitutive
Regulative rules: Are concerned with conditions on the occurrence of certain forms of behaviour
e.g. children are forbidden to play football on the grass, you are forbidden to smoke bhang.
There are laws that govern and prohibit certain behaviour e.g. thou shall not kill.
Constitutive rules: Define the behaviour itself e.g. A player is offside.
In the study of language, the use of both sets of rules are important. All interaction has regulative
rules- usually not explicitly stated and these rules vary from country to country. Constitutive
rules in speech are those which contrast the ways in which an utterance of a given form is heard
as realizing a given illocutionary act
There are four constitutive rules:
1. Propositional futuristic content rule
2. Preparatory belief rules
3. Sincerity rule
4. Essential rule
E.g. in making a promise:
Rule 1: A future act must be predicted of the speaker i.e. one cannot promise to have done
something or that somebody else will do.
Rule 2: A promise is defective if the one promising does not believe that the promisee wants the
act performed. The one promised must want it.
Rule 3: The speaker must intend to perform the action. He must be sincere.
Rule 4: The uttering of the words counts as the undertaking of an obligation to perform the
action. It is essential that a promise must be a promise.
TYPES
DIRECT AND INDIRECT ILLOCUTIONS
Direct illocution of an utterance is the one most directly indicated by a literal reading of the
grammatical form and vocabulary of the sentence uttered e.g. can you speak a little louder?
Literally in this question the speaker is asking about the hearer’s ability to speak louder.
Indirect illocution of an utterance is any further meanings the utterance may have e.g. can you
speak a little louder? The speaker may be requesting the hearer for action i.e. to speak louder.
Other e.g. can you pass the sugar.
CLASSIFICATION OF ILLOCUTIONARY ACTS
The classification will depend on the type of interaction between the speaker and the hearer. The
two main classes are: A Directive act and a Commissive act.
1. A directive act is any illocutionary act which essentially involves the speaker trying to get
a hearer to behave in a required way e.g. ordering is a directive act.
20
2. A commissive act is any illocutionary act which involves the speaker committing himself
to behave I some required way e.g. promising is a commissive act.
ACTIVITY
Indicate whether the following acts are directives or commissives:
1. Volunteering
2. Advising
3. Forbidding
4. Accepting
5. Requesting
6. Undertaking
7. Criticizing
There are a number of problems with the application of speech acts theory:
1. It is not possible to assign speech acts in a non-arbitrary way.
2. Several sentences strung together may constitute a single act.
3. One utterance may perform several simultaneous acts e.g. Hey Jane! You’ve passed the
exam- the man may be asserting that she has passed, or congratulating her, apologizing
for his comment earlier that she has passed.
Speech act theory does not offer discourse analysts a way of determining how a particular set of
language elements uttered in a particular way come to receive a particular interpreted meaning.
That, not withstanding, speech act theory is one of the most useful approaches to discourse
analysis.
CHAPTER SIX: CONVERSATIONAL IMPLICATURE
By the end of the course, the learner will be expected to define and explain the role of
conversational implicature in the interpretation of discourse.
Refs: 1. George Brown and Gillian Yule (1983) Discourse Analysis. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press. Chapter Available online @
https://ebooks.cambridge.org/ebook 2012.
Focus: Chapter 2 pp. 27-33
2. Geoffrey Leech (2014) The Pragmatics of Politeness. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Online preview Chapters 1 and 2
3. Penelope Brown and Levinson (1987) Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
The proponent of the theory of Conversational Implicature is Grice (1975).

Conversational Implicature according to Grice draws on pragmatics, a functional approach to
language analysis. Its main constructs are located outside language in speaker meaning i.e. the
context, participant actions, speaker intention and the rational principles of human
communication.
21
Although communication between people is partially based on shared knowledge or structured

representations, communication also depends upon a cognitive ability to use context to make
inferences. Grice posits that the underlying basis of conversation is a general cooperative
principle and the human rationality.
Broadly, Conversational Implicature can be explained by the use of the Cooperative principle
and the Politeness Principle.
First, let us look at what the Cooperative Principle entails. To explore the phenomenon of
conversational implicature, Grice suggests that conversationalists are oriented to and by the co-
operative principle required at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose of direction
of the talk exchange in which you are engaged.
This principle implies four major areas/four maxims of the co-operative principle:
1. Relation
2. Quality
3. Quantity
4. Manner
The significance of those four is spelled out by the four maxims:
1. Relation: Be relevant
2. Quality: Do not say what you believe to be false, do not say that for which you lack
adequate evidence.
3. Quantity: Make your content as informative as is required for the current purposes of the
exchange; Do not make your content more informative than is required.
4. Manner: avoid obscurity of expression, avoid ambiguity, be brief, be orderly
These maxims could be used in the analyses of referring sequences. What matters is not the
identity of the sequence discourse slot e.g. question-answer but co-operative. There will always
be occasions when a speaker decides to:
1. Quietly and deliberately violate a maxim, he may lie, may not give as much of the
relevant information as he could, he may offer utterances which are ambiguous.
2. Break a maxim either because he has been faced with a clash between two maxims
making it impossible for him to be as specific as he ought to be and still to say nothing
for which he lacks evidence because he has chosen to flout a maxim.
In such instances, the conversational maxims provide a basis for the listener to infer what
is being conversationally implicated e.g.
Speaker A: Where is Bill?
Speaker B: There is a yellow BMW outside Sue’s house.
In most cases, we infer meaning from what people say because they implicate so. Speaker B
violates the maxims of quantity and relevance. The utterance has given us more than we want i.e.
color, make of the car and where it is parked. All that B tells us is irrelevant to the question but
going to the main principle of co-operation. Whatever B utters is relevant to what speaker A
wanted to know. We try to interpret these utterances as co-operative- we infer that Bill may be at
Sue’s house i.e. we interpret B’s utterance as an answer to A’s question. Thus, it is because
people assume co-operation at the level either the general co-op principle or specific maxims that
22
an utterance can be heard to occupy a particular sequential procedure. Sometimes people flout
these maxims for specific effects e.g. false threatening questions.
Using the four maxims combined with the general knowledge of the world, the receiver can
reason from the literal semantic meaning of what is said to the pragmatic meaning and induce
what the sender is intending to do with his words e.g.
Woman: There is a cat stuck under the gate at no. 67.
Man:
Using the knowledge of the world, the man is likely to reason that:
I. The cat is likely to be very unhappy.
II. A human is likely to be able to free such a cat.
III. Humans like to alleviate the suffering of pets.
IV. Women believe in the practical abilities of men.
Taking all this into account, the receiver interpreted this utterance to function as a request for
help in freeing the cat.
Some scholars have observed that it is never possible to say what one means in so many words or
in too few words. Speakers require hearers to work to an extent to derive the message from the
words uttered e.g.
Grice (1975) A: How is C getting on with his new job?
B: Oh, quite well. I think he likes his colleagues and he hasn’t been to prison yet.
Grice observes that in addition to what B has said, he has implicated something else. He has
provided information from which A can deduce extra information. Grice illustrates the process as
follows:
1. B has apparently violated the maxim of- be relevant yet we have a reason to suppose that
he is opting out from the operation of the co-operative principle.
2. Given the circumstances, we can regard his irrelevance as apparent if and only if we
suppose him to think that C is potentially dishonest.\
3. B knows that A is capable of working out step 2 so B implicates that C is potentially
dishonest.
For us to capture the conversational implicature there is need to:
I. Recognize irrelevance, inadequacy, inappropriateness of the utterance which triggers
number 2.
II. The subsequent information.
There are times when meaning is derived from deliberate violations i.e. flowing off the co-
operative principle e.g. two ladies on phone:
One says: We must remember your telephone bill. The speaker means more than her words, she
is hinting that- she wants to close the telephone conversation. This meaning is conveyed by
means of implicature.
23
A conversational indicator conveys an additional level of meaning beyond the semantic meaning
of words uttered and what is implied by reason according to the context of utterance.
Implicatures are pragmatic aspects of meaning and they are identified by the following
characteristics:
1. They are partially derived from conventional political meaning of an utterance.
2. They are produced in a specific context which is shared by the speaker and hearer.
3. They depend on the recognition by the speaker and the hearer of the cooperation
principle and its maxims.
POLITENESS PRINCIPLE
The proponent of this theory is Robin Lakoff (1973).
As with the Cooperative Principle, this theory also draws on the Speech Act Theory (Austin
1962; Searle 1969). Leeach (2014) observes that the bulk of work on politeness has been based
on or related to Brown and Levinson (1987). Broadly, there are two identifiable types of
politeness:
1. Maxim Based politeness
2. Face-based politeness
1. Maxim Based politeness:

