Chapter 6: DISCOURSE

STRUCTURE
 INTRODUCTION
Conversation analysts have shown that
conversation is very highly structured. Stubbs
(1984: 24) cites Firth's remark that the
moment a conversation is started, whatever is
said is a determining condition for what may
follow. "What you say raises the threshold
against most of the language of your
companion, and leaves only a limited opening
for a certain likely range of response" (Firth
1935).
Some other forms of discourse are more
obviously organized. The degree of
organization varies from the rather lose
structures to the highly crafted texts.
Discourses may be classified on the basis of
these patterns. Halliday (1985) makes it
clear that discourse organization is "a
dynamic order determined by the semantic
unfolding of the discourse.
 Table of contents

6.1 Spoken Discourse

6.2 Written Discourse

6.1 Spoken Discourse
The work of Sacks, Goffman, and Sinclair and Coulthard provides growing evidence
of a high degree of structuring in conversation, Stubbs (1984: 13) remarks:
Spontaneous conversation, although it may look chaotic when closely transcribed,
is, in fact, highly ordered. It is not, however, ordered in the same way as written
texts. I will argue that conversation is polysystematic: that is, its coherence depends
on several quite different types of mechanisms, such as repetition of words and
phrases, structural markers, fine synchronization in time, and an underlying
hierarchic structure relating sequences of discourse acts.
Several researchers have proposed concepts for discourse structures. Sacks (1967)
uses the concept adjacency-pair, which includes two-place structures. Goffman
(1971) uses the term interchange to refer to various structures of up to four places.
Meanwhile, Sinclair and Coulthard (1975) propose the term exchange for up-to-
three-place structures. Each of the parts is given the name ‘move’. Sinclair and
Coulthard call the first move in each exchange an opening move, the second an
answering move, and the third a follow-up move. Sinclair and Brazil (1982),
however, prefer to talk of initiation, response, and follow-up.
6.1.1 Adjacency pair

In conversation analysis, an adjacency pair is a two-part exchange in which the

second utterance is functionally dependent on the first, as exhibited in conventional
greetings, invitations, and requests. It is also known as the concept of nextness. Each
pair is spoken by a different person. 

Having an adjacency pair is a type of turn-taking. It is generally considered the

smallest unit of conversational exchange, as one sentence doesn't make for many
conversations. What is in the first part of the pair determines what needs to be in the
second part.

Utterances in an adjacency-pair are mutually dependent

Examples
1. "I really like your new haircut!"
→ "Oh, thanks.“
2. "I really like your new hair colour!"
→ "Oh, you’re just saying that... I don’t believe you
3. "Your phone is over there."
→ “Oh, yes.“
6.1.2 Pre-sequences
Cook (1989: 56) uses the term pre-sequences for
the utterances which "draw attention to", or "prepare (1) A: Have you got any jazz?
the ground for" what they actually want to say next. B: Yes.
For example, the following dialogue begins with a A: Can I put one on?
pre-request

(2)
- Can you fix this needle? (1)
Couthard (1985: 71) speaks of pre-sequences (pre-invitations,
- Sure. (2)
pre-requests and pre-arrangements) and gives a general
- Will you? (3)
explanation to them as"psychologically motivated structures
- I'm busy. (4)
to avoid loss of face for one of both participants resulting
- I just wanted to know if you
from a dispreferred second having to be performed".
can fix it. (5)
 Pre-sequences are mostly structures concerned with avoiding face-
threatening acts.

Examples:
1. Are you busy later No, I'm not Would you like
2. Are you busy later I'm going out How exciting
3. Are you busy later I'm afraid I am That's OK
6.2 Written Discourse
Traditionally closely related to the academic genres, namely paragraphs and
essays in general, and narration, description, process, comparison-contrast, and
argumentation in particular.

In daily communication, there are a great number of types of written discourse -

newspaper articles, advertisements, notes, memos, application forms, research
papers ... and so on. Therefore, there needs to be a generalized model to analyze
and describe the structure of all types of written discourse. Some pioneer
discourse analysts have chosen to discuss discourse structure in terms of stages,
elements, and/ or sequences as follows.
The structure of a written discourse is the staged, step-by-step organization of that text.
It is pointed out that the reason that discourse has stages is simply that we usually can
not make all the meanings we want to at once; as a result, in an interaction, it is
necessary to go through a number of stages. Each stage contributes a part to the overall
meanings that must be made for the genre to be accomplished successfully.
- By element, they mean "the smallest lexico-grammatical unit which can fulfill some
rhetorical function, significantly contributing to the overall rhetorical purpose of the
text. Each element marks a stage in the progression".
- The second level of text organization is referred to as sequence. A sequence
normally consists of more than one element and “serves a higher-order rhetorical
function than that of the individual elements in question."
The units of the hierarchical organization do not have to be of the same size. A stage is
as long as it needs to be in order to achieve its function. Text producers instinctively
know when the rhetorical purpose of a sequence has been fulfilled. That is, they avoid
going on too long (being redundant) or stopping before they have made their point
(being incomplete).

Green (1989) accounts for this from the perspective of Grice's Cooperative Principles.
He explains that in a text, each sentence could be seen as "representing a true,
necessary, and relevant contribution" to the speaker's plan.
The presence of certain elements, in a certain order, defines the Schematic Structure
of a genre. The order of the elements is a significant constraint. In many genres, most
elements are fixed in their order of occurrence.

Of the elements of schematic structure, some are somehow defining of the genre -
they are key to recognizing what a transaction is; some are not obligatory and could
be left out. The flexibility in terms of the presence and order of their occurrence
makes every communication original
The use of any given structure is motivated by the way text users react to the context
of situation and context of culture. The structure of texts reflect the general purpose
language is used for in a context. So, texts that share the same general social purpose
in the culture share the same underlying structural pattern. Another way that context
gets into text is through the lexis, syntax, cohesion, and Theme-Rheme arrangement,
which are constrained by the values of field, mode, and tenor.

As a result, in cross-cultural communication, even if foreigners can correctly deduce

the register of the text, they might still be at a loss to work out the overall function of
the text, its genre.
 1
2
3

4 5

7
 Following is an illustration of the structure of a written discourse - the body
copy of English travel advertisements (ETA) - in which we make use of these
symbols. It can be written out in a linear sequence as in Figure 2. The
obligatory and order status of each element is generalized from its distribution
in our analysis of 100 ETAs.
REFERENCES
Chapter 6. Discourse Structure, Ton Nu My Nhat, 2018