Discourse
Analysis for
Language
Teachers
MICHAEL
McCAR THY
a
Cam bridge Language
Teaching Library Discourse Analysis
for Language Teachers CAMBRIDGE LANGUAGE TEACHING LIBRARY
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Discourse Analysis for Lauguage Teachers by Michael McCarthy
Discourse and Language Education by Evelyn Hatch
English for Academic Purposes by R. R. Jordan
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Teaching the Spoken Language by Gillirrn Brown and George Ylsle
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and Michael McCartby
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David Nunun Discourse Analysis
for Language Teachers
Michael McCarthy
CAMBRIDGE
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CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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43 Cambridge University Press 1991
This book is in copyright. Subjezt to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant colleaivc licensing agrccmenta,
no reproduction of any part may take place without
the written permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 1991
Tenth printing 2000
A wialogue record for this book is avaikrble fim the British Li'my
Library of Congress caialogrcc curd wb+w 90-20850
Printed in the United Kingdom at the University h, Cambridge
ISBN 0 521 36541 4 hard covers
ISBN 0 521 36746 8 paperback Dedication
To John Harrington Acknowledgements
Preface
Chapter 1 What is discourse analysis?
1.1 A brief historical overview
1.2 Form and function
1.3 Speech acts and discourse structures
1.4 The scope of discourse analysis
1.5 Spoken discourse: models of analysis
1.6 Conversations outside the classroom
1.7 Talk as a social activity
1.8 Written discourse
1.9 Text and interpretation
1.10 Larger patterns in text
1.11 Conclusion
Chapter 2 Dlscwrse analyslr and grammar
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Grammatical cohesion and textuality
2.2.1 Reference
2.2.2 Ellipsis and substitution
2.2.3 Conjunction
2.3 Theme and rheme
2.4 Tense and aspect
2.5 Conclusion
Chapter 3 Discounce analysis and vocabulary
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Lexical cohesion
3.3 Lexis in talk Contents
3.4 Textual aspeas of lexical competence
3.5 Vocabulary and the organising of text
3.6 Signalling lam textual patterns
3.7 Register and signalling vocabulary
3.8 Modality
3.9 Conclusion
Chapfer 4 Dlircoum analyrir, and phonology
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Pronunciation
4.3 Rhythm
4.4 Word stress and prominence
4.5 The placing of prominence
4.6 Intonational units
4.7 Tones and their meanings
4.7.1 Types of tones
4.7.2 Grammatical approaches
4.7.3 Attitudinal approaches
4.7.4 Interactive approaches
4.8 Key
4.9 Pitch across speakers
4.10 Summary
4.11 Conclusion
Chapter 5 Spoken lanwaw
5.1 Introduction
5.2 Adjacency pairs
5.3 Exchanges
5.4 Turnding
5.5 Transactions and topics
5.5.1 Transactions
5.5.2 Topics
5.6 Interactional and transactional talk
5.7 Stories, anecdotes, jokes
5.8 Other spoken discourse types
5.9 Speech and grammar
5.10 Conclusion Chapter 6 Wtmn Ianguage
6.1 Introduction
6.2 Text types
6.3 Spetch and writing
6.4 Units in written discourse
6.5 Clause relations
6.6 Getting to grips with laqger ws
6.7 Patterns and the learner
6.8 Culture and rhetoric
6.9 Discourse and the reader
6.10 Conclusion
Guldance for Reader activities
References
Index Acknowledgements
Thanks are due to Jim Lawley, of Avila, Spain, for permission to use
conversational data reproduced in Chapter 5, to Roger Smith, Gill
Meldrum and Hilary Boo1 of CELE, University of Nottingham, for assist-
ance with the gathering of written data, and to the late Michael Griffiths,
Senior Prison Officer at HM Prison, Cardiff, for permission to use an
interview with him, part of which is transcribed in Chapter 4.
The author and publishers are grateful to the authors, publishers and
others who have given permission for the use of copyright material. It has
not been possible to trace the sources of all the material used and in such
cases the publishers would welcome information from copyright owners.
Edward Arnold for the extract from M. A. K. Halliday (1985) An Intro-
duction to Functional Grammar on pp. 47, 58; The Birmingham Post for
the article on p. 27; British Nuclear Forum for the advertisement on p. 49;
CambridgelNewmarket Town Crier for the article on p. 170; Cambridge
University Press for the extract from Brown and Yule (1983) Discourse
Analysis on pp. 1024, Cambridge Weekly News for the article on pp. 75,
85, 159; Collins ELT for the extracts from the Collins COBUlLD English
Language Dictionary on p. 84; the Consumers' Association for the extracts
from Which? on pp. 25,26,37, 86, 160; Elida Gibbs for the advertisement
on p. 56; A. Firth for the extract on p. 50; Ford Motor Company for the
advertisement on p. 32; Headway Publications for the article from Money-
care on p. 158; Hunting Specialised Products (UK) Ltd for the adver-
tisement on p. 72; Imperial Chemical Industries plc and Cogents for the
advertisement for Lawnsman Mosskiller on p. 83; International Certificate
Conference and Padagogische Arbeitsstelle des DVV for the extracts on
pp. 124, 125, 126, 140-1, 150-1; D. Johnson for the article from The
Guardian on p. 41; Longman Group UK Ltd for the extract from D. Crystal
and D. Davy (1975) Advanced Conversational English on p. 69; New
Statesman & Society for the extracts from New Society on pp. 77, 80, 81
and 82; Newsweek International for the extracts from Newsweek on pp. 37,
41-2; The Observer for the extracts on pp. 28, 30,40,57, 77,79; Oxford
University Press for the extract from J. McH. Sinclair and R. M. Coulthard
(1975) Towards an Analysis of Discourse on p. 13; J. Svartvik for the
extract from Svartvik and Quirk (1980) A Corpus of English Conversation
on pp. 70-1; the University of Birmingham on behalf of thecopyright
holders for the extracts from the Birmingham Collection of English Text on
pp. 10, 17; World Press Network for the extracts from New Scientist on
pp. 37,57. Any language teacher who tries to keep abreast with developments in
Descriptive and Applied Linguistics faces a very difficult task, for books
and journals in the field have grown in number at a bewildering rate over
the last twenty years. At the same time, with the pressures created by the
drive towards professionalisation in fields such as ELT, it has become more
and more important that language teachers do keep up-to-date with develop-
ments within, and relevant to, their field.
One such area is discourse analysis. Arising out of a variety of disci-
plines, including linguistics, sociology, psychology, and anthropology,
discourse analysis has built a significant foundation for itself in Descriptive,
and latterly, Applied, Linguistics. The various disciplines that feed into
discourse analysis have shared a common interest in language in use, in
how real people use real language, as opposed to studying artificially
created sentences. Discourse analysis is therefore of immediate interest to
language teachers because we too have long had the question of how people
use language uppermost in our minds when we design teaching materials,
or when we engage learners in exercises and activities aimed at making
them proficient users of their target language, or when we evaluate a piece
of commercially published material before deciding to use it.
Experienced language teachers, in general, have sound instincts as to
what is natural and authentic in language teaching and what is artificial or
goes counter to all sensible intuition of how language is used. They also
know that artificiality can be useful at times, in order to simplify complex
language for initial teaching purposes. But they cannot hope to have an
instinctive possession of the vast amount of detailed insight that years of
close observation by numerous investigators has produced: insight into
how texts are structured beyond sentence-level; how talk follows regular
patterns in a wide range of different situations; how such complex areas as
intonation operate in communication; and how discourse norms (the
underlying rules that speakers and writers adhere to) and their realisations
(the actual language forms which reflect those rules) in language differ from
culture to culture. The aim of this book is to supply such insight in a
condensed form.
Mine is not the first introduction to discourse analysis; Chapter 1
mentions sevetal indispensable readings that anyone wishing to pursue the
subject should tackle. But it is the first to attempt to mediate selectively a Preface
wide range of research specifically for the practical needs of language
teachers. In this respect it is distinctly different from conventional intro-
ductions. It does not set out to report everything about discours~nalysis,
for not everything is of relevance to language teachers. Decisions have
therefore been made along the way to exclude discussion of material that
may be very interesting in itself, but of little practical adaptability to the
language teaching context. For instance, within pragmatics, the study of
how meaning is created in context (which thus shares an undefined
frontier with discourse analysis), the conversational maxims of H. P. Grice
(1975) have been very influential. These are a set of four common-sense
norms that all speakers adhere to when conversing (c.g. 'be relevant'; 'be
truthful'). In a decade of English language teaching since they first came to
my notice, I have never met an occasion where the maxims could be use-
fully applied, although in my teaching of literary stylistics, they have
helped my students understand some of the techniques writers use to
undermine their readers' expectations. Grice, therefore, does not figure in
this book. But, as with any introduction, the sifting process is ultimately
subjective, and readers may find that things have been included that do not
seem immediately relevant to their needs as teachers; others already well-
tutored in discourse analysis will wish that certain names and areas of
investigation had been included or given more attention. It is my hope,
nonetheless, that most readers will find the selection of topics and names
listed in the index to be a fair and representative range of material. I also
hope that language teachen will find the structure of the book, a two-part
framework based on (a) the familiar levels of conventional language
description, and (b) the skills of speaking and writing, unforbidding and
usable.
The book tries to illustrate everything with real data, spoken and
written, in the true spirit of discourse analysis. In the case of spoken data, I
have tried to mix my own data with that of others so that readers might be
directed towards useful published sources if they have no access to data
themselves. Because a lot of the data is my own, I apologise to non-British
readers if it octasionally seems rather Brito-centric in its subject matter.
The speakers and writers of the non-native speaker data do, however,
include German, Italian, Hungarian, Turkish, Brazilian, Spanish, Chinese,
Korean and Japanese learners.
The book does not stop at theory and description, but it does not go so
far as telling its readers how to teach. This is because, first and foremost,
discourse analysis is not a method for teaching languages; it is a way of
describing and understanding how language is used. But it is also because
there are as many ways of adapting new developments in description to the
everyday business of teaching as there are language teachers. So, although I
occasionally report on my own teaching (especially in Chapters 5 and 6),
and present data gathered from my own EFL classes, it will be for you, the Preface
reader, ultimately to decide whether and how any of this array of material
can be used in your situation.
In preparing a book of this complexity, many ppk have inevitably had
a hand. The original inspiration came frm cight@at% of responding to the
insatiable intellectual curiosity of MA students'at thc University of Bir-
mingham, most of whom were practising ~~~~~ and almost all
of whom asked for more on discourse analysis w'hmever they had the
chance. An equal number of undergraduates who studied language as part
of their English degree also helped to shape thebook,
In addition, several years of giving in-service courseslb~~.sin West
Germany and Finland have suggested new areas and dmqjmed-gk-sader
activities, which have been tried out on course participants, -In paw,
the enthusiasm of the PILC groups of the Language Centres of the Finnish
Universities in the years 1987-9 must be mentioned as one of the unfailing
sources of inspiration to get the book done.
I must also mention my colleagues in the International Certificate
Conference (ICC), whose annual pilgrimage to Chorley, Lancashire in the
last few years has met with the penance of being subjected to the material as
it developed; particular thanks here go to Tony Fitzpatrick of VHS
Frankfurt, for his constant support.
Colleagues at the Universities of Birmingham and Nottingham who have
encouraged and inspired me are almost too numerous to mention, but
particular thanks go to David Brazil (who also checked the intonation in
Chapter 4), Mike Hoey, Tim Johns, Martin Hewings and Malcolm
Coulthard for comments at seminars and in informal chats at Birmingham,
and to my new colleagues (but old friends and associates) at Nottingham,
Ron Carter and Margaret Berry, who have already been subjected to some
of the material and encouraged my work. My new students at Nottingham
have also provided feedback on more recent versions of the material.
But above all, without the support of John Sinclair of Birmingham and
his infinitely creative ideas and comments, the notion that there was ever
anything interesting in language other than sentences would probably never
have entered my head.
So much for the university environment that spawned the book. The
most important, single influence on its final shape has been my editor,
Michael Swan, whose good-humoured scepticism as to whether academics
have anything worth saying to language teachers out there in the real world
has been balanced by an open mind, razor-sharp comments on the text and
an unflagging willingness to enter into intellectual debate, all of which have
been a challenge and a reason to keep going to the bitter end.
Annemarie Young at CUP, who commissioned this book, has neve
oomplained when I have missed deadlines and has always made me feel that
the enterprise was worth it. She too has made invaluable contributions to
the book as it has taken shape. Brigit Viney, who has edited the manuscript, Preface
has also made many useful suggestions as to how it might be made more
reader-friendly and h.as purged a number of inconsistencies and infelicities
that lurked therein.
On the home front, my partner, Jeanne McCarten, has offered the
professional expertise of a publisher and the personal support that provides
a stable foundation for such an undertaking; her penance has been an
unfair share of the washing up while I pounded the keys of our computer.
Liz Evans, Juliette Leverington and Enid Perrin have all done their bit of
key-pounding to type up various versions of the manuscript, and I thank
them, too.
But finally, I want to thank a primary-school teacher of mine,-John
Harrington of Cardiff, who, in the perspective of the receding past, emerges
more and more as the person who started everything for me in educational
terms, and to whom this book is respectfully, and affectionately, dedicated.
Cambridge, March 1990 'I only said "if"!' poor Alice
pleaded in a piteous tone.
The two Queens looked at
each other, and the Red Queen
remarked, with a little shudder,
'She says she only said "if"-'
'But she said a great deal
more than that!' the White
Queen moaned, wringing her
hands.'Oh, ever so much more
than that!'