According to Lakoff (1973) politeness is based on a principle of politeness as a universal social
norm. There are 3 (three) maxims;
i) Don’t impose
Examples:
a) I saw your door open and thought I could say hello.
b) May I come in?
In the above sentences, the speaker is expected to be polite by giving the listener to allow them
in or not.
ii) Give option (to say yes or no)
Examples:
a) May I borrow your Discourse Analysis book?
b) Could I interrupt you for a second?
In the above sentences, the speaker is expected to give the hearer the option to either say yes or
no.
iii) Make your listener feel good.
Examples:
a) You are really good at cross country. We intend to include you in the University team
b) I really admire your dressing style, do you mind telling me where you shop?
24
As with the cooperative principle, there can be flouting of these maxims to achieve certain
meanings. Sometimes the need for clarity would clash with the need for politeness. Leech
(2003) argues that it is better for conversation to avoid offence than to achieve clarity; e.g.
being implicit to convey an offensive message as in the following utterance:
If I were you I wouldn’t wear that.
However, it is important to note that implicitness and indirectness does not always convey
politeness; for example in the following utterance;
‘You must have shit for brains’.
According to Leech (2003) politeness involves polite behaviours; minimise (other things
being equal) the expression of impolite belief and maximise (other things being equal) the
expression of polite beliefs. In his view, politeness constitues the following maxims;
a) Tact - in imposives and commissives- minimise cost to other; maximise benefit to other.
b) Generosity - minimise benefit to self: maximise cost to self.
c) Approbation - in expressives and assertives – minimise dispraise of self; maximise
dispraise of self.
d) Modesty – minimise praise of self; maximise dispraise of self
e) Agreement- in assertives minimise disagreement between self and other.-
f) Sympathy - minimise antipathy between self and others; maximise sympathy between
self and others (Leech (1983: 132).
2. Face Based politeness

Brown and Levinson’s work (1987) is one of the most researched works in the area of politeness.
The focus is on Face, Face work and Face Threatening Acts (FTAs-acts that threaten face).
These two authors further the ideas of previous authors on politeness to create the theory of
positive and negative politeness.
Brown and Levinson (1987) define face as the positive social value a person effectively claims
for himself/ (herself) by the line others assume he has taken during a particular contact. They
identify two related components of face: positive face and negative face.
Positive face: this includes the desire to be ratified, understood, approved of, liked or admired
(1987: 62).
Negative face: is defined as the want of every adult member that his actions be unimpeded by
others; the assumption here is that wants are universal.
Face work: is made up of the actions taken by a person to make whatever he is doing consistent
with face and any action that impinges to some degree upon a person’s face is a Face
Threatening Act (FTA). Examples of FTAs include orders, insults, criticisms etc. People are
generally motivated to avoid FTAs and are willing to incur costs to save face. This explains why
the majority of times politicians and business people pay hefty sums of money to the courts.
FTAs that threaten a hearer’s face: expressing thanks, unwilling promises, offers, apologies, the
breakdown of control of one’s body (in case of illness) and confessions.
25
Face work involves both the speaker and the hearer such that the speaker has vested interest to
maintain the hearer’s face.
The amount of face threat of a particular act involves 3 (three) social variables;
(i) Distance (D) i.e. the symmetric social dimension of similarity between the speaker
and the hearer often based on the degree of interaction.
(ii) Relative Power (P) of the hearer over the speaker is an asymmetrical social
dimension. The degree to which a participant can impose his/her own plans and self-
evaluation. Deference indicates greater power differential.
(iii) Absolute Ranking (R): Refer to the ordering of impositions according to the degree to
which they impinge upon an interactant’s face wants in a particular situation. For
example asking a new colleague for a cup of tea is more threatening than asking an
old one.
Leech (2014) builds on Levinson’s work (1983) and Brown and Levinson’s (1987) to produce a
broad model of politeness which accounts for the social theory of politeness. In his view,
politeness is what often motivates a speaker’s use of preferred (favoured) or dispreferred
(disfavoured or avoided) expressions. In other words, preferred expressions are those speech acts
that save face while dispreferred expressions threaten face. The following table shows the two
parts of an adjacency pair containing both preferred and dispreferred expressions.
Preferred and dispreferred responses:
First part Second part
Preferred Dispreferred
Request Acceptance Refusal
Other/invitation Acceptance Refusal
Assessment Agreement disagreement
Question Expected answer Partial answer or nonanswer
Source: Leech (2014: 32) based on Levinson (1983: 236)

NB: Politeness is often ingrained in the process of socialisation. Brown and Levinson’s (1987)
study has been greatly critiqued especially on the idea of the politeness being universal in many
cultures. For example, many children in Kenya in rural settings and generally in Africa are
socialised NOT to look as an older person in the eye when they talk to them. However, in the
West, children are socialised to look at someone in the eye when they talk to them.
CHAPTER SEVEN: THE ROLE OF CONTEXT IN THE INTERPRETATION OF

DISCOURSE
By the end of the lesson, the learner will be able to discuss the role of context in the
interpretation of discourse.
Ref:
26
1. George Brown and Gillian Yule (1983) Discourse Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press. Chapter Available online @ https://ebooks.cambridge.org/ebook
2012.
Focus: Chapter 2 pp. 27-67.
2. Ndambuki, J. M. (2013) Local Community Leaders’ Constructions of Women’s

