Chapter Fourteen: Analysing discourse

Q What is discourse?

For sociolinguists, the term discourse is generally used to refer to stretches of spoken or written language which extend beyond an utterance or a sentence.

For philosophers, discourse is a broader term; it is regarded as a means of structuring knowledge and social practice, and language is just one symbolic form of discourse.

Q How is discourse viewed by pragmatics?

Pragmatics are concerned with the analysis of meaning in interaction, context is crucial in interpreting what is meant, and pragmatics extends the analysis of meaning beyond grammar and word meaning to the relationship between the participants and the background knowledge they bring to a situation, which is analysed in terms of conversation maxims and politeness.

Q What are conversation maxims?

Paul Grice formulated four maxims of cooperative talk:

1- Quantity: say as much as but no more than necessary

2- Quality: do not say what you believe to be false, or that for which you lack evidence

3- Relation: be relevant

4- Manner: be clear, unambiguous, brief and orderly

Q What are the politeness rules that Lakoff introduced?

1- Don't impose: use modals and hedges: I wonder if I might just open the window a little.

2- Give options: use interrogatives including tag questions: do you mind if I open the window? It would be nice to have the window open a little wouldn't it?

3- Be friendly: use informal expressions endearments: Be a honey and open the window darling.

Ethnography of speaking: or ethnography of communication, it is an approach developed by the sociolinguist Dell Hymes, for analysing language, which has been designed to heighten awareness of culture-bound assumptions.

* The frame work that Hymes developed for the analysis of communicative events involved the following components:

- Genre type of event: phone call, conversation, business meeting, etc.

- Topic of what people are talking about: holidays, sports, politics, etc.

- Purpose of function: the reason (s) for the talk.

- Setting: where the talk takes place.

- Key of emotional tongue: serious, jocular, sarcastic, etc.

- Participants: characteristics of those present and their relationship.

- Message form: code and/or channel (telephone, letter, email, etc).

- Message content: specific details of what the communication is about.

- Act sequence: ordering of speech acts.

- Rules for interaction: prescribed orders of speaking.

- Norms for interpretation: what is going on?

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Interactional sociolinguistics: Interactional sociolinguists typically make use of the detailed tools of conversation analysis, by paying careful attention to turn-taking behavior, hesitations, pauses, and paralinguistic behavior (sights, laughter, in-breaths, etc) to interpret what the speaker intended.

Q What is Contextualisation cause?

In an interactional sociolinguistics perspective, features 'by which the speakers signal and listeners interpret what the activity is, how the semantic content is to be understood and how each sentence relates to what precedes or follows'.

Conversational analysis: CA researchers approach communication as a jointly organized activity like dancing, or cooperative musical. Discourse is conversation (talk) which has its own structure (openings, closings, overlaps, turn-taking, interruptions, etc.)

Critical Discourse Analysis: it is concerned with investigating how language is used to construct and maintain power relationships in society; the aim is to show up connections between language and power, and between language and ideology.