语言学 第九章discourse analysis.ppt

1、,Chapter 9 Discourse analysis,Focuses: 1. discourse 2. cohesion 3. coherence 4. schema,1. Discourse Numerous approaches to study lge, two distinct perspectives: lge as system: try to describe the whole of it, which is made up of 3 layers (sub-systems): meaning (the semantic system), wording (the syn

2、tactical system and the morphological system) sounding (the phonological system).,lge as activity: studying the way lge is used for real-life communication and social interaction (e.g. chatting, lecturing, writing an email).,They observe that there is an interaction between activity and system. 1) w

3、e need to draw on our knowledge of lge as a system to communicate; 2)we are constantly picking up new stuff , which we add to our store of that knowledge.,Lge as activity in social interaction: discourse, a general term for examples of lge use, i.e. lge which has been produced as the result of an ac

4、t of communication; the larger units of lge such as paragraphs, conversations, and interviews.,The linguistic form (or record) of discourse is called text. The same text may function as different discourses in different situations. E.g. “what a nice day” on a sunny spring day and saying so on a bitt

5、erly cold winter day are different discourses, yet they have the same text.,Discourse is: lge above the sentence or above the clause a continuous stretch of spoken lge larger than a sentence, often constituting a coherent unit a stretch of lge perceived to be meaningful unified and purposive; lge in

6、 use (viewed) as social practice determined by social structures,Structural or textual definition of discourse: Discourse is a particular unit of lge (above the sentence). Functional definition of discourse: Discourse is a particular focus of lge use.,Structural approach to discourse,Find the consti

7、tuents that have particular relationships with each other and that can occur in a restricted number of arrangements;,Problems: units in which people speak do not always look like sentences, or grammatically correct sentences. Ex 1: Jack is tall and kind and dont hardly say anything. Love children. R

8、espect his wife, Odessa, and all Odessa Amazon sisters (Celies Diary) (-“The Colour Purple”, Alice Wharton) Ex 2: Colourless green ideas sleep furiously (Chomsky);,Solving the problem: adopt Lyonss distinction btw system-sentences and text sentences. SS are well-formed abstract theoretical sentences

9、 generated according to the existing grammar rules; TS are context-dependent utterances or parts of utterances which occur in everyday life. The discourse analysis will be concerned with text-sentences.,Functional approach to discourse,Roman Jakobson: lge performs six functions: Addressor(emotive);

10、Context (referential) Addressee (conative); Contact (phatic); Message (poetic); Code (metalinguistic).,Utterances may have multiple functions; The major concern: discourse analysis can turn out into a more general and broader analysis of lge functions. Or it will fail to make a special place for the

11、 analysis of relationships between utterances.,2 . Discourse analysis DA and pragmatics share the interest in lge use, yet they have different concerns. Pragmatics studies “intended speaker meaning”. A: I have a fourteen-year-old son. B: Well, thats all right. A: I also have a dog. B: Oh, Im sorry.,

12、Pragmatics would tell us that both A and B are performing indirect speech acts: A makes a request, which B accepts; then A makes another request, which B declines. Although the conversation looks disconnected at first sight, we can make perfect sense of it by imagining a familiar dialog between a wo

13、uld-be tenant and a landlord.,If we change the conversation into this: A: I have a fourteen-year-old son. B: Nice day, isnt it? A: I also have a dog. B: I m fine.,However hard you try, you probably cannot but give up and say, “ this doesnt make any sense”. In other words, the first conversation is c

14、oherent while the second one is not. The question is, how do you know this? Obviously, pragmatics cannot help you here.,Now lets consider written language. SLOW CHILDREN AT PLAY You probably need not take much trouble to figure out that this sign is meant to caution car drivers to slow down so as no

15、t to endanger children at play. However, it is not altogether impossible to see “slow” as a modifier of “children”, meaning “mentally retarded”. But you will probably dismiss this interpretation as irrelevant even if it comes to your mind. Why?,So our question may be formulated like this: when you l

