3.

Discourse analysis

ORGANISATION: - the arrangement of ideas and the relationship within them in a script

- umbrella term for coherence, unity and cohesion

- the organisation criterion is often labelled as Cohesion and Coherence

cohesion: overt linguistic elements, structures

coherence: not all cues are present in the text, background knowledge is required

Coherence

 the logical progression of the ideas from the beginning to the end of a script or a paragraph

 in a coherent text: each paragraph leads into another and each idea within a paragraph leads into the

next smoothly, text is a unified whole

 the logical arrangement of the ideas varies according to the writer’s purpose

 three aspects of coherence:

1. A coherent text has an overarching theme or topic. All sentences in the text must be related to

one main topic, directly or indirectly.

2. Concept of continuity: sentences and paragraphs are logically connected with logical

relationships. These can be via…

 subordination (introducing cause-effect relationships)

 co-ordination (restatements)

 superordination (hierarchical nature of texts  introducing a chapter with a paragraph)

3. Information structure: emphasizing important info, presenting new info, choosing a pace to

present new info  can your readers process it?

Unity

 contributes to the smooth flow of the ideas and is usually assessed together with coherence

 in a unified paragraph all the sentences relate to the topic of the paragraph, and in a unified script

all the paragraphs develop one main topic

Cohesion

 the explicit marking of the grammatical and lexical relationships between parts of a sentence,

between sentences, or between paragraphs

 can be established with several techniques: cohesive devices (formal links between sentences and

between clauses)

1. REFERENCE

 the use of personal or possessive pronouns, demonstratives and comparatives

 the writer can refer back to something mentioned earlier (called anaphoric

reference) or forward to another word or phrase to be used later (called cataphoric

reference)

 anaphoric: Sheila thinks she is the smartest.

 cataphoric: Although she was the youngest, Sheila thought she was the smartest.

2. SUBSTITUTION

 the words typically used to replaced in other word(s) are one, do, or so

 not a meaning relation, but a grammatical one

 three types of substitution:

o nominal: one/ones

o verbal: do (so)

o clausal: so, not

 e.g. Girls like music classes. Most boys don’t.

3. ELLIPSIS

 the words referred to are replaced with nothing because the sentences can be

understood as the missing words have already been mentioned and consequently are

unnecessary

 also nominal, verbal and clausal

 e.g. I cleaned the house and my husband the garage.

4. CONJUNCTION
  conjunctions have a meaning of their own

1. coordinating conjunctions (and, or, but)

2. subordinating conjunctions (because, that, unless, when)

3. compound adverbs (therefore, besides, nevertheless)

4. prepositional phrases (as a result, in addition)

5. prepositional expressions (in spite of)

 conjunctive relations are categorized based on meaning. They can be…

 additive (and, furthermore)

 adversative (but)

 causal (so)

 temporal (then, finally)

5. LEXICAL COHESION

 nouns involved in lexical cohesion may have the same common referent (red and crimson both

refer to the same color)

 can be expressed via repetition, use of synonym, a superordinate, a general word, an antonym, a

meronym (saying wheel instead of car), an opposite (question vs answer), words in ordered series

(days of the week), unordered lexical sets (parts of the body) and collocates (bee and honey =

words that tend to co-occur)

GENRE AND TEXT TYPE

- genre: open set, new genres can appear over time.

o Importance:

 helps us understand the text+context and have expectations about it

 you can recognize genres just by looking at them

Genre: texts that are related to certain situations of use + share distinct external characteristics (e.g a poem’s

text is aligned in the middle, lines don’t necessarily have to have punctuation lines at the end, etc). Genre
denotes a class of conventionalized texts that have similar communicative purposes, structure, content, style

and intended audience, such as a business letter, a research article or a thesis.

Complex genres: they unite different genres in a comprehensive whole. E.g. church service  mixture of

prayers, a sermon and hymns.

Part genre: sections of a genre that may stand alone (research article abstract) OR have been studied separately

from the genre to which they belong (the intro or conclusion of a research article).

Sub genre: shared features but different communicative purposes (letter: inquiry, complaint, etc) or different

reports.

- text type: closed set. Genres are made up of different text types.

Text type: a class of texts that have similar internal linguistic features and rhetorical structure to fulfil shared

purposes. You can’t recognize text types just by looking at them, you need to read and understand them.

Five text types:

- narrative

- descriptive

- expository/explanatory: umbrella term containing subcategories such as process description, definition,

exemplification, comparison and contrast, cause-effect. (different ways of organizing ideas).

- argumentative

- instructive

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN GENRE AND TEXT TXPE: genres are a larger unit and text types are the

constituents of this unit. Text types don’t belong to one genre only. One genre contains several text types. A

novel contains narration and description, maybe comparison and contrast. A review article can be descriptive,

expository and argumentative. However, in most texts, one text type is the most prominent  dominant text

type, can be the name for the genre (argumentative essay).

ORGANIZATIONAL PATTERNS: how to organize texts?