Interests and Needs: Inhibiting Developmental Crisis Resolution in Kenya’s
Development Crisis. pp 239-272. In Eds. Antoon de Rycker and Zuraidah Mohd Don
‘Discourse and Crisis’. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://www.researchgate.net
Context: is the world filled with people producing utterances. People who have social, cultural
and personal identities, knowledge, beliefs, goals and needs and who interact with one another in
various socially and culturally defined situations.
There are two basic concepts in the interpretation of discourse:
1. Text
2. Context
Linguists assume that messages are created through an interaction between two different types of
information i.e.
1. Semantic information
2. Contextual information
Semantic Information
Is the propositional meaning conveyed through language as seen through clauses, sentences and
other units of language.
Contextual information
Is identified in relation to something else that is our prime focus of our attention. Context cannot
exist in a vacuum. We cannot talk of context unless we are thinking of something else like an
image, sound, word, utterance or a sequence of utterances that is located relative to it.
The discourse analyst has to take account of the context in which a piece of discourse of occurs.
Some of the language elements which require contextual information for the interpretation of are
deictic forms such as here, that, this, those etc.
To interpret deictic elements in a piece of discourse, it’s necessary to know ;
Who the speaker is and the place of production of discourse
Who the hearer is
What the time is
This is the formal linguists approach to the analysis of language and specified forms. It is
important to note that because the analyst is investigating the use of language in context by
27
speaker/writer, they are more concerned with the relationship between the speaker and the
utterance on the particular occasion of use.
Context is viewed in relation of the following terms:
1. Reference
2. Presupposition
3. Implicature
4. Inference
5. Context of situation
6. Context
REFERENCE
Lyons (1968) Says reference is the relationship which holds between words and things. What is
referred to things. Reference is the relationship between language and the world.
It is the speaker who refers by using some appropriate expression. “Referring is not something
and expression does, it is something that someone can use an expression to do.”
In discourse analysis, reference is treated as an action on the part of the speaker or writer e.g.
A: Is my uncle coming home from Canada on Sunday?
B: How long has he been away or has he just been away?
Speaker A used the expression “my uncle” and “he” to refer to and individual in the real world.
(The speaker is referring to not the expression ‘he’, ‘my uncle’. An individual becomes a
referent.
Reference is the relationship between language and the real world.
PRESUPPOSITION
Is defined in terms of assumptions the speaker makes about what the hearer is likely to accept
without challenge. What is involved in a presupposition is the notion of assumed common
ground.
Stalnaker (1978) Defines presuppositions as – what are taken by the speaker to be the common
ground of the participants in the conversation.
The presupposition is the speaker e.g. in A and B above, speaker A treats the information that
she has uncle as presupposed and speaker B indicated that she accepted the presupposition.
IMPLICATURES
According to Grice (1975) implicature is used to account for what a speaker can imply, suggest
or mean as distinct from what a speaker literally says. Of interest to the discourse analyst is the
notion of conversational implicature which is derived from a general principle of conversation
plus a number of maxims which speakers will normally obey I.e. the cooperative principle
Sometimes speakers violate the maximum which result in the speaker conveying an additional
meaning which is known as a conversational implicature e.g.
A. I am out of petrol.
B. There is a garage around the corner.
28
B is infringing/violating the instruction to be relevant. The implicature here derived from the
assumption that speaker B is obeying the cooperative principle is that the garage is around the
corner and will be open selling petrol. In order to arrive at that implicature, we have to know
certain facts about the world i.e. the garage sells petrol.
Around the corner is not a great distance and we also have to interpret A’s remark as a request
for help.
In discourse analysis, the intended meaning goes beyond the literal meaning of the sentences on
the page.
INFERENCE
Since the discourse analysts has no direct access to the speaker’s as intended meaning in
producing an utterance, he often had to rely on a process of inference to arrive at an
interpretation for utterances.
CONTEXT OF THE SITUATION
Linguists have become increasingly aware of the context is important in the interpretation of
texts. Before an analyst arrives at the meaning of a particular text, he must consider the context
of the situation.
Features of context – How scholars see context of situation
1. Brown and Yule (1983): the features of context involve
i. The speaker
ii. The hearer
iii. The place
iv. The time
All these constitute a situation i.e. a context of situation. Knowledge of them will enable an
analyst to arrive at the correct meaning of an utterance e.g.
I. Speaker: a young mother
Hearer: her mother-in-law
Place: at the park
Time: a sunny afternoon in September 1962
They are watching the young mother’s 2-year-old son chasing ducks and the mother in
law has just remarked that her son, the child’s father, was rather backward at this age.
The young mother says
“I do think Adam is quick”
II. Speaker: student
Hearers: set of students
Place: sitting round a coffee table
Time: evening in march 1980
John, one of the group members, has just told a joke; everyone laughs except Adam.
Then, Adam laughs. One of the students says:
“I do think Adam is quick”
Source: Brown and Yule 1983: page, see also Brown and Yule
The second statement expresses sarcasm; from the context of the situation.
29
It is clear that the utterances in the context of situation in which they are cited would be taken to
convey very different meanings.
In e.g. I- Adam is being contrasted with his father favorably. “quick” may be interpreted in the
context of backward as meaning that Adam is quick in developing/fast learner.
In e.g. II- The same Adam is being contrasted with the set of other students unfavorably.
“Quick” must be interpreted as meaning- something is quick to understand, react or respond to
the joke. Since it is said in a context where Adam has just failed to react to the joke as quickly as
the other students. The speaker will be assumed to be implicating the opposite of what they have
said.
2. Firth (1967): According to him, the context of the situation involves the following:
i. The relevant features of participants
a. Persons
b. Personalities
c. Verbal action of participant
d. Non-verbal action of the participants/gestures, paralinguistic features
ii. The relevant objects- what is being referred- referents
iii. Effects of the verbal action- perlocution
Having this information, one will capture the meaning of an utterance.
3. Hymes (1964): According to him, context of the situation involves following features.
This is the concept of ethnography of speaking. He uses SPEAKING as an acronym
Features
i. Persons: addressor, addressee, audience
Knowledge of the addressor in a given communicative event makes it possible for
the analyst to imagine what that particular person is likely to say. Knowledge of
the addressee will lead to the same assumption.
The presence of the audience or overhearers may contribute to the specification of
the speech event.
ii. Topic: If you know what is being talked about, your expectations will be
limited/constrained.
iii. Setting: place/time
iv. Channel: through speech, writing, signing, smoke signals
v. Code: what language, what dialect, style of language, register, idiolect
vi. Message form: a chat, debate, sermon, fairy tale, sonnet, love letter.
vii. Events:
The nature of the communicative events within which a genre may be embedded
e.g. a sermon or a prayer may be part of a church service. What is the event
(church service)?
viii. Key: evaluation, was it a good or a bad message?
ix. Purpose: what did the participants intend should come about as a result of the
communicative event?
These are the ethnographic features. The more the analyst knows about the
features of context, the more likely they are to be able to predict what is likely to
be said or meant.
30
Revision assignments:
1. Without context, there is no discourse. Discuss this statement with close reference to
Hymes (1964) Ethnography of Speaking. Provide appropriate illustrations.
2. How may we analyse discourse given that the context of situation is a variable concept?
DEICTIC FORMS
These are forms e.g. here, most, you, I etc that cannot be interpreted on their own.
Ethnographic features give useful values for deictic forms occurring in utterances. Such forms
include you, here, must etc.
These forms must be interpreted with respect to the speaker and the context in which they are
uttered.
Lewis (1972) provides a checklist that gives us an index of those coordinates which a hearer
would need to specify in order to determine the truth of a sentence. His interests lie not with the
general features of the cumulative events such as the channel, code, message, form, event, but
with those particular coordinates which characterize the context against which the truth of a
sentence is to be judged.
He specifies the coordinates as follows:
1. Possible world: to account for states of affairs which might be or could be to be or are.
2. Time: to account for sentences like today or next week.
3. Place: to account for utterances like here it is.
4. Speaker: to account for sentences which include 1st person reference e.g. I, me, we, our
5. Audience: which includes you, yours, yourself etc.
6. Indicated objects: to account for sentences containing demonstrative phrases like this,
these, that
7. Previous discourse: to account for sentences including phrases like the latter, the former,
aforementioned
8. Assignments: this is to account for an infinite series of things that may include sets of
things or sequences of things.
THE CO-TEXT
Refers to the previous discourse coordinate. This takes account of sentences which include
specific reference to what has been mentioned. It is the case that any sentence other than the first
in a fragment of discourse will have the whole of its interpretation constrained by the preceding
text.
The words which occur in discourse are constrained by their co-text.
The interpretation of utterances within a discourse is constrained by co-text
Example 1: A pupil giving an account of a cartoon.
A man and woman sitting in the living room and the woman sitting and reading quite happily
and the man is bored goes to the window looks out the window and gets himself ready and goes
out.
31
Example 2:
Goes to his club and has a drink, talks to the barman and then he starts dancing with a beautiful
girl with long black hair and has a good time.
Example 3:
Then he goes home and he calls her and his wife overhears him.
Concluding remarks on the Role of context in the Interpretation of Discourse
The belief that messages are created through an interaction between text and context implies a
procedure by which to identify the communicative content of an utterance.
The procedure states that combine the language text meaning with context to derive inferences
about messages.
TEXT IN THE LINGUISTIC CONTEXT OF UTTERANCES
Text is used to differentiate linguistic material i.e. what is said as opposed to what is inferred.
Text is the actual linguistic material said or written.
In terms of utterances, text is the stable semantic meaning of words, expressions and sentences:
Context is combined with what is said to create an utterance i.e.
Context= text + utterance
Summary: Role of context in the interpretation of texts- summary
1. Context builds in terms of what speakers/hearers can be assumed to know about others.
Social interactions and the nature of human rationality guides the use of language and
interpretation of utterances.
2. The knowledge of rules (regulative and constitutive) provide context that allows us to
identify different types of speech acts e.g. directives, commissives, commands etc.
The analysis of discourse assumes that linguistic competence includes a speaker/hearer’s
mastery of constitutive rules.
Context is: that king of background knowledge called constitutive rules i.e. knowledge
about what conditions need to hold for a particular utterance.
3. According to Grice (1975) context is the general principle that the participants assume
one another to believe and observe i.e. the Co-operative Principle (CP). This allows the
inference of speaker meaning i.e. meaning of an utterance located outside of the language
itself.
4. Context of situation and knowledge: the analysis and interpretation of discourse will
incorporate situational analysis.
Context of situation constitutes social interaction, social situations including the way
participation frameworks and presuppositions are formed from situated interactions.
Context viewed as cognitive and social as seen from Ethnography of Speaking view. The
use of SPEAKING grid helps define a particular communicative event or action.
The role of context is central to the analysis of communication to provide meaning of
speech acts. What we say and do has meaning only within the framework of cultural
knowledge.
32
Example: communicative competence as opposed to linguistic competence.
CHAPTER EIGHT: COHESION AND COHERENCE

