UNIT 7

Elements of narratives: (Labov)

1.

Abstract

2. Orientation
3. Complicating action
4. Evaluation
5. Result or resolution
6. Coda

Steps to follow when doing variation analysis (Patrick):

1.

Establish which forms alternate

2. Delimit the environments

3. Propose Hypotheses
4. Compile a data set
5. Compare frequencies/probabilities
6. 1st emphasis on internal linguistic factors
2nd emphasis on external social explanations
7.

Consider analysis primarily exploratory rather than confirmatory.

UNIT 8
Theme: point of departure. / Rheme: rest of the message.
Experiential themes
Non-experiential themes:
a) Interpersonal (pragmatic markers of attention, response, request, surprise, etc. /continuative themes: oh,
well, please/vocatives/adjuncts of stance ( apparently, surely, certainly...)
b) Textual: they connect a clause to the previous part of the text by indicating relations of consequence, addition
or concession (Connective adjuncts/discourse markers: anyway, however, first...)
Multiple themes: all 3 macro-functions of language (textual+ interpersonal+ experiential)
Detached themes: absolute/dislocations (left/right).
Theme: starting point of the message/Subject: syntactic element of structure/Topic: what the text is about.
Marked/unmarked themes.
Thematization: the speaker chooses what to put first (linear organization of sentences)
Staging: + inclusive and + general term. Refers to the fact that every clause, sentence, paragraph, episode and discourse is organized
around a particular term that is taken as its point of departure.

Information structures: Given vs New.

UNIT 9
1.

POST-STRUCTURALISM:

. Reaction against the absolutism and totalizing concepts of structuralism

. Self no singular or coherent. Fictional construct.
. Readers meaning/authors intended meaning. Decentering of the author.
2. SOCIAL THEORY: attempt to theorize the modern social world in any of its spheres.
3. MICHAEL FOCAULT: (Concepts of Discourse and Discourse Analysis)
His analysis of discourse:
1) Select your topic- identify possible sources of data
2) Know your data- read and re-read
3) Identify themes- categories and objects of discourse
4) Look for evidence of an inter-relationship between discourses
5) Identify the discourse strategies and techniques that are employed.
6) Look for absences and silences
7) Look for resistances and counter-discourses
8) Identify the effects of the discourse
9) Context 1- outline the background to the issue
Context 2- Contextualize the material in the power/knowledge networks of the period
10)

Be aware of the limitations of the research, your data and sources.

4. PIERRE BOURDIEU: Social theorist.

Symbolic capital: analogy between financial capital/symbolic resources.
Habitus: refers to individual differences in practical linguistic competence.
Bodily hexis: associates linguistic practices with deep-rooted bodily dispositions.
5. MIKHAIL BAKHTIN: Language is dialogic. Utterance as the basic unit of language.
Heteroglossia: collection of all the forms of social speech or rhetorical modes that people
use in the course of their daily lives.
Centripetal/centrifugal forces.

The concept of genres.

UNIT 10 CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

Van Dijk, Norman Fairclough, Ruth Wodak, Wetherell et all.
Main tenets of C.D.A:
1. CDA addresses social problems

7. DA is interpretative and explanatory

2. Power relations are discursive

8. Discourse is a form of social action.

3. Discourse constitutes society and culture

4. Discourse does ideological work
5. Discourse is historical
6. Link between text & society is mediated

Van Dijk ideological analysis:

1. Topic selection
2. Schematic organization (overall argumentation)
3. Local meanings, coherence, implications and presuppositions
4. Lexicalization and its implications
5. Style (popular style= inclusiveness)
6. Rhetorical devices (contrasts, metaphors, hyperboles and euphemisms)
Steps to follow when doing PDA:

Type of text analyzed: the mere existence of this text already tells us something

Aims of the text and how they are achieved

Multimodal strategies present in the text: mixture of speech modes, mixing oral/visual
language, presence of nominalizations(turning other grammatical categories into nouns:
presenting as given facts), presentation of supporting data (lists, tables, graphs),
thematization (giving privilege to).

