Discourse analytic approaches

1. DISCOURSE
ANALYTIC
APPROACHES
Name : Khadija Hamidani
Mc190108178
Course : Discourse Analysis (ESEM5373)
Course Leader : Dr.Mallika

2. CODE MODEL OF COMMUNICATION :
Why is this model problematic ?

3. Why is this model problematic ?
• Neglects the role of context.
• Assumes meaning are in the words.
• Neglects the role of inferences.
Conversation is a collaborative activity. When you
speak you give people things to figure out. The
meanings of the utterances are strongly
context bound.

4. CONTEXT :
• Physical
Environment
• Participants
• Social Settings
• Prior Discourse
• Cultural Norms
& expectations.
We need to distinguish :
What is said :
"What does X mean?"
Locution
What is meant:
"What is meant by X ?"
Illocution

5. SEMANTICS
• Is the study of words and their
meanings in a language.
• Referential
• Non-situation specific meaning.
• Grammar.
PRAGMATICS
• Is the study of words & their
meanings with concern to their
context.
• Contextual
• Situation Specific meaning.
• Rhetoric

6. PRAGMATICS
• According to Yole, ‘Pragmatics is the study of
invisible meaning or how we recognize what
is meant even when it is not actually said or
written. That’s why; the speaker must be
able to depend on a lot of shared
assumptions and expectations when they try
to communicate.
• The most important principle is called the
cooperative principle.
• Co-context: Linguistic context is known as
co-context. The surrounding of the co-
context has a strong effect on what we think
the word probably means.

7. PRAGMATICS
- DEIXIS
• Deixis: is the process of 'pointing' via
language. The linguistic forms we use to
accomplish this 'pointing' is
called deictic expression.
3 main types of deixis include :
• Person deixis - this ,that/ he, she)
• Temporal deixis To point time (now and
then, yesterday, today and tomorrow)
• Spatial deixis To point location (here, there)

8. The Cooperative Principle
• Founded by H.P. Grice
• Speakers cooperate even
when they argue.
• All speakers design their
utterances in accordance
with certain norms of talk
and can expect everyone to
do so.

9. H.P. GRICE's
Maxims

10. SPEECH ACT
THEORY
is a subfield of pragmatics that studies how
words are used not only to present
information but also to carry out actions. In
short, speech acts are actions performed via
utterances.
• It was founded by Oxford
philosopher J.L. Austin in
How to Do
Things With Words in
1962 and further
developed by American
philosopher J.R. Searle in
1969.

11. DIRECT SPEECH ACT :
• Locution (what is said) and
Illocution (what is
meant) coincides.
e.g.
Please wash the dishes.
I hereby pronounce you husband
and wife.
INDIRECT SPEECH ACT
• Locution (what is said) and
Illocution (what is meant) differ
from one another.
e.g.
A: "Want to see a movie tonight?"
B: "I gotta study."
1- Declarative (Statement)
2- Interrogative (Question)
3- Imperative (Request)

12. 3 parts of Speech Act
Locutionary Act
Illocutionary Act
Perlocutionary Act

13. Speech Act Consists of :
Locutionary Act Illocutionary Act Perlocutionary Act
the literal meaning of what is said.
example: It’s hot in here.
Illocutionary meaning - the social
function of what is said. example:
“It’s hot in here” could be: - an
indirect request for someone to
open the window.
- an indirect refusal to close the
window because someone is cold. -
a complaint implying that someone
should know better than to keep
the windows closed.
Perlocutionary meaning – the
effect of what is said. example:
“It’s hot in here” could result in
someone open the windows.

15. Types of Speech Acts
Representatives Commissive Directives Declarations Expressive Verdictives
Assertions,
statements, claims,
hypotheses,
descriptions,
suggestions.
e.g.
• There is no milk.
• Paris is capital of
France.
Promises, oaths,
pledges, threats,
vows.
e.g. wedding
vows.
Commands,
requests,
challenges,
invitations, orders,
summons,
entreaties, dares.
e.g. ordering
a meal at
a restaurant.
blessings, firings,
baptisms, arrests,
marrying, judicial
speech acts such
as sentencings,
declaring a
mistrial, declaring
s.o. out of order,
etc.
Speech acts that
make assessments of
psychological states
or attitudes:
greetings, apologies,
congratulations,
condolences,
thanksgivings
rankings,
assessments,
appraising,
convictions, co
ndoning
(combinations
such as
representational
declarations:
You're out!)