16、isten to or participate in a conversation, or when you read sth written (be it a road sign, a story, a letter, or a piece of news,) how do you “make sense of ” what you hear or read, i.e. how do you tell coherent discourse from disjointed gibberish(乱语)? to answer questions like this- a thriving bran

17、ch of linguistics: discourse analysis.,In technical terms, discourse analysis is the study of how sentences in spoken or written lge form larger meaningful units such as paragraphs, conversations, interviews, etc.,It deals with: how the choice of articles, pronouns, and tenses affects the structure

18、of the discourse; the relationship between utterances in a discourse ,and the moves(话步) made by speakers to introduce a new topic, change the topic, or assert a higher role relationship to the other participants,3. Cohesion and Coherence In text linguistics, a text is a communicative act, which can

19、be either spoken or written. It is believed that there are certain standards by which we tell texts from non-texts. Some text linguists propose that there are as many as seven “constitutive principles of textuality” and three “regulative principles” which a text must fulfill. cohesion and coherence,

20、3.1 Cohesion衔接 From the chapter on syntax we learn that components that make up a sentence must be connected according to syntactical rules. Similarly, there are certain rules that govern the way sentences are connected in a text. These rules are studied in terms of cohesion.,Cohesion：the grammatica

21、l and / or lexical relationships between the different elements of a text. This may be the relationship between different sentences or between parts of a sentence. Cohesion concerns the surface structure of a text. It can be defined as the network of lexical, grammatical and other relations that lin

22、k various parts of a text.,Five cohesive devices: Reference Substitution Ellipsis Conjunction Lexical cohesion,Reference “reference ” in semantics： the relationship between a word and what it points to in the real world . In our discussion of cohesion, that sort of reference is called “presented ref

23、erence”给出的指称 (i.e. it introduces sth new to the text), as distinct from “presumed reference”假定指称 (i.e. mentioned in such a way that we need to retrieve their identity from somewhere else in the text).,I have a daughter. (Daughter is a presented reference item, as the reader dose not need to have any

24、 precious knowledge about what I have.) She is very nice. (She is a presumed reference item, as the reader needs to retrieve the identity of she to follow the text.),Only presumed reference creates cohesion in a text, as it creates ties between the presumed reference item and its referent. The commo

25、nest presumed reference items are: The definite article the; Demonstrative pronouns this, that, these, those; Pronouns he, she, they, it, etc.,Substitution the replacement of one item with another. It is often used to avoid repetition. -Do you like playing the guitar? - I do.,Substitution can be Nom

26、inal, e.g. one, ones, the same. This watch doesnt work. Go and fetch me another one. Im going to keep those boxes. The ones I want to get rid of are in the garage. John resigned and started his own company. Id do the same if I had the chance. Verbal, e.g. do, does Clausal, e.g. so, not A: Will it be

27、 a fine day tomorrow? B: I think so.,Ellipsis a special form of substitution (substitution by zero). Something is left unsaid, yet it is readily understood. nominal ellipsis: Take one of these tickets. I still have seven left. verbal ellipsis: John bought some chocolates, and Joan some biscuits. A:

28、Are you watching TV? B: Yes, I am. clausal ellipsis: A: Why are you leaving? B: Because its late.,Conjunction the logical relations between parts of the text. It is often realized in the form of conjunctive items. It can express four types of logical relation : Additive添加 (and , or, also, furthermor

29、e, in addition, besides, likewise, similarly, incidentally, by the way, by contrast, for instance, in other words, etc.),Adversative相反 (but, yet, however, though, instead, on the other hand, nevertheless, at any rate, as a matter of fact, rather, etc.) Causal因果 (so, consequently, hence, it follows,

30、for, because, that being so, under the circumstances, for this reason, etc.) Temporals时间 (then, next, previously, finally, at last, after a moment, etc.),Lexical cohesion Lexical cohesion is cohesion through the use of words, i.e. the writer or speaker relates the text consistently to its area of fo