Lewis Carroll: 7?1tvugh the Looking
018m
1.1 A brief historical overview
Discourse analysis is concerned with the study of the relationship between
language and the contexts in which it is used. It grew out of work in
different disciplines in the 1960s and early 1970s, including linguistics,
semiotics, psychology, anthropology and sociology. Discourse analysts
study language in use: written texts of all kinds, and spoken data, from
conversation to highly institutionalised forms of talk.
At a time when linguistics was largely concerned with the analysis of
single sentences, Zellig Harris published a paper with the title 'Discourse
analysis' (Harris 1952). Harris was interested in the distribution of linguis-
tic elements-in extended texts, and the links between the text and its social
situation, though his paper is a far cry from the discourse analysis we are
hsed to nowadays. Also important in the early years was the emergence of
stmiotics and the French structuralist approach to the study of narrative. In
the 1960s, Dell Hymes provided a sociological perspective with the study of
speech in its social wmng (e.g. Hymes 1964). The linguistic philosophers
sudr as Austin (1962), Searle (1969) and Grice (1975) were also influential in
tbe study of language as social action, reflected in speech-act theory and
the formulation of conversational maxims, alongside the emergence of 1 What is discourse analysis?
pragmatics, which is the study of meaning in context (see Levinson 1983;
Leech 1983).
British discourse analysis was greatly influenced by M. A. K. Halliday's
functional approach to language (e.g. Halliday 1973), which in turn has
connexions with the Prague School of linguists. Halliday's framework
emphasises the social functions of language and the thematic and infor-
mational structure of speech and writing. Also important in Britain were
Sinclair and Coulthard (1975) at the University of Birmingham, who
developed a model for the description of teacher-pupil talk, based on a
hierarchy of discourse units. Other similar work has dealt with doctor-
patient interaction, service encounters, interviews, debates and business
negotiations, as well as monologues. Novel work in the British tradition
has also been done on intonation in discourse. The Bfitish work has
principally followed structural-linguistic criteria, on the basis of the iso-
lation of units, and kts of rules defining well-formed sequences of dis-
course.
American discourse analysis has been dominated by work within the
ethnomethodological tradition, which emphasises the research method of
close observation of groups of people communicating in natural settin~s. It
examines types of speech event such as storytelling, greeting rituals and
verbal duels in different cultural and social settings (e.g. Gumperz and
Hymes 1972). What is often called conversation analysis within the
American tradition can also be included under the general heading of
discourse analysis. In conversational analysis, the emphasis is not upon
building structural models but on the close observation of the behaviour of
participants in talk and on patterns which recur over a wide range of
natural data. The work of Goffman (1976; 1979), and Sacks, Schegloff and
Jefferson (1974) is important in the study of conversational norms, turn-
taking, and other aspects of spoken interaction. Alongside the conversation
analysts, working within the sociolinguistic tradition, Labov's investi-
gations of oral storytelling have also contributed to a long history of
interest in narrative discourse. The American work has produced a large
number of descriptions of discourse types, as well as insights into the social
constraints of politeness and face-preserving phenomena in talk, overlap-
ping with British work in pragmatics.
Also relevant to the development of discourse analysis as a whole is the
work of text grammarians, working mostly with written language. Text
grammarians see texts as language elements strung together in relationships
with one another that can be defined. Linguists such as Van Dijk (1972), De
Beaugrande (1980), Halliday and Hasan (1976) have made a significant
impact in this area. The Prague School of linguists, with their interest in the
structuring of information in discourse, has also been influential. Its most
important contribution has been to show the links between grammar and
iscourse. d' 1.2 Form andfktimk
Discowse analysis has grown into a wide-ranging and heterogeneous
discipline which finds its unity in the description of language above the
sentence and an interest in the contexts and cultural influences which affect
language in use. It is also now, increasingly, forming a backdrop to research
in Appliod Linguistics, and second language learning and teachingdin
particular.
The famous British comedy duo, Eric Morecambe andErnie Wise, started
one' of their shows in 1973 with the following dia,lqpe:
(1.1) Ernie: Tell 'em about the show.
Eric (to the audience): Have we got a show for you might folks!
Have we got a show for you! (aside to Ernie) Have we got a
show for them?
This short dialogue raises a number of problems for anyone wishing to do a
linguistic analysis of it; not least is the question of why it is funny (the
audience laughed at Eric's question to Ernie). Most people would agree that
it is funny because Eric is playing with a grammatical structure that seems
to be ambiguous: 'Have we got a show for you!' has an inverted verb and
subject. Inversion of the verb and its subject happens only under restricted
conditions in English; the most typical circumstances in which this happens
is when questions are being asked, but it also happens in exclamations (e.g.
'Wasn't my face red!'). So Eric's repeated grammatical fom clearly under-
goes a change in how it is interpreted by the audience between its second
and third occurrence in the dialogue. Eric's inverted grammatical fom in
its first two occurrences clearly has the hnction of an exclamation, telling
the audience something, not asking them anything, until the humorous
moment when he begms.to doubt whether they do have a show to offer, at
which point he uses the same grammatical form to ask Ernie a genuine
qucstion. There seems, then, to be a lack of one-to-one correspondence
between grammatical form and communicative function; the inverted form
in itselfdoes not inherently carry an exclamatory or a questioning function.
By the same token, in other situations, an' uninverted declarative form
(subject before verb), typically associated with 'statements', might be heard
as a question requiring an answer:
(1 -2) A: You're leaving for London.
Ek Yes, immediately.
So how we interpret grammatical forms depends on a number of factors,
some linguistic, some purely situational. One linguistic feature that may
affect our interpretation is the intonation. In the Eric and Ernie sketch,
Eric's intonation was as follows: 1 What is discourse analysis?
(1.3) Eric (to the audience): Have we got a SHOW for you tonight folks!
Have we got a SHOW for you! (aside to Ernie)
HAVE
we got a show for them?
Two variables in Eric's delivery change. Firstly, the tone contour, i.e. the
direction of his pitch, whether it rises or falls, changes (his last utterance,
'have we got a show for them' ends -in a rising tone). Secondly, his voice
jumps to a higher pitch level (repr&ented here by writing have above the
line). Is it this which makes his utterance a question? Not necessarily. Many
questions have only falling tones, as in the following:
(1.4) A: What was he wearing?
B: An anorak.
A: But was it his?
So the intonation does not inherently carry the function of question either,
any more than the inversion of auxiliary verb and subject did. Grammatical
forms and phonological forms examined separately are unreliable indica-
tors of function; when they are taken together, and looked at in context, we
can come to some decision about functign. So decisions about communica:
tive function cannot solely be the domain of grammar or phonology.
Discourse analysis is not entirely separate from the study of grammar and
phonology, as we shall see in Chapters 2 and 4, but discourse analysts are
intetested in a lot more than linguistic forms. Their concerns include how it
is that Eric and Ernie interpret each other's grammar appropriately (Ernie
commands Eric to tell the audience, Eric asks Ernie a question, etc.), how it
is that the dialogue between the two comics is coherent and not gobbledy-
gook, what Eric and Ernie's roles are in relation to one another, and what
sort of 'rules' or conventions they are following as they converse with one
another.
Eric and Ernie's conversation is only one example (and a rather crazy one
at that) of spoken interaction; most of us in a typical week will observe or
take part in a wide range of different types of spoken interaction: phone
calls, buying things in shops, perhaps an interview for a job, or with a
doctor, or with an employer, talking formally at meetings or in classrooms,
informally in cafks or on buses, or intimately with our friends and loved
ones. These situations will have their own formulae and conventions which
we follow; they will have different ways of opening and closing the
encounter, different role relationships, different purposes and different
settings. Discourse analysis is interested in all these different factors and
tries to account for them in a rigorous fashion with a separate set of
descriptive labels from those used by conventional grammarians. The first
fundamental distinction we have noted is between language forms and
discourse functions; once we have made this distinction a lot of other 1.3 Speech acts and discourse stmctwra
conclusions can follow, and the labels used to describe discourse need not
clash at all with those we are all used to in grammar. They will in fact
complement and enrich each other. Chapters 2,3 and 4 of this book will
therefore be concerned with examining the relationships between language
forms (grammatical, lexical and phonological ones), and discourse func-
tions, for it is language forms, above all, which are the raw material of
language teaching, while the overall aim is to enable learners to use
language functionally.
Can you create a context and suggest an intonation for the forms in the
left-hand column so that they would be heard as performing the functions
in the right-hand column, without changing their grammatical structure?
1. did I make a fool of myself (a) question (b) exclamation
2. you don't love me (a) question (b) statement
3. youeatit (a) statement (b) command
4. switch the light on (a) command (b) question
1.3 Speedr acts and diawurse structures
So far we have suggested that form and function have to be separated to
understand what is happening in discourse; this may be necessary to
analyse Eric and Ernie's zany dialogue, but why discourse analysis? Applied
linguists and language teachers have been familiar with the term function
for years now; are we not simply talking about 'functions' when we analyse
Eric and Ernie's talk? Why complicate matters with a whole new set of
jargon?
In one sense we are talking about 'functions': we are concerned as much
with what Eric and Ernie are doing with language as with what they are
saying. When we say that a particular bit of speech or writing is a request or
an instruction or an exemplification we are concentrating on what that
piece of language is doing, or how the listenerheader is supposed to react;
for this reason, such entities are often also called speech acts (see Austin
1%2 and Searle 1%9). Each of the stretches of language that are carrying
the force of requesting, instructing, and so on is seen as performing a
particular act; Eric's exclamation was performing the act of informing the
audience that a great show was in store for them. So the approach to 1 What is discourse analysis?
communicative language teaching that emphasises the functions or speech
acts that pieces of language perform overlaps in an important sense with the
preoccupations of discourse analysts. We are all familiar with coursebooks
that say things like: 'Here are some questions which can help people to
remember experiences which they had almost forgotten: "Have you ever
. . . ?", "Tell me about the time you . . . ?", "I hear you once . . . ?",
"Didn't you once . . . ?', "You've . . ., haven't you?'"*. Materiab such as
these are concerned with speech acts, with what is done with words, not
just the grammatical and lexical forms of what is said.
But when we speak or write, we do not just utter a string of linguistic
forms, without beginning, middle or end, and anyway, we have already
demonstrated the difficulty of assigning a function to a particular form of
grammar and/or vocabulary. If we had taken Eric's words 'have we got a
show for you' and treated them as a sentence, written on a page (perhaps to
exemplify a particular structure, or particular vocabulary), it would have
been impossible to attach a functional lahi to it with absolute certainty
other than to say that in a large number of contexts this would most
typically be heard as a question. Now this is undoubtedly a valuable
generalisation to make for a learner, and many notional-functional lan-
guage coursebooks do just that, offering short phrases or clauses which
characteristicaily fulfil functions such as 'apologising' or 'making a polite
request'. But the discourse analyst is much more interested in the process by
which, for example, an inverted verb and subject come to be heard as an
informing speech act, and to get at this, we must have our speech acts fully
contextualised both in terms of the surrounding text and of the key features
of the situation. Discourse analysis is thus fundamentally concerned with
the relationship between language and the contexts of its use.
And there is more to the story than merely labelling chains of speech acts.
Firstly, as we have said, discourses have beginnings, middles and ends.
How is it, for example, that we feel that we are coming in in the middle of
this conversation and leaving it before it has ended?
(1.5) A: Well, try this spray, what I got, this is the biggest they come.
B: Oh.. .
A: . . . tittle make-up capsule.
B: Oh, right, it's like these inhalers, isn't it? ,
A: And I, I've found that not so bad since I've been using it, and it
doesn't make you so grumpy.
B: This is up your nose?
A: Mm.
B: Oh, wow! It looks a bit sort of violent, doesn't it? It works well,
does it?
(Birmingham CoHcction of English Text)
L. Joncs: Functions of Enghh, Cambridge University Press, 1981 ed., p. 22. 1.3 Speech acts and discourse
Our immediate reaction is that conversations can often begin with well, but
that there is something odd about 'try this spray . . .'. Suggesting to
someone 'try X' usually only occurs in respcmse to some remark or event or
perceived state of affairs that warrants intervention, and such information
is lacking here. Equally, we interpret B's final ranark, 'It works well, does
it?' as expecting a response from A. In addition, we might say that we do
not expect people to leave the question of whether something is a fitting
solution to a problem that has been raised dangling in the air; this we shall
return to in section 1.10 when we look at written text.
The difficulty is not only the attaching of sph-act-labcls to utterances.
The main problem with making a neat analysis of extract (1.5) is that it is
clearly the 'middle' of something, which makes some katures difficult to
interpret. For instance, -why does A say well at the beginning of hislher
turn? What are 'these inhalers'? Are they inhalers on the table in front of the
speakers,?or ones we all know about in the shops? Why does A change from
talking about 'this spray' to that in a short space of the dialogue?
The dialogue is structured in the sense that it can be coherently inter-
preted and seems to be progressing somewhere, but we are in the middle of
a structure tather than witnessing the complete unfolding of the whole. It is
in this respect, the interest in whole discourse structures, that discourse
analysis adds something extra to the traditional concern with functionsl
speech acts. Just what these larger structures might typically consist of must
be the concern of the rest of this chapter before we address the detailed
questions of the vahe of discourse analysis in language teaching.
What clues are there in the following extract which suggest that we are
coming in in the middle of something? What other problems are there in
interpreting individual words?
A: I mean, I don't like rhis new emblem at all.
B: The logo.
A: Yeah, the castle on the Trent, it's horrible.
C: Did you get a chance to talk to him?
A: Yeah.
C: How does he seem?
(Author's data 1989) I What is discourse analysis?