16. INTERACTIONAL
SOCIOLINGUISTICS
Is a subdiscipline of
linguistics that uses
discourse analysis to
study how language users
create meaning via social
interaction (face to face).
John J. Gumperz.

17. KEY COMPONENTS:
• POLITENESS
• CONTEXTUALIZATION CUES
• FRAMING
• CONVERSATIONAL INFERENCE
• CROSS CULTURAL MISCOMMUNICATION

18. POLITENESS (Goffman 1967)
• Bald On Record Strategy
E.g. "Oh! I want to use that pen!"
• Positive Politeness Strategy
E.g. "So is it ok if I use one of those pens"
• Negative Politeness Strategy
E.g. "I'm sorry to bother you but, I just wanted to ask you if I could use one of those pens?"
• Off record / Indirect Strategy
E.g. "Hmm, I sure could use a blue pen right now."

19. CONTEXTUALIZATION
CUES (Gumperz 1982)
• signaling mechanisms used by speakers to indicate
how they mean what they say.
• recognized by listeners through conversational
inference and interpreted through their own
culturally- shaped background knowledge.
• Prosodic: Intonation, stress and rhythm.
• Paralinguistic: tempo, stress, pitch register.
In linguistics, prosody is concerned with those
elements of speech that are not individual phonetic
segments but are properties of syllables and larger
units of speech, including linguistic functions such as
intonation, tone, stress, and rhythm. Such elements
are known as suprasegmental.

20. CONTEXTUALIZATION
CUES
• Intonation
• Prosodic Choices
• Conversational Code Switching
• Lexical / Synthetic Choices
• Style Switching
• Facial and Gestural Signs

21. Research Methodology
Research Methodology adopted by Interactional Sociolinguists involves:
• Close Discourse Analysis of videos and audio recordings of
interaction.
• Conversational Analysis
• Exploration of inferential processes and social and cultural world that
provide the context for the talk.
A key element in research is taking into account inequality when
examining context.

23. FRAMING Theory (Bateson 1972)
•Suggests how
something is
PRESENTED to the
audience (called
Frame).
•It INFLUENCES the
choices people make
about how to process
that information.

24. FRAMING
(Batesons
1972)
• Situational framing: based on the setting (e.g.,
school, workplace)
• Functional framing -e.g., casual conversation or
lecture or sub frames based on differing
functions (e.g., telling a joke, telling a story)
being accomplished within the larger function
• Tonal framing - tone chosen by conversation
participants during interaction, (e.g., joking ,
sarcastic, or serious tone).
• Self-imposed framing -i.e., the way each person
frames him-/herself as intelligent, powerful, and
trustworthy; the way people frame one another
during the interaction, or other-imposed
framing.

25. Conversational Inference (Gumperz 1982)
"Speakers do not follow conversational rules, but are rather guided by
interpretive norms which are continually reinforced or revised in the
light of on-going interpretation."
Participants
actively predict
what comes next,
based on the line of
interpretation
suggested by
on-going talk

26. Cross-Cultural
Miscommunication
(Gumperz 1982)
• Cross-cultural: interaction with people of
different cultural, ethnic, racial, gender,
sexual orientation, religious, age and class
backgrounds.
• Process of exchanging, negotiating, and
mediating ones cultural differences through
language, non-verbal gestures, and space
relationships.
• process by which people express their
openness to an intercultural experience.

