Unit 5 – Discourse analysis

Table of Contents

1. Discourse Analysis
2. Texture
3. Intertextuality
4. Coherence
5. Cohesion

Intersentential: grammatical and lexical.

Intrasentential: topicalization and focalization.

Introduction

Discourse: any unit of connected speech or writing that is longer than a sentence and that has a coherent meaning and a clear purpose.

Discourse analysis focuses on…

• The knowledge about language beyond the word, clause, phrase, and sentence that is needed for successful communication. (goes beyond the sentence)
• Patterns of language across texts, considering the relationship between language and the social and cultural contexts in which it is used.
• The ways that the use of language presents different views of the world (Paltridge 2006: 2).
• Both spoken and written texts.

Examples

«Visiting aunts can be boring» 2 meanings:

1. Aunts who visit can be boring.
2. To visit aunts can be boring.

It depends on the context

Visiting lecturers can be boring.

Visiting foreigners can benefit the economy.

Closing doors can be hazardous.

(Widdowson 2004)

Cohesion

• Cohesion can be defined as the set of resources for constructing relations in discourse which transcend grammatical structure (Halliday 1994: 309). The term is generally associated with research inspired by Halliday (1964) and Hasan (1968) in systemic functional linguistic.
• In other words, it deals with how the information is structured inside a particular clause and between clauses through Cohesive Devices.

Types

• Conjunctions: and, etc.
• Link = tie = glue
• Discourse needs cohesion. It can be understood without cohesion, but it si more difficult.

Coherence

The coherence of a text derives from the coherence of the social environment in which it is produced, or which it projects; it is realized by semiotic means. Nevertheless, the decision to select particular aspects of coherence is always the act of a socially located maker and re-maker of a text. Power is involved in the making, recognition, and attribution of coherence in a text. (Kress 2012).

• Speaker A: The phone is ringing.
• Speaker B: I’m in the bathroom.

No cohesive tie, but these ideas are linked together due to the context. A and B share the same context.

They know it means “I cannot pick up the phoneˮ.

This text lacks cohesion (no links), but it is a coherent text.

Cohesion vs. Coherence

Cohesion refers to linguistic features (such as lexical repetition and anaphora) which are explicitly realized in the surface structure of the text: Halliday and Hasan (1976) provide a thorough account.

Coherence refers to textual relations which are inferred, but which are not explicitly expressed. Examples include relations between speech acts (such as offer-acceptance or complaint-excuse), which may have to be inferred from context, or other sequences which are inferred from background nonlinguistic knowledge.

Texture

A text derives its texture from the fact that it functions as a unity with respect to its environment (Halliday & Hasan 1976: 2).

M. A.K. Halliday (1968: 210) explained that a language speaker’s ability to discriminate between a random string of sentences and one forming a discourse is due to inherent texture in the language and to his awareness of it.

If, according to Halliday (1978: 137), a text is everything that is meaningful in a particular situation, and what you put in it to make sense, what is the meaning of this list?:

• Milk
• Spaghetti
• Tomatoes
• Rocket (lettuce)
• Light bulbs

Yes, it is a text because this list has a meaning in a particular context. It has different ideas and they all together make up a particular meaning: buy these items in the supermarket when you go there.

Hot! > Is it a text? Does it have a meaning in a particular context? > For it to be a text, we need a context.

You can have a text with one word. It does not depend on the number of words; it depends on TEXTURE.

FOR A TEXT TO BE A TEXT, IT NEEDS TEXTURE.

Intertextuality

• The meaningful relationship between one text and other texts creates what we call intertextuality.
• Examples: Shopping lists and market signs.
• In the process of making sense of a text one may also need to refer to its relationship with other texts in the world. For example, signs advertising the price of tomatoes or the label on the milk carton telling buyers the expiry date.
• Any text is affected by intertextuality.

Grammatical cohesive resources

Cohesion

Halliday and Hasan (1976)’s inventory of cohesion resources was organized as:

• Reference
• Ellipsis
• Substitution
• Conjunction
• Lexical cohesion

Cohesion and reference

Reference (= using a pronoun to refer to another word). There are 2 main kinds of reference:

1. Endophoric

• Anaphoric (using words, e.g., the definite article ‘the’, which point back to a word used before): ‘Lady Gaga appeared in a dress made completely of meat. The dress was designed by Franc Fernandez.’
• Cataphoric (words, e.g., pronouns, pointing forward to a word that has not been used yet): ‘When she was challenges by reporters, Lady Gaga…’

1. Exophoric

• Exophoric (words pointing to something outside the text): ‘If you want to know more about this controversy, you can read the comments people have left on animal rights blogs.’

Spatial reference

It deals with space, the use of compliments of locations.

• this pointer vs that pointer
• The reference closer or further away
• This, that, there and those
• Complements of localization
• The table “in the corner”.
• John is sitting “near to” Peter.

