Chapter 11- Discourse Analysis Making Sense of the Language We Receive…

Developed in the 1970s, the field of discourse analysis is concerned with "the use of language in a running discourse, continued over a number of sentences, and involving the interaction of speaker (or writer) and auditor (or reader) in a specific situational context, and within a framework of social and cultural conventions" (Abrams and Harpham, A Glossary of Literary Terms, 2005). Speaker/Author Meaning Words/sentences/book/article Listener/reader

The Language Recipient’s Job… WE ENGAGE IN DISCOURSE ANALYSIS WHEN WE…. …to talk radio …to music with lyrics …to the dialogue in film …to what someone else says in conversation READ LISTEN ….essays ….news articles ….plays ….poetry

Discourse Analysis Discourse (n): a linguistic unit (such as a conversation or story; can be spoken or written) that is larger than a sentence Analysis (n): an examination of something, its elements, and their relations to each other We analyze others’ discourse when we break down the elements of their large linguistic units in order to understand their meaning

Discourse Analysis Examples (I) http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-the-papers-36627672

Discourse Analysis Examples (II)

Discourse Analysis I “The study of language - beyond the sentence - in texts and conversations” Language users recognize more than correct/ incorrect/ fragmented messages Language users have the ability to create complex discourse interpretations of fragmentary linguistic messages Language users rely on knowledge about linguistic form and structure

Discourse Analysis Examples (III)

Is This Cohesive And Coherent To You? “My father once bought a Lincoln convertible. He did it by saving every penny he could. That car would be worth a fortune nowadays. However, he sold it to help pay for my college education. Sometimes I think I’d rather have the convertible.”

Discourse Analysis II “The study of language - beyond the sentence - in texts and conversations” Cohesion (making ties and connections within a text) Pronoun referents Phrases/common elements of meaning Transition signals Verb Tenses Coherence (making sense out of what we read/hear) Hey, someone’s at the door. (REQUEST) I’m on the phone. (REASON FOR NOT COMPLYING) Okay. (PERFORM ACTION)

Discourse Analysis III “The study of language - beyond the sentence - in texts and conversations” Conversation Analysis Turn-taking Fillers and pauses Cooperative Principle (‘Gricean Maxims’) Paul Grice (1975) Quantity maxim Quality maxim Relation maxim Manner maxim

Grice Maxims Illustrated https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcR9KYLuIGA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRMgGCNKijM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEM8gZCWQ2w Implicature https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUs8GAi_cIw

Hedges Words/phrases used to indicate that a speaker is not totally sure of the validity of his statement As far as I know, the thief was found escaping. I think evolution is just a theory. There might be a slight flaw in my logic. Those comments may have been too hasty. The results of the study suggest that there could be a correlation between smoking and early death.

Discourse Analysis V “The study of language - beyond the sentence - in texts and conversations” Background Knowledge SCHEMA (conventional knowledge structures that exist in memory) “You’ll never guess what happened to me at Publix last night…. I got to the register, and I was taking the stuff out of my cart…. and I realized I had forgotten my debit card!” You’d never ask: “What register? What sort of a cart? What kind of stuff was in there? Why would you need a debit card?” SCRIPT (series of conventional actions within schema) “Fill cup to line and repeat every 4 hours.” Not stated: Drink the medicine from the cup.

What Do We Look For? In analyzing discourse, readers and listeners: Look for COHESION Look for COHERENCE Expect discourse to follow CO-OPERATIVE PRINCIPLE Apply background knowledge in SCHEMA or SCRIPTS Much depends not on what is said/written, but rather on ourselves – our interpretation and the cultural conventions of how logic and conversation/writing should flow.

Contrastive Discourse Analysis Robert Kaplan (1966) attempted to graphically explain how different cultures arrange their essays or rhetorical style Though these “doodles” are by no means taken literally anymore, they represent a critical step in recognizing the contrastive nature of discourse analysis of diverse cultures http://ksuweb.kennesaw.edu/~djohnson/6750/kaplan.pdf

“Writing Across Borders” http://youtu.be/quI0vq9VF-c Two international students, MAHO from JAPAN and ANA from ECUADOR, are going to explain storytelling and essay structure in their cultures. Watch and ask yourself….. Are the organization of these stories logical to you? Are they easy to understand or difficult to understand? Is one structure more difficult for you? Why?

Japanese Example…. “American writing it is very important for you to make everything very clear, but in Japanese writing this is a bit different because readers are supposed to participate the story much more than American writing. It means that, for example, that in Japanese writing there are so many pronouns. And there are so many pronouns but this is the reader’s job to understand what this ‘she’ is and what this ‘he’ is and what this ‘it’ refers to.” How does the culture in which Maho writes affect how her discourse is analyzed?

Is this cohesive and coherent to you? “There are two daughters at the string shop. The oldest daughter is 16 years old and the youngest daughter is 14 years old. Japanese samurai will kill their enemy with arrows. Japanese daughters at string shop will kill guys by their eyes.”

Ecuadorian Example… “Remember Pablo…Remember how Pablo used to be in love with Mary. And remember Juan, remember that he also liked Mary. Well, yesterday when we went to the party, they started drinking and, you know, and I will go on and give all these details and maybe by the time I tell you ‘yes Pablo and Juan got in a fight because of Mary,’ you already have a complete idea of maybe 95% of what I’m trying to tell you.” “If I meet [a good American friend] for coffee….She will just go ahead and tell me, ‘You know what happened yesterday? Juan and Pablo got in a fight because of Mary.’”

Turkish Example… “In America I have noticed that the writing professors want short, concrete, understandable sentences…But in Turkish, what we do is we use long and elaborate sentences because we think that it’s more poetic and it flows better that way, and you read it for the sake of getting some kind of a pleasure out of it…And also, we pay attention to the fact that we need to have these essays look good, so we have different punctuations that are just designed for visual pleasure, like three dots, when you write a sentence, you end it with three dots that indicates that the thought goes on…..” Which of Grice’s “4 Maxims” might this writer violate? How would his discourse be analyzed by an American reader?

What Do You Think? Is it significant that Grice was a British linguist? Would his logic stand the same way in other cultures? What does Ana’s perspective make you think about Grice’s 4 Maxims?