31、cus through the selection of lexical items. A given lexical item cannot be said to have cohesive function per se, but it may enter into a cohesive relation with other lexical items in a text. two types: reiteration and collocation.,Reiteration重现：repetition of lexical items. A reiterated item may be

32、a repetition of an earlier item, a synonym or near-synonym, a super-ordinate, or a general word. There is a boy playing with fire. The boy is going to burn himself if he doesnt take care. (repetition) The lad is going to burn himself if he doesnt take care. (synonym) The child is going to burn himse

33、lf if he doesnt take care. (super-ordinate) The idiot is going to burn himself if he doesnt take care. (general word),collocation：the tendency of certain lexical items to co-occur. A little fat man of Bombay Was smoking one very hot day But a bird called a snipe Flew away with his pipe Which vexed t

34、he fat man of Bombay There is a strong collocation bond between “smoking” and “pipe”. Similarly, if you read the word “mouse” in text, you will not be surprised to come across such words as “cheese”, ”tail” and ”rodent” nearby in the text.,3.2 Coherence Interestingly enough, the use of cohesive devi

35、ces alone may not produce texts that “make sense”. Consider the following passage: I bought a Ford. A car in which President Wilson rode down the Champs Elysees was Black. Black English has been widely discussed. The discussion between the presidents ended last week. A week has seven days. Every day

36、 I feed my cat. Cats have four legs. The cat is on the mat. Mat has three letters.,The passage appears to be strewn with cohesive ties (e.g. Ford-car, black, Black, my cat-cats), yet probably no one would call it a coherent text. From this example we see that there must be other factors than cohesio

37、n that enable us to judge if a stretch of a language makes sense. These factors are studied in terms of coherence.,Coherence: the relationships which link the meanings of utterances in a discourse or of the sentences in text. It concerns peoples ability to match the text with their experience or the

38、ir understanding of the word. If a stretch of a ge is in line with some experience or their “common sense”, it will be recognized as a meaningful text.,When you read the conversation cited at the beginning of this chapter, for example, you will find yourself trying to imagine a situation that would

39、fully accommodate it. IN other words, you try to fill in the “gaps” in texts by drawing on your experience or encyclopedic knowledge.,Coherence is sth underlying the text- semantic connections, logical connections or temporal sequence. It is created by our real life knowledge. Cohesion is the verbal

40、 realization of coherence in the form of cohesive devices. As we see in the last sample passage.,George studied law in Cambridge. And he is now a lawyer. George studied law in Cambridge. He is now a lawyer. The absence of the conjunctions “and” in the second sentence does not affect coherence at all

41、. We know from our experience that being a lawyer is a likely outcome of studying law. In summary, there can be no meaning cohesion without coherence, but coherence without cohesion may be perfectly possible.,4 The schema theory As mentioned above, we rely on our real life knowledge to interpret dis

42、courses. But how do we apply such knowledge to the perception of coherence? Some linguists have proposed the scheme theory as an answer. A schema is a mental representation of typical instances of discourse. You may imagine it to be a video file stored in your brain.,“asking the way”: you say hello

43、to a stranger, ask him or her the way to some place, get the answer and say thank you. There are numerous video files like this, or numerous schemata, in your brain, which are activated when you encounter discourses. Though we may not be aware of it, the existence of schemata is a great help in our

44、understanding of texts.,所谓图式是指围绕某一个主题组织起来的知识的表征和贮存方式。人的一生要学习和掌握大量的知识,这些知识并不是杂乱无章地贮存在人的大脑中的,而是围绕某一主题相互联系起来形成一定的知识单元,这种单元就是图式。比如,我们见到某种动物的图片,就能很快想起它的名称、性情、生活习性等很多有关该动物的知识。这说明该动物的外观特征是与它的名称、性情、生活习性等有关知识是联系在一起贮存在人的大脑中的。所以说,图式实际上是一种关于知识的认知模式。图式理论研究的就是知识是怎样表征出来的,以及关于这种对于知识的表征如何以其特有的方式有利于知识的应用的理论。,Consider