27. CONVERSATIONAL ANALYSIS

28. CONVERSATION
ANALYSIS
• A major area of study in the analysis of discourse is
conversational analysis. It looks at ordinary everyday
spoken discourse and aims to understand, from a
fine- grained analysis of the conversation, how
people manage their interactions.
• It also looks at how social relations are developed
through the use of spoken discourse.
• It was developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s
principally by the sociologist Harvey Sacks and his
close associates Emanuel Schegloff & Gail Jefferson.
• It is an established method used in sociology,
anthropology, linguistics, speech- communication
and psychology.

29. KEY ASPECTS
OF
CONVERSATION
ANALYSIS
• Turn Taking System
• Overlap
• Adjacency Pairs
• Insertion sequences
• Preferred and dis-preferred responses

30. TURN TAKING SYSTEM
• Basic unit of spoken discourse.
• Means how you get your turn in speech. A speech gets organized on
its own.
CUES TO ENDS OF TURNS:
• Falling intonation
• Eye gaze/ body movement
• Pause
• Selecting next speaker (Self Selection / Other Selection)

31. OVERLAP
Multiple speakers speaking at the same time.
Reasons :
• Timing Problems: A speaker mis projects
end of turn & starts speaking too soon.
• Interruption: Starting to speak before the
other is done in order to silence the
speaker.
• Backchannel: Someone speaks
without intending to "take the floor". E.g.
"hmm, yeah, oh, really, wow, ah"

32. ADJACENCY
PAIRS
A pair of turns produced by 2 speakers. First
turn 'projects' (or calls for a response)
• Question – Answer
• Invitation – Acceptance
• Opening Sequence – Response
• Assessment – Agreement
• Assessment – Disagreement
• Request – Compliance
• Preclosing sequence – Closing Response

33. TYPES OF ADJACENCY PAIRS :
• Contiguous
• Ordered
• Matched
• Insertion Sequence
E.g. A: "Where is the milk?"
B: "The skim Milk?"
A: "Yeah"
B: "On the counter."
• Preferred and Dis-preferred Responses

34. REPAIR
• Trying to "fix" something that
was said
• Self-Initiated
• Other Initiated
• False Start (also a kind of repair)
COCONSTRUCTION
• One speaker begins an utterance
and a second speaker completes
it.
• Able to finish other people's
sentences.

35. POLITENESS
NEGATIVE POLITENESS
• Making speech act less
infringing.
• Respect a person's desire to be
undisturbed, uncontradicted.
E.g.
If you don’t mind...
Sorry to bother you...
I wanted to ask you...
POSITIVE POLITENESS
• Establishing positive relationship
• Respecting person.
• Scratching other person's back.

36. COHESION
Utterances are linked together in different ways :
1- Deixis (pro-forms)
Pronouns, pro-forms, in sequences like I called Bob he said he was busy.
2- Conjunctions
Link sentences establishing a semantic relation b/w them. They can be of cause, addition,
temporal relation like this happened first, this happened next.
3- Lexical Cohesion (part-whole, category inclusion)
When you use synonyms. Part of the sentence refers back to an idea that I already presented in
the first sentence. My car is in the shop something is wrong with the brakes.

37. Variation
Analysis
(Labov 1972
& Waletzky
1967)
• Variation is a characteristic of language: there is
more than one way of saying the same thing.
• Variationists study how a language changes by
observing it. This is accomplished by looking at
authentic data.
• Language variation is a core concept in
sociolinguistics.
• Sociolinguists investigate whether this linguistic
variation can be attributed to differences in
the social characteristics of the speakers using
the language, but also investigate whether
elements of the
surrounding linguistic context promote or
inhibit the usage of certain structures.

38. Variation is typically the vehicle of
language change."
(R.L. Trask, Key Concepts in
Language and Linguistics)
"Lexical variables are fairly
straightforward, as long as we can
show that the two variants-such as the
choice between soda and pop for a
carbonated beverage in American
English - refer to the same entity."-
(Scott F. Kiesling, Linguistic Variation
and Change. Edinburgh University
Press, 2011)

39. Types of
Variation
• Linguistic Variation
the alternation between elements is categorically
constrained by the linguistic context in which they
occur.
• Sociolinguistic Variation
speakers can choose between elements in the same
linguistic context and, hence the alternation is
probabilistic.
• Dialectal Variation A dialect is variation in grammar
and vocabulary in addition to sound variations. The
extent of dialect differences is a continuum.
• Regional variation is only one of many possible
types of differences among speakers of the same
language.