1.4 The scope of discourse analysis
Discourse analysis is not only concerned with the description and analysis
of spoken interaction. In addition to all our verbal encounters we daily
consume hundreds of written and printed words: newspaper articles,
letters, stories, recipes, instructions, notices, comics, billboards, leaflets
pushed through the door, and so on. We usually expect them to be
coherent, meaningful communications in which the words and/or sentences
are linked to one another in a fashion that corresponds to conventional
formulae, just as we do with speech; therefore discourse analysts are
equally interested in the organisation of written interaction. In this book,
we shall use the term discourse analysis to cover the study of spoken and
written interaction. Our overall aim is to come to a much better under-
standing of exactly how natural spoken and written discourse looks and
sounds. This may well be different from what textbook writers and teach-
ers have assumed from their own intuition, which is often burdened with
prejudgements deriving from traditional grammar, vocabulary and into-
nation teaching. With a more accurate picture of natural discourse, we are
in a better position to evaluate the descriptions upon which we base our
teaching, the teaching materials, what goes on in the classroom, and the
end products of our teaching, whether in the form of spoken or written
output.
1.5 Spoken discourse: models of analysis
One influential approach to the study of spoken discourse is that developed
at the University of Birmingham, where research initially concerned itself
with the structure of discourse in school classrooms (Sinclair and
Coulthard 1975). The Birmingham model is certainly not the only valid
approach to analysing discourse, but it is a relatively simple and powerful
model which has connexions with the study of speech acts such as were
discussed in section 1.3 but which, at the same time, tries to capture the
larger structures, the 'wholes' that we talked about in the same section.
Sinclair and Coulthard found in the language of traditional native-speaker
school classrooms a rigid pattern, where teachers and pupils spoke accord-
ing to very fixed perceptions of their roles and where the talk could be seen
to conform to highly structured sequences. An extract from their data
illustrates this:
(1.6) (T = teacher, P = any pupil who speaks)
T: Now then . . . I've got some things here, too. Hands up. What's
that, what is it?
P: Saw. 1.5 Spoken discourse: models of analysis
T: It's a saw, yes this is a saw. What do we do with a saw?
P: Cut wood.
T: Yes. You're shouting out though. What do we do with a saw?
Marvelette.
P: Cut wood.
T: We cut wood. And, erm, what do we do with a hacksaw, this
hacksaw?
P: Cut trees.
T: Do we cut trees with this?
P: No. No.
T: Hands up. What do we do with this?
P: Cut wood.
T: Do we cut wood with this?
P: No.
T: What do we do with that then?
P: Cut wood.
T: We cut wood with that. What do we do with that?
P: Sir.
T: Cleveland.
P: Metal.
T: We cut metal. Yes we cut metal. And, er, I've got this here.
What's that? Trevor.
P: An axe.
T: It's an axe yes. What do I cut with the axe?
P: Wood, wood.
T: Yes I cut wood with the axe. Right . . . Now then, I've got some
more things here . . . (etc.)
(Sinclair and Coulthard 1975: 93-4)
This is only a short extract, but nonetheless, a clear pattern seems to emerge
(and one that many will be familiar with from their own schooldays). The
first thing we notice, intuitively, is that, although this is clearly part of a
larger discourse (a 'lesson'), in itself it seems to have a completeness. A bit
of business seems to commence with the teacher saying 'Now then . . .', and
that same bit of business ends with the teacher saying 'Right. . . Now then'.
The teacher (in this case a man) in his planning and execution of the lesson
decides that the lesson shall be marked out in some way; he does not just
run on without a pause from one part of the lesson to another. In fact he
gives his pupils a clear signal of the beginning and end of this mini-phase of
the lesson by using the words now then and tight in a particular way (with
falling,intonation and a short pause afterwards) that make them into a sort
of 'frame' on either side of the sequence of questions and answers. Framing
move is precisely what Sinclair and Coulthard call the funaion of such
utterances. The two framing moves, together with the question and answer
sequence that falls between them, can be called a transaction, which again
captures the feeling of what is being done with language here, rather in the 1 What is discourse analysis?
way that we talk of a 'transaction' in a shop between a shopkeeper and a
customer, which will similarly be a completed whole, with a recognisable
start and finish. However, framing move and transaction are only labels to
attach to certain structural features, and the analogy with their non-
specialist meanings should not be taken too far.
This classroom extract is very structured and formal, but transactions
with framing moves of this kind are common in a number of other settings
too: telephone calls are perhaps the most obvious, especially when we wish
to close the call once the necessary business is done; a job interview is
another situation where various phases of the interview are likely to be
marked by the chairperson or main interviewer saying things like 'right',
'well now' or 'okay', rather in the way the teacher does. Notice, too, that
there is a fairly limited number of words available in English for framing
transactions (e.g. right, okay, so, etc.), and notice how some people
habitually use the same ones.
Reader activity 3 d
1. How many other situations can you think of where framing moves are
commonly used to divide up the discourse, apart from classrooms,
telephone calls and job interviews?
2. Complete the list of what you think the most common framing words
or phrases are in English and make a list of framing words in any
other language you know. Do framing words translate directly from
language to language?
3. What is your favourite framing word or phrase when you are teach-
ing, or when you talk on the phone?
If we return to our piece of classroom data, the next problem is: does the
question-answer sequence between the teacher and pupils have any inter-
nal strumre, or is it just a string of language forms to which we can give
individual function or speech-act labels? Sinclair and Coulthard show
clearly that it does have a structure. Looking at the extract, we can see a
pattern: (1) the teacher asks something ('What's that?'), (2) a pupil answers
('An axe') and (3) the teacher acknowledges the answer and comments on it
('It's an axe, yes'). The pattern of (I), (2) and (3) is then repeated. So we
could label the pattern in the following way:
,
1. Ask T
2. Answer P
3. Comment T 1 .S Spoken discourse: models of analysis
This gives us then a regular sequence of TPT-TPT-TPT-TPT, etc. So we
can now return to our extract and begin to mark off the boundaries that
create this pattern:
T: Now then . . . I've got some things.h too. Hands up. What's
that, what is it? I
P: Saw. I
T: It's a saw, yes this is a saw. N What do with a saw? 1
P: Cut wood. I
T: Yes. You're shouting out though. I! QUltacd~ do with a saw?
Marvelette. I
P: Cut wood. I
T: We cut wood. 11 And, erm, what do we do with . . . etc.
We can now isolate a typical segment between double slashes (11) and use.it
as a bask unit in our description:
(1.8) T: /I What do we do with a saw? Marvelette. I
P: Cut wood. I '
T: We cut wood. 11
Sinclair and Coulthard call this unit an exchange. This particular exchange
consists of a question, an answer and a comment, and so it is a three-part
exchange. Each of the parts are giveri the name move by Sinclair and
Coulthard. Here are some other examples of exchanges, each with three
moves:
(1-9) A: What time is it?
B: Six thirty.
A: Thanks.
A: Tim's coming tomorrow.
B: Oh yeah.
A: Yes.
A: Here, hold this.
B: (takes the box)
A: Thanks.
Each of these exchanges consists of three moves, but it is only in (1) that the
first move ('What time is it?') seems to be functioning as a question. The
first move in (2) is heard as giving information, and the first move in (3) as a
command. Equally, the second moves seem to have the function,
respectively, of (1) an answer, (2) an acknowledgement and (3) a non-verbal
response (taking the box). The third moves are in all three exchanges
functioning as feedback on the second move: (1) to be polite and say
thanks, (2) to confirm the information and (3) ro say thanks again. In order
to capture the similarity of the pattern in each case, Sinclair and Coulthard 1 What is discourse analysis?
(1975: M7) call the first move in each exchange an opening move, the
second an answering moue and the third a follow-up moue. Sinclair and
Brazil (1982: 49) prefer to talk of initiation, response and follow-up. It does
not particularly matter for our purposes which set of labels we use, but for
consistency, in this book the three moves will be called initiation, response
and follow-up. We can now label our example exchanges using these terms:
Move Exchange 1 Exchange 2 Exchange 3
--
Initiation A: What time A: Tim's coming A: Here, hold
is it? tomorrow. this.
Response B: Six-thirty. B: Oh yeah. B: (takes the box)
Follow-up A: Thanks. A: Yes. A: Thanks.
In these exchanges we can observe the importance of each move in the
overall functional unit. Every exchange has to be initiated, whether with a
statement, a question or a command; equally naturally, someone responds,
whether in words or action. The status of the follow-up move is slightly
different: in the classroom it fulfils the vital role. of telling the pupils
whether they have done what the teacher wanted them to; in other situ-
ations it may be an act of politeness, and the follow-up elements might even
be extended further, as in this Spanish example:
(1.12) A: Oiga, pot favor, ~qui hora es?
B: Las cinco y media.
A: Gracias.
B: De nada.
Here A asks B the time, B replies ('half past five'), A thanks B ('gracias'),
and then B says 'de nada' ('not at all'). Many English speakers would feel
that such a lengthy ritual was unnecessary for such a minor favour and
would omit the fourth part, reserving phrases such as 'not at all' for
occasions where it is felt a great service has been done, for example where
someone has been helped out of a difficult situation. The patterns of such
exchanges may vary from culture to culture, and language learners may
have to adjust to differences. They also vary from setting to setting: when
we say 'thank you' to a ticket collector at a station barrier as our clipped
ticket is handed back to us, we would not (in British society) expect 'not at
all' from the ticket collector (see Aston 1988 for examples of how this
operates in Italian service encounters in bookshops).
In other cases, the utterance following a response may be less obviously a
follow-up and may seem to be just getting on with further conversational
business:
(1.13) A: Did you see Malcolm?
B: Yes. 1.5 Spoken discourse: models of analysis
A: What did he say about Brazil?
B: Oh he said he's going next month.
A: Did he mention the party?
B: No.
A: Funny . . . (etc.)
Different situations will require different formulae, depending on roles and
settings. The teacher's role as evaluator, for example, makes the follow-up
move very important in classrooms; where the follow-up move is withheld,
the pupils are likely to suspect that something is wrong, that they have not
given the answer the teacher wants, as in our extract from Sinclair and
Coulthard's data:
(1.14) T: What do we do with a hacksaw, this hacksaw?
P: Cut trees.
T: Do we cut trees with this?
P: No. No.
The pupils know that 'cut trees' is not the right answer; it is only when one
pupil says 'metal' that the full follow-up occurs ('We cut metal. Yes we cut
metal'); the question 'Do we cut trees with this!' is simply recycling the
initiating move, giving the pupils a second chance.
1. Can you put the moves of this discourse into an order that produces a
coherent conversation? The conversation takes place at a travel
agent's. What clues do you use to establish the correct order? Are
there any moves that are easier to place than others; and if so, why?
'You haven't no, no.'
'No . . . in LittIewoods is it!'
'I'm awfully sorry, we haven't . . . urn I don't know where you can
try for Bath actually.'
'Can I help you?'
'Okay thanks.'
'Yeah they're inside there now.'
'Urn have you by any chance got anything on Bath!'
'Urn I don't really know . . . you could try perhaps Pickfords in
Littlewoods, they might be able to help you.'
(Birmingham Collection of English Text)
2. Think of a typical encounter with a stranger in the street (e.g. asking
the way, asking for change). What is the minimum number of moves
necessary to complete a polite exchange in a language that you know
other than English? 1 What is discourse analysis?
The three-part exchanges we have looked at so far are fascinating in
another sense, too, which relates back to our discussion in section 1.3 on
speech am, in that, taken om of context and without the third part, it is
often impossible to decide exactly what the functions of the individual
speech acts in the exchange are in any completely meaningful way. Con-
sider, for example:
(1.15) A: What time is it?
B: Five past six.
A:
What could fill the third part here? Here are some possibilities:
1. A: Thanks.
2. A: Good! Clever girl!
3. A: No it isn't, and you know it isn't; it's half past and you're late
again!
'Thanks' suggests that A's question was a genuine request for information.
'Clever girl!' smacks of the classroom (e.g. a lesson on 'telling the time' with
a big demonstration clock), and 'No it isn't . . . etc.' suggests an accusation
or a verbal trap for someone who is to be reproached. Neither of the last
two is a genuine request for information; teachers usually already know the
answers to the questions they ask of their pupils and the reproachful parent
or employer in the last case is not ignorant of the time. These examples
underline the fact that function is arrived at with reference to the partici-
pants, roles and settings in any discourse, and that linguistic forms are
interpreted in light of these. This is not to say that all communication
between teachers and pupils is of the curious kind exemplified in (1.15);
sometimes teachers ask 'real' questions ('How did you spend the
weekend!'), but equally, a lot of language teaching question-and-answer
sessions reflect the 'unreal' questions of Sinclair and Coulthard's data
('What's the past tense of take?; 'What does wash basin mean!'). Nor do we
wish to suggest that 'unreal' classroom questions serve no purpose; they are
a useful means for the teacher of checking the state of knowledge of the
students and of providing opportunities for practising language forms. But
in evaluating the spoken output of language classrooms we shall at least
want to decide whether there is a proper equilibrium or an imbalance
between 'real' communication and 'teacher talk'. We would probably not
like to think that our students spent all or most of their time indulging in
the make-believe world of 'you-tell-me-things-I-alteady-know'. 1.6 Conversations outside the classroom
1.6 Conversations outside ths dassrom
So far we have looked at talk in a rather restricted context: the traditional
classroom, where roles are rigidly defined and the patterns of initiation,
response and follow-up in exchanges are relatively easy to perceive, and
where transactions are heavily marked. The dassmm was a convenient
place to start, as Sinclair and Coulthard discmend, but it is not the 'real'
world of conversation. It is a peculiar place, a placc .where teachers ask
questions to which they already know the answkr$, where pupils (at least
younger pupils) have very limited rights as speaker~and where evaluation
by the teacher of what the pupils say is a vital mechanism in the discourse
structure. But using the classroom is most beneficial for QW purposes since
one of the things a model for the analysis of classroom talk enables us to do
is evaluate our own output as teachers and that of our students. This we
shall return to in Chapter 5. For the moment it is more important to
examine the claim that the exchange model might be useful for the analysis
of talk outside the classroom. If it is, then it could offer a yardstick for the
kind of language aimed at in communicative language teaching and for all
aspects of the complex chain of materials, methodology, implementation
and evaluation, whatever our order of priority within that chain.