Expected learning outcome;
By the end of this lesson, the learner will be able to identify and discuss the different
cohesive markers in English.
Focus: Chapter 1 pp. 1-25. Chapter 6, pages 191-222. Brown and Yule (1983) largely
draw on Halliday and Hassan’s book ‘Cohesion in English’ (1976).
Cohesion: refers to elements of connectivity which bind a text together. These are also referred
to as cohesive ties or discourse markers.
Halliday and Hassan (1976) in their classic book ‘Cohesion in English’ account for cohesion by
taking the view that the primary determinant of whether a set of sentences do or do not constitute
a text depends on cohesive relationships within and between the sentences which creates texture.
A text has texture and this is what distinguishes a text from something that is not a text. Texture
is provided by the cohesive relationship devices.
Cohesive relationships within a text are a set up where the interpretation of some elements in the
discourse is dependent on that of another. The one element presupposes the other in the sense
that it cannot be effectively understood (decoded) except by recourse to the anaphoric reference
(backward referencing).
Example: Cut the beef into small pieces. Put them into the oven= Text
This sentence comprises of two sentences. Of this text, it is clear that ‘them’ in the second
sentence refers back to or is anaphoric to the ‘small pieces’ of beef in the first sentence.
This anaphoric function of the word ‘them’ gives cohesion to the two sentences so that we
interpret the two sentences as a whole. The two sentences together constitute a text.
Halliday and Hassan (1976) outline the types of cohesive relationships which can be formally
established within a text thus providing cohesive ties (surface ties) which bind a text together.
1. Use of reference
2. Use of formal markers that provide conjunctive relations e.g. use of conjunctions (and,
but, then, on) i.e.
a. Additives e.g. and, furthermore, similarly, in addition
b. Adversatives (contrasts) e.g. however, but, on the other hand, nevertheless
c. Causal e.g. because, consequently, due, for this reason, it follows that
d. Temporal markers (adverbs of time) e.g. then, after that, an hour later, at last,
formerly
33
Note: it’s not the case that any one of the formal markers stands in a simple to one-to-one
relationship with a particular cohesive relation e.g. the connector ‘and’ can occur between
sentences which show the relationship of sequence as in:
Example: We went for a drink and then a meal in Members and returned Jane for coffee
and talk.
Sometimes it is the underlying semantic relation that has the cohesive power rather than the
cohesive marker but it is the presence of the cohesive markers which constitutes textness/texture.
3. Cohesive relationships can be achieved by:
a. Reference/co-reference
b. Substitution
c. Ellipsis
d. Lexical relationships
Co-referential forms are forms which instead of being interpreted semantically, refer to
something else for their interpretation- interpretion outside the text i.e. in the context of
the situation.
TYPES OF COHESIVE RELATIONSHIPS
1. Co-referential forms/Reference:
This kind of relationship broadly categorized into two;
(i) Exophoric (this means that meaning is got by referring to where interpretation lies
out of the text) e.g. look at that
(ii) Endophoric: Meaning is got by referring to something where their interpretation
lies inside the text. The cohesive ties are within the text.
Endophoric relationships are of two kinds:
i. Anaphoric relations: this type look back in the text for their interpretation e.g.
look at the sun. It is going down quickly.
The ‘it’ in the second sentence finds its meaning in the sun in the first sentence-
the relationship between the two is an anaphoric one. The two sentences form a
text.
ii. Cataphoric relationships: this type looks forward in the text for the interpretation
e.g. It is going down quickly, the sun.
The interpretation of ‘it’ is found in what comes later- ‘sun’
In this example, the relationship of co-reference is seen to hold between a full