- using text types to organize content into rhetorical patterns

- using tied-constituents patterns or

- determining what kind of information we have and check organization options based on that

Organizational patterns help with written text production, improves reading and preparing written summaries.
 1. Organizing content based on text types

1.1. Narrative

This text type is typically used to give an account of events in an orderly manner. E.g. in narrative essays,

reports and research papers (especially in History). Organizational principle: strict chronological order 

writing down what happened from start to finish. Adverbs can help (first, second, last, soon), adverbial clauses

of time (before the questionnaire was handed out..) and verbs in various tense forms.

Helping questions for narrative text types: What happened? With who? Where? How? When?

1.2. Descriptive

Capturing characteristics of a given object. As a text type, the organizational principle can be spatial order (top-

to-bottom, inside-to-outside) or non-spatial. In terms of lexico-grammatical features, this text uses nouns,

adverbs of place (below, above, within), adjectives and passive voice.

Static description:

- subjective description: writers’ personal response to something (e.g. impressions on a literary work)

- objective description: factual, focusing on the object of description. More academic.

Helping questions: what does it look like? what are its characteristics?

1.3. Argumentative

Asserting a position, belief or conclusion in a reasoned and logical position. Usually the dominant text type of

academic texts. Organizational pattern: claim/support (info that no one can question) first. Typical elements:

qualifiers (definitely, probably) to indicate the strength of the claim. Conclusion indicators (therefore,

accordingly), premise indicators (for, since).

1.4. Expository

Several text types (sub-patterns) with the aim to reveal and explain.

1.4.1. Process description

How sg is done, explaining the fixed steps. Strict chronological order. E.g. explaining the data collection in a

research paper.

1.4.2. Cause and effect

Presenting reasons why something happened / making predictions. E.g. in medical research papers. 2 patterns:

cause-to-effect or effect-to-cause.
Cause-to-effect: the cause is known and the writer has to establish the effects.

Effect-to-cause: the effect is known and the cause needs to be discussed.

Typical expressions: for this reason, hence, because…

Helping question: how does the cause lead to the effect?

1.4.3. Exemplification

Explaining a concept or phenomenon through illustration. Organizational principle: general-specific

development of the content: general statement is presented first and then is illustrated and supported by

examples. In order for it to be effective, the general statement must be followed by a sufficient number of

typical, accurate, relevant and documented examples. Phrases: for instance, for example, to illustrate..

1.4.4. Classification and division

Reveals relationships between a whole and its parts. Different logic pattern:

Classification: create categories based on individual items.

Division: break up one unit into parts.

Division and classification rules are good if they minimize overlaps.

1.4.5. Comparison and contrast

Two functions: to show the similarity and the difference between two thins. Organizational patterns:

Block-by-block=clustered (listing 2 entities and compare them by each characteristic feature) or point-by-

point = alternating method (comparing based on each characteristic feature/talking point).

1.4.6. Definition

Explaining the meaning of a term or idea. Long definition- = extended definition. Organizational principle:

exemplification, comparison, contrast…  any text type (or a combo of them) can be a definition strategy. In

an academic text, a definition can be isolated or dispersed. Isolated: a particular part of the text provides an

explanation for the concept which the writer will use. Dispersed: extended definition, can range from

paragraphs to larger chunks of text, even a chapter.

Basic structure of a simple formal definition: term, category, features.

 2. ORGANIZING CONTENT BASED ON PATTERNS CONTAINING TIED CONSTITUENTS

“culturally popular patterns of text organization”

A set of organization patters whose members consist of a minimum of two main parts that are compulsory,

occur in a fixed sequence and are functionally related.

2.1. Problem-solution pattern

Elements: situation, problem, solution, evaluation. Common terms are “unfortunately, lack of…, incomplete”

or any other terms indicating that there is a problem that needs to be solved.

2.2. Goal-achievement pattern

Elements: situation, goal, method of achievement, evaluation and/or result. There is a goal that writers want to

achieve, and they present how it can be done. Terms: want to, aim, objective, etc.

2.3. Gap in the knowledge-filling pattern

Elements: situation, gap in the knowledge, filling the gap, evaluation. Writing about something that is not

known or undecided.

2.4. Question-answer pattern

Elements: situation, question, answer and evaluation. Models the active reading process  readers also have

questions to which they are searching the answers for.

3. ORGANIZING CONTENT BASED ON THE INFORMATION TYPE

- if the further options were not suitable for the writing purpose, writers have to analyze what kind of

information they have, and then invent an organizational principle that suits the purpose. Some

examples are…

3.1. Level of specificity

Organizing ideas based on how specific or general they are. One possible way: introducing a general statement

first and then presenting particular details (explanations or illustrations). This order can be reversed.

First method (top-down)  deductive pattern, going from general to specific.

Second method (bottom-up)  inductive pattern, going from specific to general.

3.2. Enumeration

Transforming a list of related items into continuous text. Fact, features, examples, reasons and connectors (first,

second, in addition, finally, etc).

 3.3. Order of frequency

Ordering content from most frequent to least frequent or in reverse. E.g. when discussing changes (e.g. in

internet usage trends), writers can start with least frequent to most frequent to emphasize the last item.