Conversations outside classroom settings vary in their degree of struc-
turedness, but even so, conversations that seem at first sight to be 'free' and
unstructured can often be shown to have a structure; what will differ is the
kinds of speech-act labels needed to describe what is happening, and it is
mainly in this area, the functions of the parts of individual moves, that
discourse analysts have found it necessary to expand and modify the
Sinclair-Coulthard model. Let us begin with a real example:
(1.16) (Jozef (J) is a visiting scholar from Hungary at an English department
in a British university. He has established a fairly informal and
relaxed relationship with Chris (C), a lecturer in the department. He
pops into Chris's room one morning.)
C: Hello Jozef.
J: Hello Chris . . . could you do me a great favour.
C: Yeah.
J: I'm going to book four cinema tickets on the phone and they
need a credit card number . . . could you give me your credit card
number . . . they only accept payment by credit card over the
phone.
C: Ah.
J: I telephoned there and they said they wouldn't do any
reservations
C: 1 without a card.
J: Yes and I could pay you back in cash.
C: Yes . . . sure . . . no problem at all.
J: Yes I What is discourse analysis?
C: Mm . . . I've got this one, which is an Access card.
J: And I just tell them your number.
C: [ You tell them my number. . . this one here.
J: And they tell me how much.
C: That's right . . . that's all . . . that's my name there and that
number.
J: Yes . . . and I can settle it.
C: Yes and bring it back when you're done.
J: Yeah . . . 1'11 just telephone then.
C: Right . . . okay.
j: Thanks Chris.
C: Cheers.
(Jozef leaves the room.)
(Author's data 1988)
This is not like the classroom. Jozef and Chris are more or less equals in
this piece of interaction, therefore each wiH enjoy the right to initiate,
respond and follow up in their exchanges. It is not merely a question-and-
answer session; sometimes they inform each other and acknowledge infor-
mation. But their talk is not disorganised; there are patterns we can
observe. The sequence begins and ends with framing mechanisms not
entirely unlike the 'right' and 'now then' of the classroom: after the initial
greeting, Jozef pauses and his voice moves to a higher pitch:
could you do me . . . (etc.)
(1.17) J: Hel.10 Chris . . . t
We shall return in greater detail to this use of pitch in Chapter 4. For the
moment it is sufficient to record it as a signal of a boundary in the talk, in
this case marking off the opening from the main business of the conver-
sation. Starting the main business, Jozef then begins a long sequence, all of
which is concerned with eliciting a favour from Chris. He does not
immediately ask his question but in his initiating move gives the back-
ground to it first ('I'm going to book four. . . etc.'). This speech act we shall
call a starter, after which comes the main part of the elicitation ('could you
give me . . . etc.'). Jozef expands his elicitation with several comments
('they only accept payment. . . etc.'), during which he is supported by a sort
of grunt from Chris ('ah') and an occasion where Chris completes Jozefs
words for him, as if he has predicted what Jozef wanted to say ('without a
card'). Jozef s long elicitation ends with 'and I could pay you back in cash'.
Chris then responds "Yes sure . . . etc.') and Jozef follows up with 'yes'.
The fact that Jozef says so much in asking the favour is because he is
potentially inconveniencing Chris, and he thus has to prepare the ground
carefully; this relationship between what is said and factors such as polite-
ness and sensitivity to the other person is taken up in section 5.2.
So, complex though it is, we have initiation-response-follow-up 1.6 Conversations outside the classroom
sequences here that form meaningful exchanges just like the classroom
ones. What we have here, which we would not expect in the classroom, are
Chris's verbal supports; we should be very surprised to hear in a classroom
of young children:
(1.18) T: Now . . . :[ have some things here.
Ps (in chorus): Oh yes . . . ah-ha.
T: Used for cutting things.
Ps: Oh, really?
But we can pare Jozef and Chris's exchange down to ia.bst"esc .
(1.19) J: // Could you give me your credit card number and I'B pay you in
cash. /
C: Yes sure no problem. /
J: Yes. /I
It now begins to look a little more manageable, and in it we can see the
difference in complexity between a simple speech act and elaborated ones
of the kind demanded by politeness, which can be difficult for the learner
with limited linguistic resources in an L2. We can also see the difference
between bare exchanges of the kind often found in coursebooks and the
way, in natural discourse, that speakers support and complete one
another's moves, how they follow up and acknowledge replies, and other
features that we have not yet discussed. It is in this way, by using descriptive
categories such as the exchange and its sub-components, that discourse
analysis enables us to describe actual performances, to delimit targets more
accurately in language teaching and to evaluate input and output in the
teaching/learning process.
This extract also serves as a reminder of the form and function problem
raised in section 1.2. Some of Jozef s declarative forms are heard by Chris as
questions requiring a confirmation (or correction if necessary):
(1.20) J: And l just tell them your number.
C : [ You tell them my number . . . this one here.
J: And they tell me how much.
C: That's right . . . that's all . . . (etc.)
They are heard as questions since Chris is the person with the knowledge
that Jozef is seeking to have confirmed (at least Jozef assumes that he is).
Chris will not suppose that Jozef is telling him something he (Chris) already
knows, and so will assume he is being asked to confirm.
Equally, we can observe the same kinds of exchange boundaries occur-
ring in the middle of speaker turns as we did in the classroom data:
(1-21) J: // And they tell me how much. /
C: That's right . . . that's all . . . that's my name there and that
number. /
J: Yes I/ . . . and I can settle it. / 1 What ?s discourse analysis?
C: Yes and bring it .back when you're done. /
J: Yeah // . . . I'll just telephone then.
The double slashes in Jozefs turns come after the follow-ups to Chris's
answers and before new initiating moves. The conversation finally ends
with a framing move similar to the teacher's ('right . . . okay'), and an
expression of thanks.
Obviously there are numerous other features in the conversation (into-
nation, gesture, etc.) which make us more confident in our analysis, and we
shall return to the most central of these later, but this short conversation
should at least serve to illustrate that even apparently loosely structured
talk adheres to norms and is regularly patterned. It is this type of patterning
that can be as useful to the language teacher as the regular patterns of
syntax are in clauses and sentences.
So far we have looked only at one model for the analysis of spoken
interaction, the Sinclair-Coulthard 'Birmingham' model. We have argued
that it is useful for describing talk in and out of the classroom; it captures
patterns that reflect the basic functions of interaction and offers a hier-
archical model where smaller units can be seen to combine to form larger
ones and where the large units can be seen to consist of these smaller ones.
The bare bones of the hierarchy (or rank scale) can be expressed as follows:
TRANSACTION
t
EXCHANGE
t
MOVE
2
ACT
The lowest rank is what we have referred to as 'speech acts'; Sinclair and
Coulthard simply call them acts, but for our general purposes, any fine
distinction the terminology might suggest is unimportant. Sinclair and
Coulthard's model is very useful for analysing patterns of interaction where
talk is relatively tightly structured, such as between doctors and patients
(see Coulthard and Ashby 1975), but all sorts of complications arise when
we try to apply the model to talk in more informal, casual, and spon-
taneous contexts.
Because of the rigid conventions of situations such as teacher talk and
doctor-patient talk, it is relatively easy to predict who will speak when,
who will ask and who will answer, who will interrupt, who will open and
close the talk, and so on. But where talk is more casual, and among equals, 1.7 Talk as a social activity
everyone will have a part to play in conuolhg and monitoring the
discourse, and the picture will look considerably more complicated.
Consider the problems which arise when we try twk&-&se rhe following
extract from the point of view of exchange a&an&m-hdaries. Are
there straightforward initiating, responding and foilmap Decide
where each move begins and ends and try to la be1 some o# tbc lsomabvious
speech am (e.g. elzcit~ttiom, replies, comments and so w). There are
complications here, not least because there are more than twu people
talking. Do you feel this extract is more or less tightly structured than the
classroom talk or the conversation between Jozef and Chris? What extra
problems does this sort of transcript raise for discourse analysts?
(1.2) (University lecturer (L) at a student bar where he has just ordered
drinks for a group of students (Sl, S2, etc.). The barman (B) is
attending to the order and the group are standing at the bar.)
L: Well, that should blow a hole in five pounds, shouldn't it?
S1: It's quite cheap actually.
L: (laughs)
S1: What's the urn lecturers' club like, senior, senior, you know.
L: L Ah it's very cosy and
sedate and, er, you know, nice little armchairs and curtains . . .
there are some interesting characters who get there.
S2: Is that the one where they have the toilets marked with er
gentlemen, no, 'ladies and members'?
L: loh, oh,
S2: Yeah it was one
of the other lecturers who pointed it out, he ought it was quite
amusing.
L: Yeah, I hadn't
noticed that, yeah, might well be, yeah.
B: Four sixty-seven please.
r
L: Is that all, God, I thought it would cost more than that (pays)
. . . thank you . . . I thought it would cost more than that.
S1: It's quite cheap.
S2: I wouldn't argue with that one.
~3: I NO, it's quite good.
L: Now, how are we going to carry all these over?
(Author's data 1989) 1 What is discourse'analysis?
There are features which can be handled by the ' Sinclair-Coulthard
exchange structure model (the lecturer's 'now' at the end seems to be a
typical boundary marker, and his laugh at the beginning of the talk could
be seen as a follow-up to the student's remark), but there are many
complications. The student who asks about the toilets does not get a proper
answer from the lecturer, and, if anything, answers her own question; the
barman comes in and disrupts the continuity of the talk, and, at one point,
three people are talking at once. If this were a classroom, many would
consider that the lecturer had lost all control over the discourse, and that
people were behaving 'out of turn'.
Complications of this kind have led many discourse analysts to devote
their attention more to observing how people behave and how they
cooperate in the management of discourse, rather than to a concern with
building elaborate models of structure (see Levinson 1983: 286). Observ-
ing conversational behaviour close to has been the preoccupation of a
school of analysts roughly grouped under the name ethnomethodologists,
though sociologists, anthropologists and psychologists have also made
significant contributions. This approach has been largely, but not exclus-
ively, an American phenomenon, and it has concentrated on areas of
interest such as how pairs of utterances relate to one another (the study of
adjacency pairs), how turn-taking is managed, how conversational open-
ings and closings are effected, how topics enter and disappear from
conversation, and how speakers engage in strategic acts of politeness,
face-preservation, and so on. The emphasis is always on real data, and
observing how people orient to the demands of the speech event. We shall
look more closely at this kind of conversational analysis in Chapter 5, but
the student-lecturer data extract above exemplifies some of the ways in
which data can be dealt with.
Because the lecturer and his group are not in the classroom, students, as
well as lecturer, feel free to raise new topics. S1 asks about the staff club,
but he is hesitant, and stutters somewhat in his question; such hesitancy is a
significant detail, and is a typical signal of deference. The lecturer feels free
to overlap with his answer before the student has finished speaking.
urn-takbg rights are exercised, with people taking turns at talk when they
feel they have the right to say something. For example, the barman
considers his right to continue the purchasing transaction to override the
group's conversation, and the three students all feel they have an equal
right to comment on the lecturer's remark about the price of the drinks.
However, we might also observe that the talk is all directed at the lecturer,
rather than student to student. Is this because the lecturer is seen as
'dominant speaker', a hangover from the classroom, which the group have
only recently left? It is to answer such questions that ethnomethodologists
examine large amounts of data to observe regular patterns of behaviour
that might indicate adherence to underlying norms or 'rules' of conver- 1.8 Written discourse
sation. In Chapter 5 we shall look at some of their findings concerning the
issues our extract has raised, as well as others of a similar type. This is not
to say that such findings must automatically have any implications for
language teaching, but some of them may.
With written texts, some of the problems adad wi& spoken tran-
scripts are absent: we do not have to contend with people( all speaking at
once, the writer has usually had time to think about what to say and how to
say it, and the sentences are usually well formed in a way that the utterances
of natural, spontaneous talk are not. But the overall questions remain the
same: what norms or rules do people adhere to when creating written texts?
Are texts structured according to recurring principles, is there a hierarchy
of units comparable to acts, moves and exchanges, and are there conven-
tional ways of opening and closing texts? As with spoken discourse, if we
do find such regularities, and if they can be shown as elements that have
different realisations in different languages, or that they may present
problems for learners in other ways, then the insights of written discourse
analysis might be applicable, in specifiable ways, to languagk teaching.
In Chapter 2, we shall consider some grammatical regularities observable
in well-formed written texts, and how the structuring of sentences has
implications for units such as paragraphs, and for the progression of whole
texts. We shall also look at how the grammar of English ofkrs a limited set
of options for creating surface links between the clauses and sentences of a
text, otherwise known as cohesion. Basically, most texts display links from
sentence to sentence in terms of grammatical features such as pronominali-
sation, ellipsis (the omission of otherwise expected elements because they
are retrievable from the previous text or context) and conjunction of
various kinds (see Halliday and Hasan 1976). The resources available for
grammatical cohesion can be listed finitely and compared across languages
for translatability and distribution in real texts. Texts displaying such
cohesive features are easy to find, such as this one on telephones:
(1.23) If you'd like to give someone a phone for Christmas, there are plenty
to choose from. Whichever you go for, if it's to be used on the BT
[British Telecom] network, make sure it's approved - look for the
label with a green circle to confirm this. Phones labelled with a red
triangle are prohibited.