lexical expression – ‘the sun’ and a pronominal expression- ‘it.’
2. Lexical repetition/relationships
Repetitions of words in a text can create unity in discourse just the same way as pronouns
do e.g.
i. The prime minister recorded her thanks to the foreign secretary. The prime
minister was most eloquent.
34
ii. Nice and Lovely is both mild to your hair and to your scalp- so mild that you can
wash your hair as often as you like. Nice and Lovely cleans your hair gently
leaving it soft and shiny.
In Britain however, mother tongue learners of English are discouraged from using
repetition on the grounds that it is a bad style they are encouraged to use a device called
elegant repetition whereby synonyms or more general words to phrases are used so that
instead of writing the “the pineapple, the pineapple, the pineapple,” they might write
“The pineapple…the luscious fruit…. Our meal… the tropical luxury” all these refer
back to the pineapple. This also applies to learners of English as a second language in
Kenya. They are encouraged to avoid repletion and instead to use elegant repetiotion
especially in creative writing.
The kind of link we choose will depend upon the kind of discourse we are seeking to
create and elegant repetition is not always desirable. It may sound pretentious in a casual
conversation or create dangerous ambiguity in a legal document.
3. Substitution
This is a kind of formal link between sentences which involves the substitution of words
like do or so for a word or group of words which have appeared in an earlier sentence e.g.
Do you like bread? Yes, I do or Yes, I think so. Instead of saying Yes, I like bread or yes,
I think I like bread. We’ve substituted “like bread” for “I do”.
4. Ellipses
Sometimes we do not need to provide a substitute for a word or a phrase which already
has been said. We can simply omit it and note that the missing part can be reconstructed
quite successfully e.g.
i. Would you like a glass of juice? Instead of answering with yes, I would like a
glass of juice we can just say yes, I would. We have elided some words but not
lost meaning.
In this way, we know that the phrase like a glass of juice will be understood.
ii. What are you doing? We can answer eating a cake instead of I am eating a cake
because we know that I am is understood and does not have to be said.
Omitting parts of sentences on the assumption that an earlier sentence or the context will
make the message clearer is called ellipsis.
5. Conjunctions
These provide formal relations between sentences and are shown by words and phrases
which explicitly draw attention to the type of relationship which exist between one clause
and another. These words and phrases are called conjunctions and sometimes they may
simply add more information to what has already been said e.g. and, furthermore, to add
to that, moreover etc.
Other conjunctions may elaborate or exemplify what has already been said e.g. for
instance, thus in other words, hence etc.
Other conjunctions may contrast new information with the old one or put another side to
the argument e.g. ox, on the other hand, however, conversely, in contrast; all these are
known as adversatives.
Others may relate new information to what has already been given in terms of causes e.g.
so, consequently, because, for this reason; or they may relate new information in terms of
35
time e.g. formerly, then, in the end, next, or other conjunctions may indicate a new
departure or a summary e.g. by the way, well, to sum up, anyway etc. these are causal.
There are many words and phrases which can be put in this category in English and many
different ways in which they can be classified. They indicate the relationship of
utterances in the mind or in the world and are thus in a way contextual. Their presence or
absence in discourse often contributes to style.
6. Referring expressions
There are various expressions which can be used to refer and those which cannot be used
to refer (reference)
a. Use of indefinite expressions: there are some independent expression like a man,
a rainbow, a beautiful girl, a line etc. which are typically used to introduce entities
into the discourse.
In each of these examples, the speaker intends the hearer to recognize that there is
an individual entity referred to by the expression used but there are some
circumstances in which an indefinite expression is unlikely to be taken as a
referring expression e.g. my father was a stones man. Stones man is not a
referring expression but just gives attributes complement of my father.
The indefinite noun phrase a Stoneman is not used as a referring expression in this
particular sentence. It appears as a complement of the verb “to be” (wasp). To
assign referential or non-referential use of indefinite expressions, the discourse
analyst should have clear contextual or co-textual cues to guide them.
b. The use of proper nouns: proper nouns can be used as referring expressions e.g.
Mr. Enoch, Plato. Proper names are used to identify individuals uniquely but they
need to be used in specific contexts. Some proper nouns, however, are taken to
have a unique referent regardless of context e.g. the name Plato- the Greek
philosopher. But this assumption can be misleading where a person can refer to
her child as Plato or can refer to any other entity other than the Greek philosopher
e.g. Plato is on the bottom shelf of the book case- in this case Plato refers to a
publication of his.
c. Use of definitive noun phrase (NP) e.g. The matron, the priest. Such expressions
are discourse specific in their referential function. These are subsequent referent
to an entity which has already been mentioned in an earlier part of the discourse
or to salient objects in the physical world context. However, some definite noun
phrases even as subjects of their sentences may be used non-referentially e.g. “the
killer”. A situation in which one refers to a specific individual by using an
expression ‘the killer’ may be seen as a referring expression and in an alternative
situation in which one uses the expression ‘the killer’ without referring to a
specific individual may simple mean whoever did the killing.
Most texts will reveal cohesive structuring. This is necessary for a text to be
identified as a text. If the interpretation of the passage depends on something else
and if that something else is verbally explicit then there is cohesion in that text.
The links explained above are neither necessary nor sufficient to account for our
sense of unity of discourse. Their presence does not automatically make a passage
coherent and their absence does not automatically make it meaningless. It should
36
be clear that correctness and the effect of some expressions can not only be
judged within a sentence but must be judged with other sentences in the discourse.
CHAPTER NINE: TOPICS AND VARIATION IN INFORMATION STRUCTURE AND
SYNTACTIC FORMS
By the end of this lesson, the learner will be able to analyze the concepts of topic, theme,
rheme discuss their role in the organisation of discourse structure.
Focus: Chapter 3: pp 68-124; Chapter 4: pp 125-152
There is a wide range of possible inferences made by readers in interpreting discourse. The
readers may rely on syntactic structure and lexical items to arrive at an interpretation. The
reader/hearer may attempt to arrive at the writer’s/speaker’s intended meaning by use of
reference and the grammatical features of context. They may also use the regularities of
discourse structure in terms of the organization of information structure i.e. given and new,
theme and rheme, topic and comment etc.
The notion topic is an intuitively satisfactory way of describing the “unifying principle which
makes a stretch of discourse about something and the next about something else.”
Types of topics
1. Sentential topic: One use of the term topic is associated with descriptions of sentence
structure.
According to Hockett 1958 a distinction can be made between the topic and the
comments in a sentence in that, the speaker announces a topic and then says something
about it. In English, topics are usually also subjects and comments are predicates from
this e.g. of English the sentential topic may coincide with the grammatical subjects e.g.
John ran away
Topic comment
Subject predicate
This is the treatment of topic as a grammatical term. Identify constituent in the structure
of a sentence.
The term topic then as found in descriptions of sentence structure is essentially a term
which identifies a particular sentential constituent.
2. Discourse topic: Of interest here is the general notion of topic as “What is being talked
about” in a conversation.
This is not identifiable as one part of a sentence. It is not sentences that have topics but
speakers. Topic then cannot be treated like it was somehow expressible by a simple noun
phrase.
37
Discourse topic is not a noun phrase but a proposition in which some claim is made.
Discourse topic is therefore seen as of immediate concern i.e. what we are talking about
at that time= topic
The implication is that there must be, for any fragment of conversation/discourse, a single
proposition expressed as a phrase or a sentence represents the discourse topic of the
whole of the fragment.
The topic of a text may be equivalent in the title and there is a single correct expression
which is the topic.
However, in other situations, the comprehension of English depends not only on
knowledge of language but also on extra knowledge particularly related to context in
which the texts occur. The analysis of texts which depend on the accompanying visual
material for others for which the topic must be provided.
For any text, there are a number of possible titles, corresponding for any text a number of
different ways for expressing the topic. The expression of the topic will effectively
provide a different judgment that is being written or talked about in a text.
THEME AND RHEME
These two terms are used in structural organization of the sentence.
Theme- refers to a formal category, the left most constituent of the sentence. Each simple
sentence has a theme that is “the starting point of the utterance” and a rheme that is “everything
else that follows in the sentence which consists of what the speaker states about the theme.”
The theme is what speakers/writers use as the point of departure according to Halliday (1967)
In many cases, the theme of a declarative sentence will be a noun phrase otherwise called the
grammatical subject. The theme of interrogatives will be the interrogative (wh-) words and in
imperatives the theme will be the imperative form of the verb.
The left most constituent in the sentence is the grammatical subject of the declarative sentence
hence theme and grammatical subject may be used interchangeably. But in the discussion on
discourse, the term “theme” may be used rather than “grammatical subject” according to Clark
and Clark (1977).
It is important to note that the leftmost constituent is not always the grammatical subject. In
declarative sentences for example, it is frequently that adverbs/adverbial phrases may precede
the grammatical subjects
Example:
1. Late that afternoon, she received a replied paid telegram.

