Discourse
Discourse analysis the the study of language beyond the sentence, in text and conversation.
Cohesion
Cohesion is the formal ties and connections that exist within texts. These connections can be common elements of meaning, tenses, people etc.
Coherence
Coherence is the concept of everything fitting together well. It exists in people not words or structure like cohesion.
Conversation Analysis
Conversation is an activity where two or more people take turns at speaking. People wait until a completion point occurs before replying. Depending on the conversational style and participators the turn-taking may vary. In speech pauses are ordinary but to prevent them from being interpreted as completion points we often use filled pauses (em, er, you know). An adjacency pair is an almost automatic sequence that has two parts. They are often found in greetings, Q&A sequences, thanking, and leave-taking.
| First part | Second part |
|---|---|
| Good Morning | Good Morning |
| Where’s Mary? | She’s at work |
| Okay, talk to you later. | Bye. |
An insertion sequence occurs when an adjacency pair is broken. This often occurs in service encounters.
The Co-operative Principle
The co-operative principle is an underlying assumption of conversation that you will “make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the state at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged.”
The Gricean maxims are the elements of conversational exchanges.
| Co-operative principle - Make conversational contribution as is required, when it should, for the purpose of the exchange. |
| Quantity - Make as informative as required. Not more or less details. |
| Quality - Do not say what you think is false. |
| Relation - Be relevant. |
| Manner - Be clear, brief, and orderly. |
A tautology is an expression that seems to repeat an element with no apparent meaning (boys will be boys). Hedges are words or phrases that are used to indicated uncertainty. Implicature is an additional meaning conveyed by a speaker adhering to the co-operative principle. An example of this is when someone asks Will you be coming to the party tonight and you reply I’ve got an exam tomorrow. There is an implied no as studying is more important than partying.
Background Knowledge
A schema is a conventional knowledge structure in memory for specific things (a market - has shelves, aisle, shopping carts etc.). A script is a dynamic schema (going to the market - get in the car, drive, grab a cart, load the cart etc.).
Study Questions
- How is the word “discourse” usually defined? Language beyond the sentence.
- What is the basic difference between cohesion and cohere? Cohesion focuses on connections within text, coherence focuses on everything fitting together in the interpretation of texts.
- What do you think the slogan “No gap, no overlap” refers to in the analysis of English conversation? We avoid silence but do not talk over one another.
- How do speakers mark completion points at the end of a turn? Ask questions or pausing at end of completed syntactic structure.
- What is a “filled pause”? When a speaker uses filler expressions such as em, er during a pause.
- How do we describe these regular conversational patters? Adjacency pairs.
Hi ~ Hello and Bye ~ See you later.
- What is an “insertion sequence”? Adjacency pair that comes in between the other two parts of an adjacency pair.
- Which maxim involves not saying things you believe to be false? Maxim of quality.
- Which maxim does this speaker seem to be particularly careful about? Quantity, speaker is avoiding all the details.
I won’t bore you with all the details, but it wasn’t a pleasant experience.
- What are hedges in discourse? Using words to indicate uncertainty.
- What is an implicature? An additional meaning intentionally implied by what is said.
- In the study of discourse understanding, what are scripts? Dynamic schemas.