(Which? December 1989: 599)
The italicised items are all interpretable in relation to items in previous
sentences. Plenty is assumed to mean 'plenty of phones'; you in the first and
second sentence are interpreted as the same 'you*; whichever is interpreted I What is discourse amlysis?
as 'whichever telephone'; it is understood as the telephone, and this as 'the
fact that it is approved'. These are features of grammatical cohesion, but
there are lexical clues too: go for is a synonym of choose, and there is
lexical repetition of phone, and of label.
Reader activity 6 d
Pick out the cohesive items between clauses and sentences in this text
extract in the same way as was done for the telephone text:
(1.24) British men are a pretty traditional bunch, when it comes to shaving;
two out of three use a blade and soap, rather than an electric shaver.
Which? readers are more continental in their tastes; around half of
you use an electric shaver, about the same proportion as in the rest of
Europe.
For women, shaving is by far the most popular method of
removing body hait. 85 per cent of the Which? women readers who
removed body hair told us that they used a shaver.
(Which? December 1989: 613)
Notice that, when talking of cohesion in the telephone text, we spoke of
interpreting items and understanding them. This is important because the
cohesive items are clues or signals as to how the text should be read, they
are not absolutes. The pronoun it only gives us the information that a
non-human entity is being referred to; it does not necessarily tell us which
one. It could potentially have referred to Christmas in the phone text, but
that would have produced an incoherent reading of the text. So cohesion is
only a guide to coherence, and coherence is something created by the reader
in the act of reading the text. Coherence is the feeling that a text hangs
together, that it makes sense, and is not just a jumble of sentences (see
Neubauer 1983: 7). The sentences 'Clare loves potatoes. She was born in
Ireland.' are cohesive (Clarelshe), but are only coherent, if one already
shares the stereotype ethnic association between being Irish and loving
potatoes, or is prepared to assume a caus~ffect relationship between the
two sentences. So cohesion is only pan of coherence in reading and writing,
and indeed in spoken language too, for the same processes operate there.
1.9 Text and Interpretation
Markers of various kinds, i.e. the linguistic signals of semantic and dis-
course functions (e.g. in English the on the verb is a marker of pastness),
are very much concerned with the surface of the text. Cohesive markers are
26 1.9 Text ad interpretation
no exception: they create links across sentence boundaries and pair and
chain together items that are related (e.g. by daring to the same entity).
But reading a text is far more complex than that: we haveto interpret the
ties and make sense of them. Making sense of a =-is m act of interpreta-
tion that depends as much on what we as mad-trs'brhgtr,raext as what the
author puts into it. Interpretation can be seen asp set of pmeddures and the
approach to the analysis of texts that mph~5ises the-mental activities
involved in interpretation can be broadly cdM- wdi W.ocdural
approaches emphasise the role of the trader in arrialy bddierht world
of the text, based on hislhet experience of the wdd aild how stares and
events are characteristically manifested in it. The reader hwxu adarm such
knowledge, make inf&ences and coiist~n-hidhe intapretation in
the light of the situation and the aims and goals of-& texr as the reader
perceives them. The work of De Beaugrande and Dressler (1981) is central
to this approach. If we rake a text which is cohesive in the sense described
above, we can see that a lot more mental work has to go on for the reader to
make it coherent:
The parents of a seven-year-dd Australian boy
(l.Zo
woke m find a giant python crushing and trying
to swallow him.
The incident occurred ia Cairns, Queengland
and the boy's mother, Mrs Kathy Dryden said:
'It was like a horror movie. It was a hot night
and Bartholomew was lying under a mosquito
net. He suddenly started screaming.
'We rushed to the bedroom to find a huge
snake trying to strangle him. It was coiled
around his arms and neck and was going down
his body.'
Mrs Dryden and bet husband, Peter, tried to
stab the creature with knives but the python bit
the boy several times before escaping.
(from The Birmingham Post, 12 March 1987, p. 10)
This text requires us to activate our knowledge of pythons as dangerous
creatures which may threaten human life, which strangle their prey and to
whose presence one must react with a certain urgency. More than this we
make the cognitive link between 'a hot night' and the time of the event (this
is implicit rather than explicit in the text). The boy's screaming must be
taken to be a consequence of the python attacking him (rather than, say,
prior to the arrival of the python). The 'creature' must be taken to be the
python rather than the boy (which 'creature' could well refer to in another
bcxt), since parents do not normally stab their children in order to save their
livcs. All this is what the reader must bring to any text. What we are doing
in making these cognitive links in the text is going further than just noting
cht semantic links between cohesive items (e.g. creature = general super-
ordinate, snake = genuslsuperordinate, python = specieslhypon y m); we are 1 What is discourse analysis?
creating coherence (see De Beaugrande and Dressler 1981: 6-12,3147). The
various procedures that mediate between cohesion and coherence will be
returned to in greater detail in sections 6.4-7, as this area of text analysis is
obviously crucial in any discourse-based approach to reading and writing.
Another level of interpretation which we are involved in as we process
texts is that of recognising textual pattern. Certain patterns in text reoccur
time and time again and become deeply ingrained as part of our cultural
knowledge. These patterns are manifested in regularly occurring functional
relationships between bits of the text. These bits may be phrases, clauses,
sentences or groups of sentences; we shall refer to them as textual segments
to avoid confusion with grammatical elements and syntactic relations
within clauses and sentences. A segment may sometimes be a clause,
sometimes a sentence, sometimes a whole paragraph; what is important is
that segments can be isolated using a set of labels covering a finite set of
functional relations that can occur between any two bits of text. An
example of segments coinciding with sentences are these two sentences
from a report on a photographic exhibition:
(1.26) The stress is on documentary and rightly so. Arty photographs are a
bore.
(The Guardian, 27 October 1988: 24)
The interpretation that makes most sense is that the relationship between
the second sentence and the first is that the second provides a reason for the
first. The two segments are therefore in a phenomenonleason relationship
with one another. An example of a segment consisting of more than one
sentence can be seen in extract (l.27), where the relationship between the
first segment (sentence 1) and the second segment (sentences 2-5) is one of
pbenomenonbxample; all of sentences 2-5 have to be read as part of the
act of exemplification for the text to make sense.
1.27) Naturally, the more people pay for their houses, the more they want
to rename their neighbourhoods. Suppose you've just coughed up
£250,000 for an unspectacular house on the fringe of Highgate - an
area with loads of cachet. The estate agent tells you it's Highgate.
You've paid a Highgate price. There's no way you're going to admit
that it's in Crouch End.
(Simon Hoggart, The Observn Magazine, 11 March 1990: 5)
The interpretation of relations between textual segments is a cognitive act
on the part of the reader, who might be supposed to be asking questions of
the text as it unfolds, such as (for extract 1.26) 'The stress is on documen-
tary; why?' In this sense, reading the text is like a dialogue with the author,
and the processing of two segments could be seen as analogous to the
creation of an exchange in spoken discourse. Whether this dialogue with
the author is a reality or an analytical construct is not a question that can be
easily answered here, but a model which suggests this kind of interaction 1.9 Text and intetpretation
between reader and text or author might be able to capture difficulties
readers experience in text processing and offer ways of attacking them.
The approach to text analysis that emphasises the interpretive acts
involved in relating textual segments one to the other through relationships
such as phenoneno~reason, causeconsequence, instmmmt-achievement
and suchlike is a clause-relational approach, and is-best exemplified in the
work of Winter (1977, 1978) and Hoey (1983). The pbmmenon-reason
relation which united the two sentences of extraa (1.261, along with
cause-consequmce and instrument-achievement, can be brought under the
general heading of logical sequence relations. When segments of a tat are
compared or contrasted with one another, then we may talk of matching
relations, which are also extremely common. Logical seqaettcing and
matching are the two basic categories of the clause-relational approach.
This view of text is dynamic; it is not just concerned with labelling what are
sometimes called the illocutionary acts (a bit like speech acts) which
individual clauses, sentences and paragraphs perform in a text, but is
concerned with the relationships the textual segments enter into with one
another.
It would of course be wrong to suggest that all texts are like the two
sentences from the photo exhibition text and that the whole operation of
reading was some sort of perverse guessing-game where authors made life
difficult for readers. Texts often contain strong clues or signals as to how
we should interpret the relations between segments; these are not absolutely
deterministic .but are supporting evidence to the cognitive activity of
dedwing the relations. For example, we may find in a text a sentence such
as: 'f;eling ill, he went home', and here we would note that the sub-
ordination of one element to another by the grammatical choloc-eftoining a
main clause to a subordinate one is a characteristic device of cause-
consequence relations; it is a signal of the likely relation, which would have
to be reinterpreted if the sentence were 'Going home, he felt ill'. Equally, an
author might help us with a conjunction: 'Because he felt ill, he went home',
or else use items of general vocabulary to signal the same relation: 'The
reason he went home was that he was feeling ill'. Other types of signals
include repetition and syntactic parallelism (using the same syntax in two
or more different clauses to draw attention to a comparison or contrast, for
example). In the sentence 'The politicians were in a huff, the industrialists
were in a rage, the workers were in the mood for a fight', the parallelism of
the 'subject + be + prepositional phrase' underlines the comparison
between the three groups of people. The clause-relational approach takes
all this evidence into account in its analyses. 1 What is discourse analysis?
Here are some extracts from real texts. Decide what kind of relation exists
between segments separated by a slash (1) in each case, and note any
supporting evidence such as syntactic parallelism.
1. The BBC has put off a new corporate advertising campaign due to be
aired this month, extolling the virtues and values of both television
and radio. / A BBC spokesman delicately suggests that this may not
be the most appropriate time to be telling the audience how
wonderful the Beeb is.
(The Obsc~ver, 16 November 1986: 42)
2. In Britain, the power of the unions added an extra dread, 1 which
made British politics a special case; 1 on the Continent, Margaret
Thatcher was regarded as something of a laboratory experiment,
rather like a canary put down a mine-shaft to see if it will sing,
(The Sundrty Times Magazine, 30 December 1979: 14)
The clause-relational approach to text also concerns itself with larger
patterns which regularly occur in texts. If we consider a simple text like the
following, which is concocted for the sake of illustration, we can see a
pattern emerging which is found in hundreds of texts in a wide variety of
subject areas and contexts:
(1.28) Most people like to take a camera with them when they travel
abroad. But all airports nowadays have X-ray security screening and
X rays can damage film. One solution to this problem is to purchase
a specially designed lead-lined pouch. These are cheap and can
protect film from all but the strongest X rays.
The first sentence presents us with a situation and the second sentence with
some sort of complication or problem, The third sentence describes a
response to the problem and the final sentence gives a positive evaluation of
the response. Such a sequence of relations forms a problem-solution
pattern, and problem-solution patterns are extremely common in texts.
Hoey (1983) analyses such texts in great detail, as well as some other
common text patterns, some of which we shall rmrn to in Chapter 6.
These larger patterns which may be found in texts (and indeed which
may constitute the whole text) are the objects of interpretation by the I. 1 Larger patterns in text
reader, just as the smaller clause-relation were, and in the same way, are
often signalled by the same sorts of grammatical andlexical devices such as
subordination and parallelism. In our concoctd*~k instance, we have
a conjunction (but) indicating an adversative ddmi backward lexical
reference to 'this problem' (damage caused. by X rays)-land a forward
reference to the solution (lead-lined puck), Jk& readm and writers
need to be aware of these signalling devicesand to be able to use them when
necessary to process textual relations that are notyi-diately obvious and
to compose text that assists the reaaer in the qct of irttvxprctatiop. The
larger patterns such as the problem-solution pam odklly
ingrained, but they are often realised in a sequence of t@ mgmmts
which is not so strarghtforward as our concocted text suggests, The
sequence situation-problem-response-evaluation may be varied, but we
do normally expect all the elements to be present in a well-formed text;
where the sequence is varied, signalling plays an even more important part
in signposting the text, that is, showing the reader a way round it.
Reader activity 8 dl
Identify the elements of the problemsolution pattern in these extracts from
advertisements and note any signalling devices.
I. DAMP WALLS, FIAKING PAINT,
RrmNGWAUPAPE&MUSrYSMaLS
: Rising Damp
Rising damp, if not treated effectlwly could in time cause extensive damage to the
rrbucture of your home, ruin decoration and fumfture. Damp also causes repugnant
mould and mildewy smells and could be a hazard to health.
Doulton Wallguard guarantee
cure rlslng damp
Doulton, ~ international
specialists in ceramic technology haw
developed a unique ceramic tube
that when installed In walls draws
moisture out and ensures it stays
out for good. This tried and tested
process requires no structural work
and is usually installed in just one day.
Guaranteed for 30 Years 1 What is discourse analysis?
In~jyoathaeira
pbcaoararon brown w N.V.H. It
~far~vibntiond~
You can easily tell how badly your
car suffers from N.V.H. by the volume
at which you have to play your radii
and the way that you feel after a long
journey. It's very tiring.
The rudimentary cure is to fill the
car with sound deadening material.
Everybody does this to some extent,
even Ford.
But we believe that prevention is
better than cure. After all, with the
technology that we have at our disposal,
there are more scientific ways of
reducing N .V. H.
At the Ford design and development
centre we have a room which is known
as the anechoic chamber. It's here, on
the rolling road, that our acoustics
engineers explore new techniques in
sound proofing.
The result is a car that never feels
as if it's uying. Even at Autobahn speeds,
with the smooth V6 engine and all
round independent suspension, the
performance is effortless.