2. Without hesitation, Betty replied.
3. In one place, Betty saw the remains of the study safe.
4. Then she went on.
These examples are from a detective novel which thematizes time adverbials. All those
underlined are time adverbials.
38
The direct link between what has gone before and what is asserted in the main clause of the
sentence is the adverbially expressed relationship from a travel brochure:
i. On some islands, it is best if you…

ii. In Greece and Turkey, you’re met at the airport…
iii. In all other places, we make bookings.
iv. In some centers, we have local agents.
The themes in these examples are locational adverbials. In general: we can suggest that the
constituent which is thematized in a sentence is what the sentence is about regardless of whether
or not the constituent is the grammatical subject.
Meanwhile, there is another set of adverbials which are frequently thematized but which do not
contribute to the structure of the discourse. This set includes: Metalingual comments in which
the speaker/writer specifically comments on how what he is saying is to be taken. He/she mat
comment on the structure of what he/she is saying e.g.
Let me begin by, first of all I shall…, I shall now turn to, in conclusion, finally
The speaker/writer may comment on their content to believe in what they are saying;
E.g. Obviously…
Off course…
Clearly…
Perhaps…
Possible…
Supposedly…
Etc.
The speaker/writer may produce an expression which indicates how the recipient is to get what
the content in his memory
E.g. … in confidence
Briefly…
…between you and me
Frankly…
It is clear that this thematized “metalingual comment” is not to be integrated with the
representation of content which the recipient is constructing. It merely gives him directions about
the type of structure of mental representation he should be constructing.
39
i. Once upon a time- this instructs the recipient to construct a fairy tale model.
ii. More importantly- instructs the recipient about the internal structure of the model.
iii. Perhaps- comments on the reliability of what is being asserted.
It is hard to make judgements on the effect of different placings of adverbials in sentences in

isolation e.g.
Frankly, I don’t think he will.
I frankly don’t think he will.
I don’t think he will, frankly.
Some hearers feel these variations produce no difference in meaning while others perceive slight
differences in meaning. This issue is little understood in linguistics according to Cook 1989
Conclusion:
Theme is a formal category in the analysis of sentences.
Theme has 2 main functions:
1. Connecting back and linking into the previous discourse maintaining a coherent point of
view.
2. Serving as a point of departure for the further development of the discourse.
NOTE:
THEMATIZATION
Is used in the organization of units larger than the sentence. It is then a discourse rather than
simply a sentential process. What the speaker/writer puts first will influence the interpretation of
the text which follows it.
The first sentence of the first paragraph will constrain the interpretation not only of the paragraph
but also of the rest of the text i.e. every sentence forms part of a developing cumulative
instruction which tells us how to construct a coherent representation.
RULES AND REGULATIONS
Rules: refers to the writing rules of grammar which are fixed and true all the time. The grammar
must have categorical rules (NP, VP)
The rules of grammar then appear to be treated in the same way as laws in the physical sciences.
This restricts their applicability i.e. Language is rule governed e.g. if a sentence begins with the
article 'the’, there are rules that limit what word can follow it. The sentence cannot continue ‘the
an’.
40
Examples:
The girls rode their motorcycles through the corn
The girls’ rode their motorcycles through the corn- incorrect- possessive.
The girls rided their motorcycles through the corn.
The girls road their motorcycles through the corn.
There are also rules which limit what kind of sentence can follow another. If we violate rules of
sentences we produce wrong sentences. Wrong sentences may include those with:
I. Morphological errors- this is where parts of the word are wrongly put e.g. The knight kill
a dragon- tense is wrong.
II. Syntactic errors- this involves wrong word order e.g. the a knight dragon killed
III. Semantic errors- involve the wrong meaning e.g. the knight killed a teaspoon.
In the same way that there are rules within sentences which limit words following others, so
there are rules within discourse limiting which sentences can follow another e.g.
i. The knight killed the dragon. He cut off its head with his sword.
ii. The knight killed the dragon. The pineapple was on the table- no cohesion.
To recognize a stretch of language as unified and meaningful, we employ language rules of the
type studied by grammarians taught in language text books. These rules operate between
sentences and across sentence boundaries.
1. Regularities: refers to the frequency with which a particular linguistic feature occurs under
certain conditions in the discourse data. For example one can look at the use of pronouns
in a given text to see how they are used to represent social actors (see Ndambuki, J.M. &
Janks, H. (2010) ‘Political Discourses, Women’s Voices: Mismatches in Representation?’
In Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis Across Disciplines (CADAAD) Journal. Vol.
4 (1): 73-92 (online).
The discourse analyst is mainly interested in the level of frequency which reaches significance in
perceptual terms. Thus, a regularity in discourse is a linguistic feature which occurs in a
definable environment with a significant frequency- frequency of occurrence of linguistic
features. In discourse, text regularities will include: Regularities of topic given a new
information, theme and rheme etc. the discourse analyst attempts to interpret these features.
41
CHAPTER TEN: INFORMATION STRUCTURE

Expected Learning Outcome
By the end of the course, the learner will be able to explain the concepts of Given and
New information and their role in information structure.
Focus: Chapter 1 pp. 1-25.Chapter 5 pp 153-188.
Basically, we look at the way information structure is manifested is syntax i.e. how information
is structured in sentences.
GIVEN AND NEW INFORMATION
In English, new information is introduced by indefinite expression subsequently referred to by
definite expressions. This involves the use of the two articles, ‘a’ and ‘the’
A- Indefinite expression- to introduce
THE- Definite expression- to refer back
Article ‘a’ represents our primary perception and denotes individuals as unknown.
Article ‘the’ represents our secondary perceptions and denotes individuals as known
e.g. ‘a’ There goes a man with a heavy jacket.
There goes the man with the heavy jacket.
A man in e.g. 1 is new information- becomes given information
Given and Syntactic Forms
a. Yesterday I saw a little girl get bitten by a dog. I tried to catch the dog but it ran away.
b. Mary got some beer out of the car. The beer was warm.
c. Yesterday, Beth sold her Chevy (type of car). Today Glen bought the car.
d. I bought a painting last week. I really like paintings.
e. Robert found an old car. The steering wheel had broken off.
f. What happened to the jewels? They were stolen by a customer.
g. I saw two young people there. He kissed her.
h. (Sag produces a cleaver and prepares to hack off his left hand)
He never actually does it.
i. Look out, it is falling.
j. William works in Manchester, so do I.
From the above examples, given information include:
42
i. Lexical units which are mentioned for the second time particularly those as in
definite expressions as in a and b
ii. Given information include lexical units which are presented as being within the
semantic field of a previously mentioned lexical unit particularly those as in
definite expressions as in c, d and e
iii. Given information includes pronominals used anaphorically following full lexical
form in the preceding sentence as in a, f and g.
iv. Pronominals used exophorically to refer to the physical context of situation where
the referent is present as in h and i.
v. Given information will include pro-verbals as in h and j.
According to Sanford and Garrod (1981):
They suggest that the given and new information can apply to any sentence in a discourse and is
signaled both in the syntax and intonation.
Example: it was Mary / who left
New information/ Given information
Psychological Status of Givenness
This is seen in terms of speaker expectations. Given information is specified as being treated by
the speaker as “recoverable either anaphorically or situationally”. New information is said to be
focal in the sense that the speaker presents it as not being recoverable from the preceding
discourse.
In the above example “who left” can be recovered from Mary (previous discourse).
That’s according to Halliday 1967
Dahl (1976) remarks: the concept of old and new information is used to explain such phenomena
in language as intonation, stress, word order, and the use of anaphoric devices.
Chafe (1970-1976) says old information (given) suggests it is what the listener is expected to
know already. He insists that given status should be restricted to “that knowledge which the
speaker assumes to be in the consciousness of the addressee at the time of the utterance.”
Clark (1977) supports Chafe by taking the general view of given status as what the listener is
expected to know already. Thus, given information should be identifiable and new information
unknown. Listeners should be confident that the given information conveys information they can
identify uniquely.
INFORMATION STRUCTURE IN DISCOURSE COOK 1989
There are many interpretations and explanations of the aspect of communication yet all
interpretations agree that a pre-requisite of the explanation is used to divide a sentence or a
clause into two.
43
A sentence has bi-partite structure and this enables us to bring different bits of information into
differing prominence.
One explanation is that the ordering of information is determined by the sender’s hypothesis
about what the receiver does know and does not now.
That which the sender thinks the receiver already knows (given information).
That which the sender thinks the receiver does not know (new information).
Any unit of information may be the status as the discourse proceeds and what was new in one
sentence becomes given in the next precisely because it has just been said.
Communication can therefore be defined as the conversion of new information into given
information. A successful communicator is a person who correctly assesses the state of
knowledge of his interlocutor.
A typical discourse therefore proceeds as follows
Given- New Given- -New Given- - New
Examples of given and new information
I. Earnest Miller Hemingway was born/ in 1899 at Oak park

