Discourse Analysis

1. Ministry of Higher Education &
scientific Research
Salahadin University- Erbil
College of Language-
Department of English.
‫الرحيم‬ ‫الرحمن‬ ‫هللا‬ ‫بسم‬
Discourse Grammar
2016-2017
AWAN K.MUHAMMED
MA STUDENT

2. OUTLINE
Discourse Grammar
The texture of a text
Cohesion: Reference items
Cohesion: Substitution and Ellipsis
Theme and rheme

3. Discourse Grammar
Discourse Grammar (DG) is a grammatical
framework that grew out of the analysis of spoken and
written linguistic discourse .
Discourse analysis and grammar study familiar terms
like : clause, pronoun, adverbial and conjunction and
attempt to adverbial and conjunction and attempt to
relate them to a less familiar set of terms: theme, rheme,
reference and anaphoric, in order to make link between
grammar and discourse.

4. The texture of a text
The notion of texture was introduced by Halliday
and Hasan to express the property of being a text.
A text has texture and this is what distinguishes it
from something that is not a text
Hasan (1989a, 1989b) discusses two crucial
attributes of texts and which are important for the
analysis of Discourse. These are ( Unity of structure
and Unity of texture)

5. Unity of structure refers to patterns which combine
together to create information structure,focus and flow in
a text, including the schematic structure of the text.
Unity of texture refers to the way in which resources
such as patterns of cohesion create both cohesive and
coherent texts.

6. • Cohesion refers to the the relationship between items in a text such as words, phrases and
clauses and other items such as pronouns, nouns and conjunction.
• It includes the relationship between words and pronouns that refer to that word (reference
items).
• It also includes words that commonly co-ocuur in texts (collocation) and the relationship
between words with similar, related and different meanings (Lexical Cohesion).
• Cohesion also considers semantic relationship between clauses and the ways this is
expressed through the use of conjunction.
• A further aspect of cohesion is the way in which words such as ‘one’ and ‘do’ are used to
substitute for other words in a text (substitution) and the ways in which words or phrases
are left out, or ellipsed, from a text (ellipsis).

7. Cohesion: Reference items
Reference refers to the situation where the identity of an ite
can be retrieved from either within or outside the text.
The main reference patterns are:-
• Anaphoric reference
• Cataphoric reference
• Exophoric reference
• Homophoric refernce

8. Anaphoric reference
Anaphoric reference is where a word or phrase refers back to
another word or phrase used earlier in a text.
Usually items such as : he/she or them, it, this can be decoded
without major difficulty .
Tom likes ice-cream but Bill can’t eat it.

9. Cataphoric reference
Cataphoric reference (forward reference) describes an item
which refers forward to another word or phrase which is used
later in the text.
Examples of cataphoric sentences are:
- My reasons are as follows: one, I don’t …..
- Here is the news. The prime Minster…..

10. Exophoric reference
Exophoric reference looks outside the text to the situation in which the
text occurs for the identity of the item being referred to.
Example
Custmer: what kind of book would you say this is? Where would you
put it on your bookshelves?
So here both speakers clearly know what book is being referred to in
this conversation( Monica’s story) . You and “your” are examples of
exophoric reference.

11. Homophoric reference
Homophoric reference is where the identity of the item can be retrieved by reference
to cultural knowledge, in general, rather than specific context of the text.
For example,
the meaning of the phrase “the Queen” may be determined by the country in which
it is spoken. Because there are many Queens throughout the world, the location of the
speaker provides the extra information that allows an individual Queen to be
identified. (Wikipedia)

12. Cohesion: Lexical Cohesion
Lexical cohesion refers to relationships in meaning between lexical items in a text and, in
particular, content words and the relationship between them.
The main kinds of lexical cohesion are :
• Repetition refers to words that are repeated in a text.
• Synonymy refers to words which are similar in meaning
• Antonymy describes opposite or contrastive meanings such as ‘shy’ and ‘forward’ in the earlier text
• Hyponymy is a less familiar term to most people than either synonymy or antonymy, but it refers to a
much more important sense relation. It describes what happens when we say ‘An X is a kind of Y
• Meronymy is where lexical items are in a ‘whole to part’ relationship with eachother, such as the
relationship between ‘Jen’ and ‘Stuart’ in relation to the item ‘couple
• Collocation Collocation describes association between vocabulary items which have a tendency to co-
occur. ( made up of two or more words that are commonly used together in English).

13. Cohesion: Substitution and Ellipsis
 Substitution
With substitution, a substitute form is used for another
language item, phrase or group. It can involve substituting
an item for a noun.
Ellipsis
With ellipsis some essential element is omitted from the text and can
be recovered by referring to a preceding element in the text. Ellipsis
may involve the omission of a noun or noun group, a verb or verbal
group or a clause

14. Theme and rheme
• Theme is the starting point of the clause, what the clause is
“about”, the “element which serves as the point of
departure of the message” (Halliday, 1985: 38)
• The remainder of the clause is the rheme.

15. In the sentence ‘Hiragana represents the 46 basic sounds of the
japanes language’
The theme is ‘Hiragana’.
The rest of the sentence is the rheme ; that is , what the sentence
has to say about Hiragana. In this instance ‘Hiragana’ is a topical
theme

16. Thank you