(from The Sunday Times Magazine, 30 December 1979, pp. 42,49)
We have seen in this chapter that discourse analysis is a vast subject area
within linguistics, encompassing as it does the analysis of spoken and
written language over and above concerns such as the structure of the
clause or sentence. In this brief introduction we have looked at just some
ways of analysing speech and writing and just some aspects of those
particular models we have chosen to highlight. There is of course a lot more
to look at. For example, we have not considered the big question of
discourse in its social setting. In subsequent chapters we shall return to this
and mention the Hallidayan model of language as social action (see
Halliday 1978), looking at types of meaning in discourse and their relation-
ship with the notion of register, the linguistic features of the text that reflect
the social context in which it is produced. This and further discussion of the
approaches outlined here will form the background to a reassessment of the
basics of language teaching as they are conventionally understood: the
levels of language description (grammar, lexis and phonology) and the
skills of language use (reading, writing, listening and speaking). There will
also be suggestions concerning teaching materials and procedures whenever
it seems that discourse analysis has some direct bearing on these matters. 1.1 1 Concfusion
Furfher reading
Coulthard (1985) is an indispensable introduction to discourse analysis, as is Stubbs
(1983).
Brown and Yule (1983) is a thorough and detailed survey, but is harder going
because of its less obvious structure.
Van Dijk's (1985) collection of papers covers a vast ran-gc of ateas within discourse
analysis; the introduction sets the scene, and the papcat lcna be dipped into
according to area of interest.
Levinson (1983), although concerned with the broader fidd af 'ptagmaacs', pro-
vides a balanced criticism of the British, exchange-stnmure school as against the
American conversation analysis.
G. Cook (1989) is a more recent book at an introductory level.
For the original Birmingham discourse model, Sinclair and Coulthard (1W.5) is still
unsurpassed, though extensions and modifications as described in Coulthard
and Montgomery (1981) and Sinclair and Brazil (1982) should also be consulted.
Further extensions and modifications are to be found in Carter and Burton (1982),
Francis and Hunston (1987), and, specificaliy on the follow-up move, Hewings
(1 987).
More introductory reading on acts and communicative functions, as well as on
speech and writing may be found in Riley (1985).
Schenkein (1978) is a seminal collection of American conversational analysis.
On written text, Halliday and Hasan (1976) is essential for the notion of cohesion,
De Beaugrande and Dressler (1981), though difficult in places, expands on the
procedural approach, while Winter (1977 and 1978) and Hoey (1983) are the best
works for the clause-relational model.
Hewings and McCarthy (1988) offer a summary of the clause-relational approach
with some pedagogical applications.
Halliday (1978) contains much discussion on language in its social setting.
Widdowson (1979)' De Beaugrande (1980), Van Dijk (1980), Neubauer (1983) and
Tannen (1984) are all useful sources on cohesion/coherence.
Reddick (1986) argues for the importance of personal interpretation in the analysis
of text structure. 2 Dircourse ana4ysis and grammar
'All right, so far,' said the King;
and he went on muttering over
the verses to himself. "'We
know it to be true" - that's the
jury, of course - "If she should
push the matter on" - that must
be the Queen - "What would
become of you?" - What,
indeed?'
Lewis Carroll: Alke's Admniwes
in W&dd
21 Introduction
In this chapter we shall start on familiar ground. Much of the discussion
will use terms that are common in language teaching: clause, pronoun,
adverbial, conjunction, and so on, and we shall be using them in familiar
ways. But we shall attempt to relate them to a probably less familiar set of
terms: theme, rbeme, reference, anaphoric and so on, in order to make the
fink between grammar and discourse. Nothing we shall say will undermine
the importance of grammar in language teaching; on the contrary, this
chapter takes as a basic premise that without a command of the rich and
variable resources of the grammar offered by a language such as English,
the construction of natural and sophisticated discourse is impossible. But
we shall be arguing that structuring the individual utterance, clause and
sentence, structuring the larger units of discourse and creating textual
coherence are ultimately inseparable. We shall be looking at what discourse
analysts can tell us about contextualised uses of structures and grammatical
items, and considering whether earnmar teaching needs to broaden or shift
its orientations to cover signijitcant areas at present under-represented in
grammar teaching. We begin by looking at grammatical cohesion, the
surface marking of semantic links between clauses and sentences in written
discourse, and between utterances and turns in speech. 2.2 Grammakmmakcul cohesion and textuality
2.2 Ommatical cohwion and textuam
Spoken and written discourses display gramma&d cornexions between
individual clauses and utterances. For our purposes, these grammatical
links can ,be classified under three broad typ 7- (or co-reference;
see Brown and Yule 1983: 192), elfipsislsubstihthq llad conjunction.
2.2.1 Reference
3.
Reference items in English include pronouns (e.g: h@~,k~:&-%h, they,
etc.), demonstratives (this, that, these, those), the article tha,-d {igms like
such a. A complete list is given in Halliday and Hasan (1976: 37-9).
The opening lines of a famous English novel, ]ude the Obscure, by
Thomas Hardy, show different types of reference at work:
(2-1) The schoolmaster was leaving the village, and everybody seemed
sorry. The miller at ~resscombe lent him the small white tilted cart
and horse to carry his goods to the city of his destination, about
twenty miles off, such a vehicle proving of quite sufficient size for the
departing teacher's effects.
The italicised items refer. For the text to be coherent, we assume that him in
'lent him the small white tilted cart' is the schoolmaster introduced earlier;
likewise, his destination is the schoolmaster's. Referents for him and his can
be confirmed by looking back in the text; this is called anaphoric reference.
Such a also links back to the cart in the previous sentence. The novel opens
with the schoolmaster leaving the village. Which schoolmaster? Which
village? On the previous page of the novel, the two words At Marygreen
stand alone, so we reasonably assume that Marygreen is the name of the
village, and that the character is (or has been) schoolmaster of that village.
We are using more than just the text here to establish referents; the author
expects us to share a world with him independent of the text, with typical
villages and their populations (everybody), their schoolmasters and millers.
References to assumed, shared worlds outside of the text are exophoric
references. Because they are not text-internal, they are not truly cohesive,
but because they are an equally important part of the readerllistener's
active role in creating coherence, they will be included in our general
discussion of factors which contribute to 'textuality', that is, the feeling that
something is a text, and not just a random collection of sentences.
Now consider this example of reference with the pronoun they:
e-2) They pressed round him in ragged fashion to take their money.
Andy, Dave, Phil, Stephen, Bob.
(Graham Swift, The Sweet Shop Owner, Penguin Books Limited, 1983: 13)
In this particular text, neither anaphoric nor exophoric reference supplies
the identity of they; we have to read on, and are given their identities in the 2 Discourse analysis and grammar
second sentence. Where referents are withheld in this way, we can talk of
cataphoric reference. This is a classic device for engaging the reader's
attention; referents can be withheld for quite long stretches of text.
LOOKING BACKWARD: ANAPHORIC REFERENCE
Exercises which involve looking back in texts to find the referent of, for
example, a pronoun, have long been common in first and second language
teaching and testing. Usually items such as helshe or them can be decoded
without major difficulty; other items such as it and this may be more
troublesome because of their ability to refer to longer stretches of text and
diffuse propositions not necessarily paraphrasable by any direct quotation
from the text. Problems can also arise where lower-level learners are so
engaged in decoding the individual utterance, clause or sentence that they
lose'sight of the links back to earlier ones. But evidence of local difficulties
hindering global processing at given points in the unfolding discourse
should not automatically be read as inherent difficulties with processing at
the discourse level. Only if intervention at the local level fails to solve larger
processing problems might we begin to consider intervention in the form of
training 'discourse skills' to build up the sort of pragmatic awareness as to
how references are decoded, which must, after all, be the basis of effective
readingllistening in the learner's first language too. Nonetheless, there will
always be cases where first language skills are lacking or undeveloped, and
teachers may find themselves having to intervene to make up such short-
comings. That, however, is a problem area beyond the purview of this
book.
Grammar teachers have long been aware of recurring interference factors
with pronouns and reference, such as the Japanese tendency to confuse he
and she, the Spanish tendency to confuse his and your, and so on, and there
is not much discourse analysts can say to ease those evergreen problems.
What can be (and often is not) directly taught about a system such as that of
English is the different ways of referring to the discourse itself by use of
items such as it, this and that, which do not seem to translate in a
one-to-one way to other languages, even where these are closely cognate
(cf. German, French, Spanish). Some examples of how reference items refer
to segments of discourse follow in (2.35); the first is one given by
Halliday and Hasan (1976: 52):
(2.3) It rained day and night for two weeks. The basement flooded and
everything was under water. It spoilt all our calculations.
Here it seems to mean 'the events of two weeks', or 'the fact that it rained
and flooded', that is, the situation as a whole rather than any one specified
entity in that situation. 2.2 Grammatical cohesion and textualit))
Reader activity 1 d
What does it refer to in these short extracts: a noun pkqse in the text, or a
situation?
1. A pioneering 'school-based management' proEpdrar in Miami-Dade
County's 260 schools has also put some budget, ah@ and personnel
decisions in the hands of local councils, composed Iawy af teachers.
'It's a recognition that our voices and input are important,' says
junior highschool teacher Ann Colman.
(Newsweek, 17 October 1988: 23)
2. Like the idea of deterring burglars with-a big, ferocious hound - but
can't stand dogs? For around £45 you can buy an automatic dog
barking unit - Guard God, or the Boston Bulldog, both available by
mail order from catalogues like the ones you're sent with credit card
statements. You plug it in near the front door and its built-in
microphone detects sharp noises.
(Which? October 1988: 485)
Matters become more complicated when we look at this and that in
1SCOUrse: d '
(2.4) You may prefer to vent your tumble dryer permanently through a
non-opcning window. This isn't quite as neat, since the flexible hose
remains visible, but it does save knocking a hole in the wall.
(Which? October 1988: 502)
(2.5) Only a handful of satellite orbits are known to be changing. Such
changes are usually subtle and can be detected only by long-term
observations. One exception is the orbit of Neptune's large moon
Triton, which is shrinking quite rapidly. That is because it circles
Neptune in the direction opposite to the planet's revolution,
generating strong gravitational friction.
(~cw Scientist, 23 January 1986: 33)
These are written examples, but speech abounds in the same choices of it,
this and that. Surprisingly, conventional grammars do not give satisfactory
descriptions of such usage (e.g. see Quirk et al. 1985: 868). Discourse
analysts have touched upon the area (see Thavenius 1983: 167-9), and the
insights of different analysts have a certain amount in common.
It is herpful, for a start, to return to the notion of discourse segments as
functional units, rather than concentrating on sentences (or turns in 2 Discourse analysis and grammur
speech), and to see the writerlspeaker as faced with a number of strategic
choices as to how to relate segments to one another and how to present
them to the receiver. A simple example is Linde's (1979) investigations into
how people reacted when asked to describe their apartments. She observed
that there were simificant differences in the distribution of it and that in
people's descriptions. One room or area was always a current 'focus of
attention', i.e. was the entity being talked about, the topic of any particular
moment; pronominal references to the focus of attention were almost
always made with it, while references across different focuses of attention
used that:
(2.6) And the living room was a very small room with two windows that
wculdn't open and things like that. And it looked nice. It had a
beautiful brick wall.
(2.7) You entered into a tiny little hallway and the kitchen was off that.
Extract (2.6) is all within one focus of attention (the living room), while
(2.7) refers across from one focus (the kitchen) to another (the hallway).
This is not to say Linde's conclusions solve the whole of the discourse
reference problem; it is simply to make the point that many unanswered
grammatical questions can be resolved at the discourse level, and that much
good discourse analysis recognises the links between discourse organisation
and grammatical choice. As such, discourse-level investigations are often
invaluable reading for teachers looking for answers to grammatical
problems.
An example of an error in discourse reference from a non-native speaker
may help us to resolve the still unconcluded issue of it, this and that. The
writer is giving a chapter-bychapter summary of his university disser-
tation, starting with the introduction:
(2.8) Introduction: It traces the developments in dialectology in recent
years.
(Author's data 1989)
English here demands 'This traces . . .' or the full noun phrase The
introduction repeated. Neither it nor that will do. It seems that it can only
be used when an entity has already been marked as the focus of attention,
usualiy by using a deictic word (such as a, the, or my, or thislthat), so that
versions such as (2.9-11) are acceptable:
(2.9) The introduction is lengthy: it covers 56 pages.
(2.10) 'This introduction is fine. It is brief and precise.
(2.11) My introduction was too short. It had to be rewritten.
We can now conclude that it cannot be used to refer back to an entity unless
it is already the focus of attention, but this, as in the corrected version of 2.2 Grammatical cohesion and textuality
(2.8), can make an entity into the focus of attention and create new foci
of attention as the discourse progresses. That, as in Linde's explanation,
can be used to refer across foci of attention, and, as is suggested by (2.5),
can push a proposition out of central focus and maanalise it in some
way.
The discussion of this one question of discourse r&erice has been
lengthy in order to exemplify the type of approach d-i-~cmae analysts take
to grammar, in that they look for patterned recurrences axass different
data and try to relate the separate levels of analysis in a rncaninbful way.
Individual grammatical choices are seen as significant in the mging and
organisation of the discourse as a whole, and not just as local problems to
be resolved within the bounds of the capital letter and the full stop. And the
same approach is valid not only for questions of reference, as we shall see
when we look at word order and tense and aspect choices.
Collect some examples of it, this and that used as discourse reference items
after the fashion of the examples discussed in this section (any English-
language newspaper should provide plenty of data). Do they fit the general
conclusion drawn above as to their usage in discourse? If not, try to
'rewrite' the rule.
LOOKlNG OUTWARD: EXOPHORfC REFERENCE
We have mentioned the possibility of referring 'outward' from texts to
identify the referents of reference items when backward or anaphoric
reference does not supply the necessary information. Outward, or exo-
phoric reference often directs us to the immediate context, as when
someone says 'leave it on the table please' about a parcel you have for them.