Given New
The speaker or writer assumes we know the existence of the writer called Earnest Miller
Hemingway or we have seen his name on the cover or even without previous knowledge
of his name or sight of the cover of his book we process new information at the very
beginning of a discourse. However, one piece of what is probably new information can be
stepped into the middle of the given information e.g. the middle name Miller may be the
new information may be new information in the given information.
II. He was / the 2nd of 6 children

Given / New
III. The family / spent the holidays in a Lakeside hunting lodge.
Given / New
The ordering of given and new information is not always straight forward. Sometimes new
information is forced to the front as if it were given information e.g.
Although he was energetic and successfully / Earnest Hemingway / twice ran away from home.
New / Given / New
The two-part structure of each clause may select the way the sender organizes information in the
mind. The sender may wish to make certain points of the message. The topic of what he/she is
saying- the focus of attention- and others simply comments.
44
In speech, stress and intonation can draw attention to any part of an utterance. However, the
choices we make about the order of the information in discourse reveal our own assumptions
about the world and about the people we are trying to communicate with.
The truth of those assumptions gives unity to our discourse and success to our communication.
CHAPTER ELEVEN: COHERENCE IN THE INTERPRETATION OF SPOKEN AND

WRITTEN DISCOURSE
By the end of the lesson, the learner will be able identify and explain the factors involved
in process of interpreting a speaker’s/writer’s intended meaning in producing discourse
Focus: Chapter 6 pp 223-270
The process of interpreting a speaker’s/writer’s intended meaning in producing discourse

involves FOUR main factors
a) Imputing communicative function

b) Top-down and Bottom-up processing
c) The role of Background knowledge
d) The role of schemata in representing background knowledge
a. IMPUTING COMMUNICATIVE FUNCTION
The social anthropologists and ethnographers studying language assume that that speakers
convey both social and propositional meaning when they produce utterances in particular
contexts.
In recent years there has been a lot of interest in the social interaction aspect of language use
Labov (1970) argues that there are rules of interpretations which relate what is said to what is
done and it is on the basis of such social but not linguistic rules that we interpret some
conversational sequences as coherent and others as non-coherent.
The recognition of coherence in conversation is not based on a relationship between

utterances but between the actions performed with these utterances e.g.
A: What is the time?
B: Well, the postman’s been already.
Here, the assumption of rationality on B’s part leads us to assume that he is providing an
answer to the question asked.
45
A: Can you go to Edinburg tomorrow?
B: B.E.A pilots are on strike.
This reply is taken to be a negative answer to the question because the strike will prevent the
speaker flying to Edinburg.
This is one interpretation of the speaker’s intended meaning.
A: That’s the telephone.
B: I am in the bathroom.
A: Ok
By recognizing the action performed by each of these utterances, we accept the sequence as
coherent discourse i.e. A requests B to perform an action. B states the reason why he cannot
comply. A undertakes to perform the action.
The analysis of the interaction can be made without taking account of the language employed
by the speakers as in
A: Indicates by pointing and tapping his ear that he can hear the telephone.
B: Points to the cat asleep on her lap.
A: Shrugs and gets up.
No words but actions used to communicate
In discussing discourse structure, Coulthard (1977) argues that the structure cannot be
expressed in grammatical terms i.e. the linguistic form of the utterance is almost irrelevant.
In other words, what is critical is the level of function of a particular utterance in a particular
social situation and, at a particular place in the sequence as a contribution to a developing
discourse.
More importantly is the issue of turn taking. In this analysis, the aim is to identify the
regularities of conversational structure by describing the ways in which participants take
turns at speaking. This involves regularities like adjacency pairs e.g.
i. Greetings
ii. Questions and answers so that if A says:
A: Hello
B: Hi
A: How are you?
B: Fine, thank you.
Turn is a unit of analysis according to the adjacency pair formula. What follows a question
should be treated as an answer to that question. E.g.
46
A: Are you coming?
B: I’m not feeling well.
Two formally connected utterances placed together form a coherent piece of discourse
because there is an assumed coherent structure to discourse over and above the frequently
described structure of sentential form.
b. TOP-DOWN AND BOTTOM-UP PROCESSING
The process of incoming discourse can be seen as a combination of at least two activities:
i. We work out the meanings of the words and the structure of a sentence and build up a
composite meaning for the sentence- this is bottom-up processing.
ii. We predict on the basis of the context plus the composite meaning of the sentences
already processed what the next sentence is most likely to mean- this is top-down
processing.
Top-down
Social relationships
Shared knowledge
Discourse type
Discourse structure
Conversational mechanism
Cohesion
Grammar and texts
Sounds or letters
Bottom up
The bottom-up processing operates with the rules of the sort presented in descriptions of
sentential syntax and lexical semantics.
The top-down processing utilizes the discourse context which creates expectations relating to
discourse content.
Once we start processing a discourse fragment we do not treat it as the one piece of discourse
we have ever encountered. We have our experience of having processed other discourse
fragments before. We can also draw from our experiences of the way the world is and that is
our background knowledge in the interpretation of discourse.
c. THE ROLE OF WORLD KNOWLEDGE
The general knowledge about the world underpins our interpretation not only of discourse
but of every aspect of our experience.
As De Beaugrande (1980) notes, the question of how people know what is going on in a text
is a special case of the question of how people know what is going on in the world.
47
The interpretation of discourse is based to a large extent on a simple principle of analogy

with what we have experienced in the past.
Adults process quite a large amount of background experience and knowledge. Existing
knowledge in the receiver of a message and the correct assessment of the extent of the
knowledge by the sender are essential for successful communication.
Interpreting the cohesive devices depends upon the knowledge of the receiver e.g. there was
a pineapple on the table. I ate it- to interpret ‘it’ we refer back to the first sentence and from
the background knowledge, ‘table is not applicable hence ‘it’ is a pineapple.
Successful participation in discourses whether in formal institutionalized discourse like

school lessons or informal discourses like conversations depends upon pre-existent
knowledge of how such events are likely to proceed and what sort of behaviour is appropriate
at any point.
d. REPRESENTING BACKGROUNG KNOWLEDGE
The role of knowledge in discourse production and comprehension has been significantly
influenced by findings in the field of artificial intelligence which attempts to program
computers to produce and understand discourse. This involves pre-existent knowledge of the
world.
For discourse analysis, the most important idea to come out of artificial intelligence is the
knowledge of schemata.
Schemata: are mental representations of typical situations and they are used in discourse
processing to predict the content of a particular situation which the discourse describes. The
idea is that the mind stimulated by key words or phrases in the text or by the context activates
a knowledge schema and uses it to makes sense of the discourse. To program a computer to
understand a discourse, artificial intelligence researchers need to reproduce typical situations
and to give computers both the necessary language knowledge and the necessary schemata.
The suggestion is that computers can be programmed to process discourse in a similar way to
human beings. This has been largely prevalent for example in the use of robots during the
Covid-19 pandemic.
HOW MENTAL SCHEMATA OPERATES IN DISCOURSE PRODUCTION AND