Effect of the text

Variables to be analyzed in PDA:

a) Voice
b) Forms, strategies and mechanisms of evaluative language
c) Power of narrative.

UNIT 11 MEDIATED DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

Central concepts:
1. Mediated action: the unit of analysis in MDA
2. Site of engagement
3. Mediational means

Inherently polyvocal, intertextual and interdiscursive

Inevitably carry histories and social structures with them

In dialectal interaction with structures of the habitus.

4. Practice
5. Nexus of practice

Methods in MDA:
1) E.O.C. surveys of key situations and participants.
2) Issue-based surveys of public discourse
3) Public opinion and focus group surveys of issues and situations.
Each type of data can be seen from 4 different perspectives (Scollon):
I) Members generalizations
II) Individual experience
III)

Neutral-objective data

IV)

Playback responses

Central elements in Geosemiotics (4):

1. Social actor
2. Interaction order
3. Visual semiotics
4. Place semiotics

UNIT 12 FURTHER ISSUES IN DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

Units of analysis

Types of discourse: formal/informal; reciprocal/non-reciprocal; spontaneous/non-spontaneous;

Face-to-face/telephone; Public/private; task-oriented; Literate; Memorable; emphatic; Monologic;
dyadic/tryadic/group.

Political discourse; Medical discourse; Computer-mediated discourse.

Cohesion: set of semantic sources for linking a sentence with what has gone before.
Cohesion occurs when one element is presupposed by another. Types: 1) Grammatical
cohesion, 2) lexical cohesion.

1.

Reference (Grammatical)

2.

Substitution (Grammatical)

3.

Ellipsis (Grammatical)

4.

Conjunction (Grammatical + lexical)

5.

Lexical cohesion (lexical)

Intonation.

Cohesive tie: relationship between a cohesive item and the item it presupposes.
Martin: Cohesion is a set of discourse semantic systems at a more abstract level than
lexicogrammar:
1.

Identification

Textual meaning

2. Negotiation

Interpersonal meaning

3. Conjunction

logical meaning

4. Ideation

Experiential meaning

Coherence:
a) Cognitive approach: a property of what emerges in two collaborating minds during speech production and
comprehension.
b) Social approach: coherence as deriving from the notion of discourse as a social event, as action in its own right.
Global patterns of knowledge and experience:

Frames: activated when trying to develop a topic

Schemas: when thinking of how an event sequence will progress

Plans: how text users or characters in textual worlds will pursue their goals

Scripts: how situations are set up so that certain texts can be presented at the right moment.

Van Dijk defines coherence in terms of mental models. There are two main kinds of coherence:
I) Extensional or referential
II) Intensional

Discourse markers: a kind of pragmatic marker that establishes a conjunctive relation between two sentences.
For Hallyday and Hasan, conjunction is a kind of both lexical and grammatical cohesive device which refers to a range
of expressions which convey conjunctive relations:

Additive: and, furthermore, in addition, besides

Adversative: but, yet, though, on the contrary, however

Causal: so, therefore, then, consequently

Temporal: then, next, after that, finally, to sum up, in short

Fraser places Dms within the broader set of pragmatic markers:

1.

Basic markers: performative expressions (I promise, please)

2. Commentary markers: manner of speaking markers (Frankly, to be honest)

3. Parallel marker: conversational management markers (Well, O.K, now)
4. Discourse markers: connectives (but, so, then, however)
In Frasers view Dms are a type of pragmatic markers and they function as segment connectives which belong to any of
the following semantic categories:

Contrastive: but

Elaborative: and

Implicative: so

Temporal: then

Discourse strategies and their functions. Functions of speech associated with 6 basic components of the
communicative event (Jakobson):
1.

Referential

2. Emotive
3. Conative
4. Metalinguistic
5. Phatic
6. Poetic

Hallyday. (3 main functions):

1. Experiential
2. Interpersonal
3. Textual
Brown & Yule: two general functions:
1. Transactional
2. Interactional