Sometimes, the referent is not in the immediate context but is assumed by
the speakerlwriter to be part of a shared world, either in terms of know-
ledge or experience. In English the determiners often act in this way:
(2,12) The government are to blame for ilnernployment.
(2.13) She was using one of those strimmars to get rid of the weeds.
It would be odd if someone replied to (2.12) with the question 'Which
government!'. It is assumed by the speaker that the hearer will know which
one, usually 'wr government' or 'that of the country we are in / are talking
about'. Tbe same sort of exophoric reference is seen in phrases such as the
Queen, the Pope, the army, and in sentences such as 'We always take the 2 Discourse analysis and grammar
car since we can just put the kids, the dog and the luggage into it.' A learner
whose Ll has no exact equivalent to English the may need to have this
central use of the article taught explicitly. On the other hand, speakers of
languages with extended use of definite articles to cover general nouns in
situations where these would not be marked as definite in English some-
times produce utterances which, to the English ear, seem to be making
exophoric reference, such as 'Do you like the folk music?' when no music is
to be heard (cf. 'Do you like folk music?').
Exophoric reference (especially in the press) is often to a 'world of
discourse' connected with the discourse of the moment, but not directly.
British popular newspaper headlines sometimes make references such as
'That dress. Queen scolds Princess Di'. Here the reader is assumed to have
followed certain stories in the press, and the reference is like a long-range
anaphoric one, to a text separated in time and space from the present.
Native speakers often have difficulties with such references even if they
have only been away from the papers and radio or television for a week or
two; the foreign learner may experience even greater disorientation.
An example of a text referring to such an assumed shared world is extract
(2.14), which talks of 'the entire privatisation programme'; readers are
assumed to know that this refers to the British government's sell-off in 1989
of the'entire public water service into private hands:
(2.14) Eighty per cent of Britain's sewage works are breaking pollution
laws, according to a report to be published this week.
The cost of fulfilling a government promise to clean them up. will
run into billions, and put the entire privatisation programme at risk.
(The Observer, 4 December 1988: 3)
Exophoric references will often be to a world shared by sender and
receiver of the linguistic message, regardless of cultural background, but
equally often, references will be culture-bound and outside the experiences
of the language learner (e.g. British references to the City, the Chancellor,
and so on). In these cases the learner will need to consult some source of
encyclopaedic information or ask an informant. This aspect of language
learning is a gradual familiarisation with the cultural context of L2.
Language teachers and materials writers will need to monitor the degree of
cultural exophoric references in texts chosen for teaching to ensure that the
referential burden is not too great.
Reader actii 3 d
Find exophoric references in the following extract and consider whether
they are likely to create cultural difficulties for a learner of English. 2.2 Grammatical cohesion and textuality
King trial jury
adjourns with
Tn"' in the trial of three
peopleaccusedaf~onsphingto
murder the Northern Ireland
!kcretiuy, Mr Tom King, adjomed
last night after more than seven
hours' deIibemtion.
They spent the night within
Weter crown court buiklhgs,
where the trial is taking place. Five
hours after they retired to consider
their verdict, the judge recalled
them to answer a question they had
put to him in a note.
That question was "Can we
convict if we think the! infomation
d&& ~'w~palpoaes,
ordoesthe.oric~w$de~hineto
be m&? "
ThejudgemidEbCrerrrrBsdto
prove an agreement to mmkr so
that the jury was sm. It mas-&&
sufficient to prove it as H powM&y
or probability, but it must be proved
beyond reasonable doubt.
(from The Guardian, 27 October 1988, p. 20)
Exophoric reference directs the receiver 'out of the text and into an
assumed shared world. This idea of a shared world overlaps with the idea
of a shared world built up by sender and receiver as any discourse unfolds,
and for this reason, some linguists see no real distinction between ana-
phoric and exophoric reference (e.g. Brown and Yule 1983: 201), since both
proceed on the basis of an assumption by the sender that the receiver is, at
any point in time, availed of all the knowledge necessary to decode any
reference items. But for practical purposes the distinction may be a useful
one to retain as it enables us to evaluate to hat extent any discourse is
self-contained, supplying its referents inte J ally, or to what extent it
depends heavily on external, culture-specific realworld referents.
LOOKING FORWARD: CATAPHORIC REFERENCE
Consider these opening lines of a news article:
(2.15) She claims Leo Tolstoy as a distant cousin. Her grandfather was
Alexei Tolstoy - the famous 'Red Count' who sided with Lenin's
revolutionaries. Now, Tatyana Tolstaya has put pen to paper, in her
case to demonstrate that someone from the family can write
compactly. In her stories of ten to twelve typewritten pages, 'I 2 Discourse analysis and grammar
somehow try to show the whole life of a person from birth to death,'
she says.
(Newsweek, 21 September 1987: 12)
We do not establish who she is until the second sentence. Forward-looking
or cataphoric reference of this kind often involves pronouns but it can
involve other reference items too, such as the definite article:
(2.16) The trip would hardly have been noteworthy, except for the man
who made it. In mid-July a powerful American financier flew to
Mexico City for a series of talks with high-level government officials,
including President Miguel de la Madrid and his finance minister,
Gustavo Petricioli.
(Newsweek, 21 September 1987: 44)
Both examples of cataphoric reference were found in the same issue of
Newsweek, which underlines the most characteristic function of cataphoric
reference: to engage and hold the reader's attention with a 'read on and find
out' message. In news stories and in literature, examples of cataphoric
reference are often found in the opening sentences of the text.
Reader activity 4 d
Identify the cataphoric reference item and its referent in this extract:
It has often been compared to New Orleans's Mardi Gras as an
outdoor celebration. Certainly New York's Mulberry Street and
surrounding blocks have been as crowded over the last few days as
Royal and Bourbon Streets in the French Quarter are for the Mardi
Gras. More than three million people arc estimated to have
celebrated the 61st annual Feast of the San Gennaro down in
Greenwich Village since it began on Thursday.
(The Guardian, 15 September 1987: 23)
Cataphoric reference is the reverse of anaphoric reference and is relatively
straightforward, but language learners may lack awareness or confidence to
put it into use in constructing texts, and nay need to have the feature
explicitly taught or exercised. There is, too, the danger of its overuse or its
use in unnatural contexts. As always, it is a question of training the learner
to observe features of language above sentence level where these might not
necessarily be automatically transferred from L1, especially since, in
English, reference often involves the definite article and demonstratives,
which do not translate easily into many other languages. 2.2 Grammatical cohesion and textuality
2.2.2 Ellipsis and substitution
Ellipsis is the omission of elements normally required by the grammar
which the speakerlwriter assumes are obvious from the context and
therefore need not be raised. This is not to say kt.wery utterance which is
not fully explicit is elliptical; most messagb req$& some input from the
context to make sense of them. Ellipsis is di&lrgtlishe$ by the structure
having some 'missing' element. If two people have ta stack adlabel a pile
of items and one says to the other 'you label and I'll d,-ifPe fact that
label and stack are usually transitive verbsrequiring.anobject in thesurface
structure is suspended because the context 'supplies' the &jixt. hother
way of saying this is, of course, that structures are only fully redlid when
they need to be, and that ellipsis is a speaker choice made on a pragmatic
assessment of the situation;not a compulsory feature when two clauses are
joined together.
We shall concentrate here on the type of ellipsis where the 'missing'
element is retrievable verbatim from the surrounding text, rather in the way
that anaphoric and cataphoric references are, as opposed to exophoric
references. For example:
(2.17) The children will carry the small boxes, the adults the large ones.
where 'will carry' is supplied from the first clause to the second. This type
of main-verb ellipsis is anaphoric; in English we would not expect:
(2.18) *The children the small boxes, the adults will carry the large ones.
though some kind of analogous structure does seem possible in Japanese
(see Hinds 1982: 19 and 48). Ellipsis as a notion is probably a universal
feature of languages, but the grammatical options which realise it in
discourse may vary markedly. For instance, English does have the kind of
cataphoric ellipsis suggested by our rejected example (2.18), but usually
only in front-placed subordinate clauses (see Quirk et al. 1985: 895):
(L 19) If you could, I'd like you to be back here at five thirty.
English has broadly three types of ellipsis: nominal, verbal and clausal.
Nominal ellipsis often involves omission of a noun headword:
-1 Nelly liked the green tiles; myself I preferred the blue.
The Romance and Germanic languages have this kind of nominal ellipsis
and it should not present great difficulties to speakers of those languages
hing English.
Ellipsis within the verbal group may cause greater problems. Two very
-on types of verbal-group ellipsis are what Thomas (1987) calls
doing and auxiliary contrasting. Echoing repeats an element from the
dl group: 2 Discourse analysis and grammar
(2.21) A: WiN anyone be waiting?
B: Jim will, I should think.
Contrasting is when the auxiliary changes:
(2.22) A: Has she remarried?
B: No, but she will one day, I'm sure.
Thomas also makes the point that in English, varying degrees of ellipsis are
possible within the same verbal group:
These variants are not directly translatable to other languages and will have
to be learnt.
With clausal ellipsis in English, individual clause elements may be
omitted; especially common are subject-pronoun omissions ('doesn't
matter', 'hope so', 'sorry, can't help you', etc.). Whole stretches of clausal
components may also be omitted:
(2.23) A: Should any one have been told?
(2.24) He said he would take early retirement as soon as he could and he
has.
B: John
For this type of sentence, many languages will require at the very least some
kind of substitute for the main verb and an object pronoun such as to
produce a form roughly equivalent to 'He said he would take early
retirement as soon as he could and he has done it.'
Ellipsis not only creates difficulties in learning what structural omissions
are permissible, but also does not seem to be readily used even by proficient
learners in situations where native speakers naturally resort to it (see
Scarcella and Brunak 1981).
should.
should have.
should have been.
Reader activity 5 d
Identify examples of ellipsis in these extracts:
1. Most students start each term with an award cheque. But by the time
accommodation and food are paid for, books are bought, trips taken
home and a bit of social life lived, it usually looks pretty emaciated.
(Advertisement for Barclays Bank, University of Birmingham Bulletin, 5 December
1988: 5)
2. 'You like watching children . . . ?' her tone seemed to say: 'You're
like a child yourself.'
'Yes. Don't you?' His cheek was full of cheese sandwich. She 2.2 Grammutical cohesion and textuality
didn't answer; only looked at the swings with anxiety.
'I sometimes wish,' he said, trying hard to empty his mouth, 'I
could join in myself.'
'But you wouldn't?
'Why not?
He saw the sudden challenge in her eyes. And was that a smile
somewhere in that held-aloft face?
'Well, if you feel that way . . . ?'
' - why don't you?'
'Why don't I?'
(Graham Swift, The Sweet Shop Ownn, Penguin Books Limited, 1986: 27)
Other aspects of ellipsis that are difficult for learners occur in the area
where ellipsis overlaps with what is often treated under the grammar of
coordination (e.g. 'goats' milk and (goats') cheese', 'he fired and (he)
missed the target', etc.). Once again, specific ruies of realisation may not
overlap between languages.
Substitution is similar to ellipsis, in that, in English, it operates either at
nominal, verbal or clausal level. The items commonly used for substitution
in English are:
One(s): I offered him a seat. He said he didn't want one.
Do: Did Mary take that letter? She might have done.
Solnot: Do you need a lift? If so, wait for me; if not, I'll see you there.
Same: She chose the roast duck; I chose tJhe same.
Most learners practise and drill these items in sentence-level grammar
exercises. They are not easily and directly translatable to other languages.
Many common, everyday substitutions tend to be learnt idiomatically (e.g.
responses such as 'I thinkhope so'). While it is easy to formulate basic rules
for substitution, at more advanced levels of usage, subtleties emerge that
may be more difficult to explain and present. For example, there are
restrictions on reduced forms which might otherwise cause stress to fall on
the substitute do, which is normally never prominent when it stands alone,
as opposed to auxiliary do in ellipsis, which can be stressed (e.g. 'Did you
win?' 'Yes, I DID!'):
(2.29 A: Will you unlock the gate?
B: I HAVE done already.
* I've DONE already.
Where the speaker does wish to give prominence to the substitute do, then
so is used as well:
I went to lock the gate. When 1 got there, I found somebody had
already DONE so. 2 Discourse analysis and grammar
Our examples of ellipsis and substitution have included a number of
spoken exchanges. This is because ellipsis and substitution assume a lot
from the context; they proceed on the basis that omitted and substituted
elements are easily recoverable, and are therefore natural in speech situ-
ations where a high degree of contextual support is available. We shall
return to them briefly in section 5.9, when we discuss what constitutes
natural speech.
It is sometimes difficult to separate the various types of cohesion, and it
may seem questionable at times why linguists separate such words as the
pronoun it and the substitute one. There are reasons for such categori-
sations: for example, substitutes can be modified ('a red one', 'the one in the
corner') and as such are true substitution, while pronouns, unable to be
modified in this way, (* 'a red it', * 'the it in the corner') co-refer but do not
really substitute for noun phrases. However, in language teaching, there
may be good reasons to bring different categories together, for instance, to
contrast backward reference to an indefinite antecedent ('Do you need 'a
pencil? Yes, I need one.') with reference to a definite antecedent ('Do you
need the pencil? Yes, I need it.').
Reader actii 6 d
The sentence below occurred in a letter of reference for someone applying
for a job; written by a non-native speaker. What mistake has the writer
made, and what explanation might a language teacher offer to help the
writer avoid the error in future?
If you require further information on the applicant, I would be
pleased to do so.
(Author's data 1989)
2.2.3 Conjunction
We include conjunction here in our discussion of grammatical contri-
butions to textuality even though it is somewhat different from reference,
ellipsis and substitution. A conjunction does not set off a search backward
or forward for its referent, but it does presuppose a textual sequence, and
signals a relationship between segments of the discourse.