COMPREHENSION
Waking up schema
A: I woke up at 7 am. I made some toast and a cup of tea. I listened to news and left for work at
8:30.
Such a description is enough to satisfy the conversation.
48
The other piece of information with all the details will be seen as superficial and irrelevant. It is
hoped that the witness that we at least have the details. Once she says that she woke up, we
assume certain facts i.e. she got out of bed… etc. Till she went to the place of work.
We have the knowledge of waking up schema in the meaning and we have to fill in the missing
details.
It is a future of these knowledge representations that schemata are organised in a fixed way as a
complete unit of knowledge in memory.
Thus, knowledge of a restaurant for example is treated as being stored in memory as a single
easily accessible unit rather than a scattered collection of individual facts.
Riebeck (1975) Asserts that, comprehension is a memory process, undertaking discourse in this
sense is essentially a process of retrieving start information from memory and relating it to
encountered discourse.
Evidence for schemata
1. When people are questioned about a text or asked to recall it, they frequently fill in the
details which they were not actually given but which a schema has provided for them.
2. Evidence provided by certain users of the definite article proves the existence of a
schema.
E.g. I was late and we decided to call a taxi. Unfortunately, the driver spent a long time
finding our house.
The expression ‘the driver’ seems appropriate even though the driver is mentioned for the
first time. This is because our taxi schema contains a taxi driver and we assume that a taxi
that arrives at our house has a driver.
3. Interpretation of words with more than one meaning is determined by the schema
activated to make sense of the discourse.
E.g. the King put his seal on the letter.
The two meanings of ‘seal’ – one that catches fish and one that puts wax on something.
The schemata activated by the opening leads to an interpretation of seals for stamping
works but the schema can be upset by an unexpected continuation making one to read the
sentence again.
People use expectation based understanding. We can make mistakes in our predictions
and have to go back and refashion our conceptualisation/schema
Relevance of the Schemata
Schemata are data structures representing stereotypical patterns which we retrieved from
memory and employ in our understanding of discourse. The successful communicator tries to do
those features which differ from the scheme and nibbling the receiver to adjust it and to bring it
closer to the individual instance which is being described.
Schemata are sometimes considered to be determinist to predispose the experiencer to interprets
is experiences in a fixed way.
E.g. Racial prejudice – this is a manifestation of some fixed way of thinking about newly
encountered individuals who are assigned undesirable attributes and motives on the basis of an
existing schema for members of the race.
49
There may also be deterministic Schemata which we use when we are about to encounter certain
types of discourse
E.g. A: There is a party-political broadcast coming on – do you want to watch it?
B: no – switch it off – I know what they’re going to say.
Schema theory explains the reader’s choice and arrangement of information and communication.
Schemata can be seen as organised background knowledge which leads us to expect or predict
aspects in our interpretation of discourse.
Schemata can be viewed as follows;
Different cultural backgrounds can result in different Schemata for the description of witnessed
events e.g. A film with no dialogue. The American subject described actual events and filming
techniques. The Greek subjects produced elaborate stories with additional events and a detailed
account of motives and feelings by the characters in the film.
Schemata theory helps to make clear some of the vague notions of Grice’s maxims and Austin’s
speech act theory on the issue of relevance. Schema theory tries to explain the concept of
relevance. Information is relevant when it has a significant effect on our assumptions. Successful
communication must work within the framework of the receiver’s existing knowledge. It must
not make too many demands on the receiver. Successful communication gives us new
information but must work within the framework of the receiver’s assumption.
Schemata allow for human communication to be economical. It would be hard if every discourse
had to begin from scratch. The role of pre-existing schema will therefore explain Grice’s maxim
of brevity (brief) if we provide information which is already known then we are too long winded.
If we take knowledge for granted we are to brief. In either case we violate the maxim of brevity.
Misjudgements and mismatches of schema are particularly likely when people are to
communicate across cultures and across languages. The resulting misunderstandings are
prevalent in foreign language classification as it is important in discourse analysis.
CHAPTER TWELVE: STEPS OF DOING DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

By the end of the lesson, the learner will be able to practically analyse samples of
spoken, written and visual texts.
1. Refs: Fairclough, Norman (2003) Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research.
New York: Routledge.
2. Amy Luo (2019) Discourse analysis: a step by step guide with examples Revised June 2020
www.scribbr.com
3. Goodman (2017) How to conduct a psychological Discourse Analysis
www.lancaster.ac.uk
4. Ndambuki, J. M. (2013) The Focus Group Discussion as a Preferred Method in Gender and
Women Research. In Eds. Khamasi, J., Longman, C. and van Haegendoren, M. W. “Gender
Practices and Challenges: A Call for Accountabilit:y. pp 1-17.
50
The following are essentially the steps of doing Discourse Analysis are similar with slight variations
depending on the discipline. The steps include the following;
1. Define the research question and select the content of the analysis
2. Collect/Gather information and theory on the context; interviews, f
Focus Group Discussions (FGDs), questionnaires, participant observation etc.
3. Transcription of data
4. Translation
5. Coding your material for analysis
6. Examine the structure of the text
7. Analyse the content for themes and patterns
8. Review your results and draw your conclusions
ACTIVITY: Exercises on discourse analysis of spoken, written and visual texts.
51

Engl 321/ Elcs 322 Discourse Analysis Laikipia University Department of Literary and Communication Studies

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Engl 321/ Elcs 322 Discourse Analysis Laikipia University Department of Literary and Communication Studies

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Discourse Analysis notes JN

ENGL 321/ ELCS 322 DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

2. Deborah Schiffrin (1987) Discourse Markers. Cambridge. Cambridge: Cambridge

What is Discourse Analysis?

K- Key (manner of speaking, tune of

Discourse therefore can be viewed as follows:

CHAPTER TWO: EMERGENCE OF DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

By the end of this course, the learner will be able to

APPROACHES TO DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

A concern with the social and political consequences of language (signification).

3. CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALSYSIS (CDA)

Dimensions of discourse Dimensions of discourse analysis

CHAPTER FOUR: FORMS AND FUNCTIONS OF LANGUAGE

Focus: Chapter 1 pp. 1-25.

Spoken and written language

CHAPTER FIVE: SPEECH ACTS

Focus: Chapter 7: pp. 231-234.

The proponent of the theory of Conversational Implicature is Grice (1975).

Although communication between people is partially based on shared knowledge or structured

1. Maxim Based politeness:

2. Face Based politeness

Source: Leech (2014: 32) based on Levinson (1983: 236)

CHAPTER SEVEN: THE ROLE OF CONTEXT IN THE INTERPRETATION OF

2. Ndambuki, J. M. (2013) Local Community Leaders’ Constructions of Women’s

Example: communicative competence as opposed to linguistic competence.

CHAPTER EIGHT: COHESION AND COHERENCE

e.g. It is going down quickly, the sun.

The interpretation of ‘it’ is found in what comes later- ‘sun’

In this example, the relationship of co-reference is seen to hold between a full

Focus: Chapter 3: pp 68-124; Chapter 4: pp 125-152

THEME AND RHEME

These two terms are used in structural organization of the sentence.

1. Late that afternoon, she received a replied paid telegram.

i. On some islands, it is best if you…

…between you and me

It is hard to make judgements on the effect of different placings of adverbials in sentences in

Frankly, I don’t think he will.

I frankly don’t think he will.

I don’t think he will, frankly.

Theme is a formal category in the analysis of sentences.

Theme has 2 main functions:

RULES AND REGULATIONS

The girls rode their motorcycles through the corn

The girls rided their motorcycles through the corn.

The girls road their motorcycles through the corn.

CHAPTER TEN: INFORMATION STRUCTURE

Focus: Chapter 1 pp. 1-25.Chapter 5 pp 153-188.

From the above examples, given information include:

According to Sanford and Garrod (1981):

Example: it was Mary / who left

New information/ Given information

Psychological Status of Givenness

That’s according to Halliday 1967

INFORMATION STRUCTURE IN DISCOURSE COOK 1989

A typical discourse therefore proceeds as follows

Given- New Given- -New Given- - New

Examples of given and new information

I. Earnest Miller Hemingway was born/ in 1899 at Oak park

II. He was / the 2nd of 6 children

New / Given / New

CHAPTER ELEVEN: COHERENCE IN THE INTERPRETATION OF SPOKEN AND

Expected learning outcome: