The Art of Discourse
Discourse is connected text (spoken, written, or signed) above the sentence level. It can be a letter, a speech, a telephone conversation, an interview, a novel, an essay, a story, etc. It is connected text in the sense that it is continuous and the sentences function coherently as a unit.
Spoken Discourse
An utterance is the basic unit of spoken discourse. It is a unit of speech on a specific occasion in a specific context. Speech act theory examines how utterances are related to action and how they accomplish things that are beyond the referential meaning of the words in the utterance. It distinguishes three different acts involved in any speech act:
Locutionary act: the production of sounds and words that make up an utterance's referential meaning
Illocutionary act: the intended or understood meaning of the utterance
Perlocutionary act: the effect achieved by an utterance on the recipient
A speech act is not complete until someone receives and interprets the utterance. Speech acts can be direct (intended meaning corresponds directly to proposed meaning) or indirect (intended meaning differs from the literal meaning of the words). Speakers make strategic choices within contexts about how to formulate a speech act to communicate successfully.
The Cooperative Principle of conversation asserts that participants will cooperate in creating and interpreting meaningful utterances while observing the following conversational maxims.
1. Quantity: supply as much information as required
2. Quality: speak the truth
3. Relation: be relevant
4. Manner: avoid obscurity and ambiguity and be brief/orderly
Politeness is a driving force in many interactions. Speech is often shaped to respect the face-wants of speakers and cultural norms involved. Therefore, many of these maxims are violated.
Locutionary act: the production of sounds and words that make up an utterance's referential meaning
Illocutionary act: the intended or understood meaning of the utterance
Perlocutionary act: the effect achieved by an utterance on the recipient
A speech act is not complete until someone receives and interprets the utterance. Speech acts can be direct (intended meaning corresponds directly to proposed meaning) or indirect (intended meaning differs from the literal meaning of the words). Speakers make strategic choices within contexts about how to formulate a speech act to communicate successfully.
The Cooperative Principle of conversation asserts that participants will cooperate in creating and interpreting meaningful utterances while observing the following conversational maxims.
1. Quantity: supply as much information as required
2. Quality: speak the truth
3. Relation: be relevant
4. Manner: avoid obscurity and ambiguity and be brief/orderly
Politeness is a driving force in many interactions. Speech is often shaped to respect the face-wants of speakers and cultural norms involved. Therefore, many of these maxims are violated.
Discourse markers are optional words that do not affect the proposed meaning of an utterance. They carry out the pragmatic function of signaling to a listener how to understand an utterance in relation to the previous utterance and the context of the relationship being negotiated.
Examples: now (serves as focuser), and (shows continutity), I mean (signals an upcoming adjustment) |
Conversations are highly structured. Opening/closings tend to be highly ritualized. Speakers negotiate turn-taking through the use of silence, questions, gestures, eye contact, and intonation. Often simultaneous talk occurs in the form of overlap or interruption. Speakers use back-channeling or minimal responses ("yeah," "uh huh") to indicate they are listening and maintain a conversation. Repairs also occur when a speaker clarifies an utterance that may have been misunderstood.
All speakers control multiple speech styles and can style-shift when warranted. Style can refer to formal versus informal speech as well as different types of talk (e.g. gossip, academic, social, etc.) Speakers can style-shift depending on the context and purpose of the interaction.
All speakers control multiple speech styles and can style-shift when warranted. Style can refer to formal versus informal speech as well as different types of talk (e.g. gossip, academic, social, etc.) Speakers can style-shift depending on the context and purpose of the interaction.
Written Discourse
To linguists, genre describes types of texts that occur within a specific context with a specific purpose for that context (e.g. the resume, the expository essay, the editorial). Registers are varieties of a language defined by use (Business English vs. Journalese). Register can also be identified by social level or mode as well (formal vs. informal). Stylistic conventions vary from genre to genre. Therefore, what constitutes "good writing" depends on the genre and register for which the piece belongs.
Texts are not haphazard. They are words collected for a purpose. Cohesion describes the linguistic features that tie sentences into one text. Cohesion is achieved through the following elements:
Reference: Items that depend on antecedents for their interpretation ("My new shoes are great. They are so
comfortable.")
Ellipsis and Substitution: Ellipsis involve leaving something out ("Who would like to go? I would.") and
substitutions use a holding item in the omitted information's place ("Who took out
the garbage? She did.").
Conjunction: The use of a conjunctive adverbial, a prepositional phrase, or a conjunction to express a
relationship between two sentences (e.g. in other words, for example, and, also, but, next,
finally, soon).
Lexical Cohesion: When one part of text is tied to another through repetition of words across sentences or
use of synonyms to create connections.
Stories or narratives in Western Cultures take on a specific form. A narrative is defined as a text in which something humanly interesting happens or a significant change in a situation has occurred. There are six parts to a narrative:
Abstract: an introduction to what happened
Orientation: background information about the who, where, and when of the story
Complicating action: events in which something happens or changes
Evaluation: comments that address why the story is interesting or the narrator's reaction to the events
Resolution: how the events play out
Coda: a final summary, which may provide a lesson or connect the story to the current context
Narratives are told from a narrator's perspective. Thus, they can be analyzed as a type of discourse. Audiences expect stories to work in conventional ways. They develop a relationship to the narrator which elicits intellectual and emotional responses based on pace and voice within the narrative and the relation between direct and indirect speech. Literary dialogue can be analyzed in terms of speech act theory and conversational maxims.
Poetry can also be analyzed linguistically. Repetition, patterns, recurrent structures, ungrammatical structures, and internal contrasts of content are a few linguistic items found in poetry. Rhyme and prosody give poems their "flow."