Temporal reference

• Terms of the verb
• Adverbs of time
• Then, now, later, before, ago
• Prepositions
  
  • At 5 vs by 5

Ellipsis

Ellipsis refers to resources for omitting a clause, or some part of a clause or group, in contexts where it can be assumed. In English conversation, rejoinders are often made dependent through omissions of this kind:

• Would you like red or white wine? – White, please.
• ‘There is much to support the view that it is clothes that wear us, and not we, them’. (Virginia Woolf)

Substitution

Some languages, including English, have in addition a set of place holders which can be used to signal the omission.

e.g.

«so» and «not» for clauses, «do» for verbal groups, and «one» for nominal groups.

This resource of place holders is referred to as substitution.

e.g.

• «Besides wearing a meat dress, Lady Gaga has also worn a hair one…»
• «If Lady Gaga was intending to chock people, she succeeded in doing so».
• Carlos pass the exam and Laura made the same. (the same = pass the exam)
• Carlos pass the exam and Laura did so last year. (did so = pass the exam)

Conjunctions and grammatical cohesion:

Using conjunctions (‘connecting words’), which can be grouped into different kinds:

• Additive (and, moreover, in addition, as well…)
• Contrastive (/adversative) (but, however, though…)
• Causative (because, consequently, therefore…)
• Sequential (then, firstly, subsequently…)

Lexical cohesive resources

Lexical cohesion complements grammatical cohesion. It refers to a relationship in meaning between lexical items in a text. The main kinds are:

• Repetition
• Synonymy
• Antonymy
• Hyponymy
• Meronymy
• Collocation
• Lexical chain or lexical fields

Repetition

Repetition refers to words that are inflected for tense or number and words derives from particular items. Read the following extract from and explain the purpose of the repetitions:

• Mr. Piggott lived with his two sons, Simon, and Patrick, in a nice house with a nice garden, and a nice car in the nice garage. Inside the house was his wife.
• “Hurry up with the breakfast, dear”, he called every morning, before he went off to his very important job.
• “Hurry up with the breakfast, mum”, Simon and Patrick called every morning, before they went off to their very important school.

Synonymy

Synonymy serves to achieve good style by avoiding unnecessary repetition (compare with intentional repartition before). They may or may not be in the same word category.

• I wish I hadn’t cried so much! I shall be punished for it, I suppose, by being drowned in my own tears!

Same class words are rarely completely synonymous, though. This is complicated by polysemy. Context will help:

• My tummy feels funny (= peculiar).
• Annie told a funny (= comical) joke.

Antonymy

• Words can have canonical antonyms: happy / sad happy / unhappy.
• Or they can have opposites: red does not have a canonical antonym, but it may have opposites in some contexts: red wine / white wine (Murphy 2003).
• Given the difficulty to define “antonymy”, Crystal (1981) posits it entails maximum difference between pairs.

Hyponymy (“x is a kind of y”) / Hypernymy

Henry’s bought himself a new Jaguar. He practically lives in the car ‘Car’ is the superordinate of ‘Jaguar’, its hypernym.

Alcohol

• Gin
• Sherry
• Wine
• Merlot
• Chardonnay
• Beer

As alcoholic beverages, Gin, Wine, Beer, etc. are all hyponyms of Alcohol, and co-hyponyms of each other.

Meronymy (“x is a part of y”) / Holonymy

Meronymy = a part of something

Holonymy – computer

Meronymy – mouse, screen, keyboard…

• Sleeve is a meronymy of coat, dress, or blouse.
• Brake / car
• Lid / box
• Cheeks, lips, eyes, forehead /face
• Face / human head

Example

Sun is a hyponymy (an example) of star; Venus and Mercury are cohyponyms (hyponyms of the same superordinate term; planet, which is their hypernym), and they are, together with the Sun, the Earth, and other planets, (co-)meronyms (parts) of the Solar System, which is their holonym.

Collocations

• It refers to association between vocabulary items which have a tendency to co-occur.
• Therefore, it is not restricted to a text, but it applies to a language in general. A speaker of a given language will have the knowledge to know what words co-occur.
• On a camping trip with their parents, teenagers willingly do the household chores that they resist at home. They gather wood for a fire, help put up the tent, and carry water from a creek or lake.

More examples

• Strong tea (but NOT powerful tea).
• Strong language (but also powerful language).

Lexical chain / Semantic field

Many texts are cohesive because that have what is called a lexical field or lexical chain.

Example:

Hospital	University
– Health – Patient – Doctor – Waiting list – Ambulance – Medicine	– Students – Teachers – Deadlines – Assessments – Exams – Anxiety

Words related to a particular word (topic) create a lexical field.

Intrasentencial Cohesion

Those dogs bit the little boy;

They hurt him badly.

He was badly hurt (by them).

Topicalization (fronting)

• That book, I won’t to read (it).
• In Paris, they all wear this.
• He said that he would cross the channel and cross the channel he will.
• In Paris those clothes she sells (them) quite well.

Focalization

• Phonological: marked tone units.
  He bought ORGANIC food. (notice the change in pragmatic meaning when we stress).
• Syntactic:
• Clefting: It was ORGANIC FOOD that he bought. (emphasizing constituent after be)
• Pseudoclefting: What he bought was organic food. (expressing contrast).