3.4. Order of importance

Most-to-least important or vice versa. Terms: most importantly, even more, etc.

Celce-Murcia, M., & Olshtain, E. (2000). Discourse and context in language teaching.

Discourse
Formal definition: a unit of coherent language consisting of more than one sentence.
Functional definition: language in use.
Both are deficient on their own:
 “No smoking” can be discourse – really short
 we don’t always need the notion of sentences
 language in use is far too vague
 it presupposes that we know what language is.
 we need to combine the two
discourse – “A piece of discourse is an instance of spoken or written language that has describable internal
relationships of form and meaning (e.g., words, structures, cohesion) that relate coherently to an external
communicative function or purpose and a given audience/interlocutor.”
We need context and information on participants to specify the communicative function or purpose.

1960s-1970s:
 text linguistics – mostly dealt with written discourse
 discourse analysis – a more cognitive and social perspective on language use and communication exchange,
included spoken & written discourse
trends in discourse analysis:
 extension of grammatical analysis to include functional goals
o theoretical approach
o can be related to:
 formal linguistics
 systemic linguistics
 the study of institutionalized language use within specific cultural setting
o actual conversations in institutionalized situations (contracts, doctor-patient interaction)

in this book: discourse analysis is "an umbrella-term for all issues that have been dealt with in the linguistic
study of text and discourse” (ÖSTMAN & VIRTANEN)

a general movement in language pedagogy: focus shifts from grammar to discourse

Classifying discourse
- by medium / channel: written or spoken

- written or spoken

- register – level of formality, how formal

 - what genre – communicative purpose, audience, and conventionalized style and format

- by the number of participants:

 monologic (1)
 dialogic (2)
 multiparty (2+)

- by discourse planning:
 planned (letters)
 unplanned (most conversations, personal letters, etc.)

- by context:
 context-embedded (interlocutors rely heavily on their knowledge of the situation)
o usually unplanned ones
 context-reduced / decontextualized (discourse is removed from its context, relies more heavily on linguistic
knowledge)
o usually planned, usually literate spoken or written texts

- by function:
 transactional (goal: transmit information, exchange of goods/services)
 interactional (goal: maintain social relationships)

Information structure
 theme / topic (old information –what the discourse is going to be about)
 rheme / comment (new information – what the discourse shares about the theme /topic)

The old one precedes the new one usually.

In spoken discourse the old info is recoverable from the context.
In written discourse we need grammatical and discourse features (e.g. cohesion, coherence) more.
Sentences have to be locally well-formed. Have to fit in:
 syntactically
 semantically
 pragmatically

One sentence’s topic might become a comment in the next one (and vice versa)

Turn taking
It may be different in different (sub)cultures.
The conversational turn-taking system of any language includes conventions governing matters such as:
 how conversations open and close
 who speaks when and for how long
 who can interrupt (and how this is done)
 how topics get changed
 how much time can elapse between turns or between speakers
 whether or not speakers can overlap
 and whether or not speakers can complete or repair each other's utterances
adjacency pairs – the first speaker says something that conventionally requires of the interlocutor a response
that is often partly predictable.
E.g. greetings
1. Hello, how are you?
2. Fine, thanks.
They might have two options for the second part (e.g. invitation + refusal/acceptance; request for
confirmation + confirmation, disconfirmation).

Critical discourse analysis

~ deconstructs and exposes social inequality as expressed, constituted, and legitimized through language use
(PCness of the media, official situations – court, doctor-patient interaction, classrooms).
Poses questions, comes up with solutions
Many cr. d .analysts believe that language as such and mostly 2nd language teaching is ideological and
political (and therefore bears responsibility) and teachers should be aware of that! Critical examination of
textbooks. + being aware of reactions to what they say in class, encouraging open discourse community.

Context
"the events that are going on around when people speak (and write)." HALLIDAY
Discourse analysis of context: entails the linguistic and cognitive choices made relevant to the interaction at
hand.
Pragmatic analysis of context: the participants taking part in the interaction, the relevant sociocultural
background, any physical-situational elements that may have some bearing on the exchange.

Shared knowledge
most important in everyday speech
In informal contexts shared knowledge can make the discourse almost non-understandable for “outsiders”.
In formal situations, participants rely more heavily on physical context.
Where context is not available (e.g. written discourse) we rely very heavily on the text itself and our prior
knowledge.

In classrooms context-reduced texts are rarely presented along with the necessary background to help
students interpret it. It’d have benefits though:
 learning to interpret more difficult texts
 learning about the background (often history, culture, etc.)
Contextualized and interactive language use can be acquired in 2-3 years with optimal circumstances.
Decontextualized uses take 5-7 years (higher level of proficiency is required).

Types of context (DURANTI & GOODWIN)

 setting (physical and interactional)
 behavioural environment (nonverbal and kinetic)
 language (co-text and reflexive use of language)
 extrasituational (social, political, cultural, and the like)
setting ~situational context
language ~discourse context – the stream of prior language in which the utterance occurs
 ‘Who else was there?’ ‘else’: one needs prior information from the text to interpret this