40. Regional Variation
includes :
- occupational dialects (the word bugs means something quite different to a
computer programmer and an exterminator)
- sexual dialects (women are far more likely than men to call a new
house adorable)
- educational dialects (the more education people have, the less likely they
are to use double negatives)
-dialects of age (teenagers have their own slang and the phonology of older
speakers is likely to differ.
- dialects of social context (we do not talk the same way to our intimate
friends as we do to new acquaintances, to the paperboy, or to our employer)

41. Variation
Analysis
(Labov 1972
& Waletzky
1967)
• Labov and Waletzky argue that fundamental
narrative structures are evident in spoken
narratives of personal experience.
The overall structure of fully formed narrative
of personal experience involves six stages:
1) Abstract 6) Coda where 1 and
6) are optional.
2) Orientation
3) Complication
4) Evaluation
5) Resolution

42. ETHNOGRAPHY OF
COMMUNICATION
(EC)
It is an approach to language and social
interaction. EC seeks to discover the
cultural particularities and general
principles of communication.
It is the a method of discourse analysis
in linguistics, which draws on the
anthropological field of ethnography .

43. DELL HYMES
SPEAKING MODEL
Dell Hymes developed
a mnemonic device
SPEAKING MODEL
to describe the
elements that make
up any speech.
The SPEAKING model is
used by linguistic
anthropologists to
analyze SPEECH EVENTs
(one or more Speech act
involving one ormore
participants) as part of an
Ethnography.

44. 6 common
examples of
how
ethnographic
research
is collected:
• Social Media Analytics. Social media is used
by 2.3 billion people and any one Internet
user has on average 5.54 social media
accounts. ...
• Eye Tracking. ...
• Scrapbooks. ...
• Discovery Forums. ...
• Vox Pops. ...
• Online Diaries.

45. COMMUNICATIVE
COMPETENCE
Communicative competence” was developed
by Dell Hymes to describe, and account for, the
knowledge that speakers and listeners have in
order to communicate appropriately in different
social contexts. It is a central notion in
sociolinguistics and other socially oriented
approaches to the study of language.
It is divided up into four subcomponents:
• Grammatical Competence
• Sociolinguistic
• Discourse
• Strategic competence

47. Critical Discourse Analysis
• Critical discourse analysis is primarily positioned in the
environment of language and its successes can be measured with a
measuring rod of the study of languages. Language can be
used to represent speakers’ beliefs, positions and ideas in terms of
spoken texts like conversations. Written or oral messages
convey meanings if we analyse the underlying meaning of the
words. Analysis of underlying meanings can assist in interpreting
issues, conditions and events in which the educators find themse
lves. Using words can direct/assist those in control of the education
system.-(International Journal of Humanities Social Sciences and
Education )

48. Reflection
• Discourse analysis enables to reveal the hidden motivation behind a text or
behind research to interpret that text.
• CA helps to identify various facets and subtleties in an interaction that
would otherwise not be recognized by other analytical approaches.
• 2C Fairclough's approach (called 'Critical Discourse Analysis') assumes that
there is a dialectical relationship between language and other elements of
social life. It aims to help the analyst understand the social problems that
are mediated by mainstream ideology and power relationships, all
perpetuated by the use of written texts in our daily and professional lives.
• Unspoken & unacknowledged aspects of human behaviour can be revealed
by applying these approaches. Critical discourse analysis is able
to provide a positive social psychological critique of any phenomenon
under the gaze of the researcher.

49. DISCUSSION
QUESTIONS :
What is the knowledge that we have that
has been so hard to program into our
machines (robots) of 21st Century ? Why
do people understand language so much
better than robots/computers?
How can you use Critical Discourse
Analysis in shaping Language Education
System?

50. THANK YOU!