45、 the following instructions from a bottle of cough syrup: Fill measure cup to line. Repeat every 2 to 3. Of course you do not have to keep filling the measure cup every two to three hours. Nor do you have to rub the syrup in your hair every two to three hours. You know you are supposed to drink it b

46、ecause you have a schema of such instructions on medicine bottles.,Schemata may also help to clear up ambiguity. For example, if we encounter the sentence They caught many soles that day. We know that sole here refers to a kind of fish, rather than a part of the foot/shoe, because the word “caught”

47、activates the schema of fishermen catching fish.,However, schemata may also be a barrier to understanding when they have become stereotyped. Consider the following quiz item: A woman is walking on the beach, but she has left no footprints behind her. Why? If you fail to figure out that the woman is

48、walking backward (or come up with such spooky answers as “shes a ghost”), you probably have a schema in which one can only walk forward! When things like this happen, the mind will adjust the old schema or create a new schema so as to adapt to the new experience.,5. Information structure: theme and

49、rheme Consider the following excerpt from a text: The Greenwood Boys are a group of popular singers. At present, they are visiting all parts of the country. They will be arriving here tomorrow. Of course the short passage reads smooth and natural. Now suppose we change it into this:,The Greenwood Bo

50、ys are a group of popular singers. All parts of the country they are visiting at present. Tomorrow, here they will be arriving. The sentences remain grammatical, yet the passage reads somewhat awkward, doesnt it? Does that have something to do with word order in sentences?,it is often taken for gran

51、ted that English has a fixed word order. Take the declarative sentence for example. its structure as “SVOA”-Subject + Verb + Object + Adverbial. However, this kernel sentence structure may be altered to bring elements to the front of the sentence (this movement is called “fronting”).,So, apart from

52、Michael wrote a very good novel last year, we can create A very good novel Michael wrote last year. Last year Michael wrote a very good novel. What Michael wrote last year was a very good novel. Michael, he wrote a very good novel last year.,But why would we like to change the basic structure of a s

53、entence? To answer question like this, we need to take a functional approach to English grammar. In this part, we shall discuss two of the most important terms in functional grammar: theme and rheme.,1) Clause, theme and rheme Theme and rheme are usually discussed at the level of clause. A clause is

54、 a grammatical unit that contains a subject and a predicate. It may be a sentence or part of a sentence. E.g. the clause she is very young can either stand alone as a simple sentence or be part of a complex sentence- Although she is very young, she speaks three languages.,As shown by the above examp

55、le of the variations of a sentence, a writer or speaker can decide where to start the clause. The beginning of each clause is its theme主位. It is the starting-point for the message. The rest of the clause tells the reader or hearer something about the theme.,That “rest of the clause” is called rheme述

56、位. The theme is the framework or point of departure of a message. The rheme is what is speaker or writer wants to convey about the theme.,In English the theme is marked in intonation as a separate tone unit, frequently followed by a brief pause. It always occurs in the initial position of the clause

57、. Theme and rheme are also discussed in terms of given and new information: usually, theme is given information, while rheme is new information.,In English, what is new tends to appear at the end of a clause. The following sentences have different themes: Im writing handouts for my students. For my

58、students, Im writing handouts. Handouts Im writing for my students.,2) Types of theme three types of theme: Textual theme (discourse marks and conjunctions话语标记和连词), e.g. However, she would not listen to me. Now, that is something interesting. Interpersonal theme (vocative呼语), e.g. Dad, look at that

59、cat!,Interpersonal theme (finite verb, modal adjunct情态动词, wh-theme,etc.),e.g. Can you solve this mathematical problem? Did you watch the new Hollywood movie? Whose desk is this?,Ideational theme (subject, complement, etc.), e.g. Tom Sawyer is the hero of a novel by Mark Twain. Over the bridge flew the plane. More than one of these types of theme may occur in the same sentence, forming what is called multiple themes.,When multiple themes occur, they usually follow th