Discourse analysts ask the same sorts of questions about conjunctions as
they do about other grammatical items: what roles do they play in creating
discourse, do the categories and realisations differ from language to 2.2 Grammatical cohesion and textuality
language, how are they distributed in speech and writing, what resttictions
on their use are there which are not reftected purely through sentence
analysis, and what features of their use are inadequately explicated in con-
ventional grammars?
In fact it is not at all easy to list definitively all &cCitems that perform
the conjunctive role in English. Single-word c~ns merge into
phrasal and clausal ones, and there is ob little &&me heen the
linking of two clauses by a single-word conjuncticq,sif pW one, or a
lexical item somewhere else in the clause, a factwinter rf19n) h-as pointed
out. For example, (2.27-30) signal the causecansrpw relation in-
several ways:
(2.27) He was insensitive to the group's needs. Consequently there-was a lot
of bad feeling. (single word conjunction)
(2.28) He was insensitive to the group's needs. As a consequence there was
a lot of bad feeling. (adverbial phrase as conjunction)
(2.29) As a consequence of his insensitivity to the group's needs, there was a
lot of bad feeling. (adverbial phrase plus nominalisation)
(2.30) The bad feeling was a consequence of his insensitivity to the group's
needs. (lexical item within the predicate of the clause)
There are clearly differences in the way the speakerlwriter has decided to
package the information here. Note how (2.29) and (2.30) enable the
information to be presented as one sentence, and how (2.30) enables the
front-placing of 'bad feeling', a feahlre we shall return to in section 2.3
below. A rrue discourse grammar would examine the options for using 'X is
a consequence of Y', as opposed to 'Y occurred; as a consequence, X
occurred'. We would almost certainly find ourselves in the realm of infor-
mation structure and the speakerlwriter's assessment of what needed to be
brought into focus at what point, and so on (see the discussion of theme
and rheme below).
Halliday (1985: 302-9) offers a scheme for the classification of conjunc-
tive relations and includes phrasal types as well as single-word everyday
items such as and, but, or, etc. Here is a simplified list based on Halliday's
thtee category headings of elaboration, extension and enhancement:
Type Sub-types Examples
daboration apposition in other words
clarification or rather
ertcnsion addition andlbut
variation alternatively
&cement spatio-temporal therelpreviously
causal-condi tionat consequentlylin that case 2 Discourse analysis and grammar
The full list appears in Halliday (1985: 306), and contains over forty
conjunctive items; even that is not exhaustive. So the task for the language
teacher is not a small one. However, when we look at natural data,
especially spoken, we see that a few conjunctions (and, but, so, and then)
are overwhelmingly frequent. We can also observe the wide use of and,
where the readerllistener can supply additive, adversative, causal and
temporal meanings, depending on contextual information, as in (2.31-34):
(2.31) She's intelligent. And she's very reliable. (additive)
(2.32) I've lived here ten years and I've never heard of that pub.
(adversative: but could substitute)
(2.33) He fell in the river and caught a chill. (causal)
(2.34) I got up and made my breakfast. (temporal sequence)
Equally, the possible choices of conjunction will often overlap in meaning,
with little overall difference:
Look at the text on the opposite page and find conjunctions linking
sentences to one another. Using the simplified categorisation below, based
on Halliday and Hasan- (1976), can you say what type of conjunctive
relation is being signalled in each case?
(2.35) A: What about this meeting then?
Categories:
B: I may go,
1. Additive (e.g. and, in addition)
2. Adversative (e.g. but, however)
3. Causal (e.g. because, consequently)
4. Temporal (e.g. tben, subsequently)
and
or
but
though
then
I may not; it all depends. 22 Grammatical cohesion and textuality
Wind wer. Wave power. Solar
power. 9" ida~ power.
Whilst their use will increase they
are unlikely to be able to provide
large amounts of economic elec-
tricity. Generally, the cost of har-
nessing their wer is huge.
Howwer, ~r ere is a more practi-
cal, reliable and economical way of
ensuring electricity for the future.
And that is through nuclear
energy.
It's not a new idea, of course.
We've been using nuclear electricity
for the last 30 years.
In fie it now accounts for
around 20% of Britain's electticity
production. And it's one of the
cheapest and safi ways to pro-
duce electridty we know for the
hture.
What's more, dd nrp lies of
unnium ue arcirmtedtoR for
hundreds of years, wMch will give
us more than e~~lgh time to
develop alternatives ifwe netd to.
So, while some people m@t not
care about their children's future.
We do.
(Advertisement for British Nuclear Forum from The Guardian, 7 October 1988,
P. 17)
When we look at a lot of natural spoken data, we find the basic conjunc-
tions and, but, so and then much in evidence, and used not just to link
individual utterances within turns, but often at the beginning of turns,
linking one speaker's turn with another speaker's, or linking back to an
earlier turn of the current speaker, or else marking a shift in topic or
sub-topic (often with but). In this sense, the conjunctions are better thought
of as discourse markers, in that they organise and 'manage' quite extended
stretches of discourse.
An interesting example of differences in data comes from Hilsdon (1988).
She compared spoken discourse of adult native speakers, young native
speakers and Zambian young adult learners of English, and found in her
Zambian subjects almost a complete absence of the use of and and but in
the characteristic ways we have just described that native speakers use
them. The reasons for the absence of this otherwise very common feature of
spoken discourse in her Zambian data may be cultural, Hilsdon suggests.
Because is very frequent in spoken English, not just to express the
causeeffect relationship, but also to express the reason relationship and as
a speech-act marker signalling a 'this is why I am saying this' function, as in
remarks such as 'this one's better quality, because we'll have to get one that
will last', where the quality of the item being discussed is not an effect of the
speaker's need to buy durable goods, but is simply a justification for
making the remark. Firth (1988) made a study of the distribution of such
'reason' markers in the speech of a mixed native and non-native speaker
group. He found that the non-native speakers exclusively used because to
signal the reason/justification relation, while the native speakers varied the 2 Discourse analysis and grammar
signal, using because, 'cos, like and see, as in this extract from a conver-
sation about smoking in public places:
36) A: Once you start infringing upon the benefits of the other people, that's
when your personal right is lost . . . just like, y'know, you have
rights but yet y'know you can't kill anybody . . . 6e-e obviously
it's infringing upon somebody else's rights . . . you don't need a
majority for something to go wrong, you only need a small minority
. . . see, that's where I mean that's just not right . . . 'cos smoke just
fills the room.
(Firth 1988)
Differences in performance data of these kinds are often the reason why
even quite advanced-learner output can seem unnatural. One of the major
contributions of discourse analysis has been to emphasise the analysis of
real data, and the significance in communicative terms of small words such
as common everyday markers. In previous linguistic approaches these were
too often dismissed as unimportant features of 'performance' which dis-
tracted from the business of describing underlying 'competence'.
t
ReoderoctMty8 d
Consider the following conversational extract from the point of view of the
use of common, everyday conjunctions. What roles do they play in organis-
ing-and managing the discourse?
(A and B have been recounting a series of stories to C about getting
lost while driving.)
A: And another time, I forget where the village was, but there was a
sharp turn at the end of this village, and we says to him 'You turn
left here', so he turned left, into a school yard.
8: Up a road into a school yard . . . they were all following me.
A: [ it wasn't so bad that, but hey
all followed behind us you see.
B: Them that were behind me followed me.
C: Yeah.
B: See I should have gone on another twenty yards.
A: [ But it was getting back
into the traffic stream that was the difficulty.
B: I should have gone a few yards further on and then turned left.
C: Aye, aye.
B: There's a T-road.
A: Oh.
B: And you see with them saying 'turn left'.
C: Yeah (laughs).
(Author's data 1989) 2.3 Theme ad rheme
In this section we have considered devices under a general heading of
grammatical cohesion and textuality. Other grammatical choices at the
clause level have implications for the organisation of the overall discourse,
not least the ordering of elements in clauses and sentences, and it is to this
we now turn.
2.3 Theme and rhemtr
Most learners, when learning the grammar of a foreign language, spend-
time assimilating the structure of clauses in that language, i.c. where
subjects, objects and adverbiab are placed in relation to the verb, and what
options are available for rearranging the most typical sequences. Discourse
analysts are interested in the implications of these different structural
options for the creation of text, and, as always, it is from the examination
of natural data that patterns of use are seen to emerge. Some of the
structural options frequently found in natural data are ignored or under-
played in language teaching (especially those found in spoken data, which
are often dismissed as degraded or bad 'style'), probably owing to the
continued dominance of standards taken from the written code. If the
desire is to be faithful to data, grammar teaching may have to reorient some
of its structural descriptions, while others already dealt with in sentence-
level exercises may be adequately covered in traditional teaching and
simply adjusted to discourse-oriented approaches.
English is what is often called an 'SVO' language, in that the declarative
clause requires a verb at its centre, a subject before it and any object after it.
This is simply a labelling device which enables comparisons to be made
with declarative realisations in difkrent languages, some of which will be
'VSO' or 'SOV' languages. This pattern is often recast in English, not least
in interrogative structures, where the verbal group is split by the subject
('Does she like cats!'), and in cases where the object is brought forward:
(2.37) The Guardian, Joyce reads. OSV Object-fronted
There are in English a variety of ways in which the basic clause elements of
subject, uerb, compl-tlobject, adverbial can be rearranged by putting
different elements at the beginning of the clause, as illustrated in (2.37) to
(2.42). These ways of bringing different elements to the front are called
fronting devices.
(2.38) Sometimes Joyce reads The Guclrdian.
ASVO Aduerbial-fronted
(2.39) It's The Ghrdian Joyce reads.
It + be + C/O + SV It-them, or cleft (The Guardian here seems to
operate simultaneously as complement of is and as object of reds) 2 Discourse analysis and grammar
(2.4) What Joyce reads is The Guardian.
Wh- + SV + be + C/O Wh-pseudo-cleft
(2.41) She reads The Guardian, Joyce. ,
S(pronoun) VOS(noun) Right-displaced subject
(2.42) Joyce, she reads The Guardian.
S(noun) S(pronoun) VO LRft-displaced subject
Structures such as (2.41) and (2.42) are far from infrequent in spoken data,
but are often, for no obvious reason, not presented in books claiming to
describe grammatical options for the learner. Other variations of word
order are also present in data, though some types may be rarer (e.g.
complement-fronting: 'rich they may be, but I don't think they're happy').
If we look again at our examples from the point of view of how the
information in them is presented, we can see how different options enable
us to focus on or highlight certain elements: (2.37) seems to be saying
something 'about' The Guardian rather than 'about' Joyce; (2.41) and
(2.42) seem to bc telling us something 'about' Joyce. This 'aboutness' is the
sort of notion discourse analysts are concerned with, for it is a speaker1
writer choice made independently of the propositional content of the
message; the speakerlwriter decides how to 'stage' the information, where
to start, so to speak, in presenting the message.
In English, what we decide to bring to the fiont of the clause (by
whatever means) is a signal of what is to be understood as the framework
within which what we want to say is to be understood. The rest of the
clause can then be seen as transmitting 'what we want to say within this
framework'. Items brought to front-place in this way we shall call the
themes (or topics) of their clauses. In what has been called the Prague
School of linguistics, the relationship of the theme to the rest of the sentence
is viewed as part of communicative dynamism, that is the assessment of the
extent to which each element contributes to the development of the com-
munication (see Firbas 1972). Alternatively, the theme can be seen as the
'point of departure' of the message (Halliday 1985: 38). For the moment, we
shall take as the theme of a clause the subject noun-phrase, or, if this is not
initial, then we shall include whatever comes before it. It seems that &st
position in the clause is important in many of the world's languages, and
that creating a theme in the clause is a universal feature, though its
realisations may vary from language to language.
Check that you are familiar with the devices for varying word order listed
above in examples (2.3742) by subjecting these two sentences to as many
of them as possible (an example is given): 2.3 Theme and rheme
1. Bob takes the children out every Saturday.
Example: Bob, he takes the children out every Saturday. (left dis-
placement)
2. The gardener wants to cut down those bushes this spring.
We now turn to the relationship between these in-clatlse structures and the
construction of text. There are clearly restrictions on where and when these
devices may be used when they occur in ml discourse. &Hh (2.43) and
(2.44) sound odd:
(2.43) Q: What time did you leave the building?
A: What I did at five thirty was leave the building.
(2.44) Dear Joan,
Me, I'm sitting here at my desk writing to you. What's outside my
window is a big lawn surrounded by trees and it's a flower bed that's
in the middle of the lawn. When it was full of daffodils and tulips
was in the spring. Here you'd love it. It's you who must come and
stay sometime; what we've got is plenty of room.
Love, Sally
(2.43) is peculiar because 'leaving the building' is already 'given' in the
question; it is therefore odd that it should be 'announced' again in the
answer. (2.4) contains a string of grammatically well-formed sentences but
it is highly unlikely that such a welter of low-frequency clause patterns
would om in one small piece of text. Moreover, it sounds as if the
postcard writer is answering questions nobody has actually ever asked,
such as 'Isn't it a pond that's in the middle of the lawn?' 'No, it's a flower
bed that's . . .', or else implicit contrasts are being suggested without any
apparent motivation: 'here you'd love it', as opposed to 'somewhere where
you might hate it'. Let us try getting rid of all the fronting devices and
rewriting our postcard with subjects initial in every clause:
(2.45) Dear Joan,
I'm sitting here at my desk writing to you. A big lawn surrounded by
trees is outside my window and a flower bed is in the middle of the
lawn. It was full of daffodils and tulips in the spring. You'd love it
here. You must come and stay sometime; we've got plenty of room.
Love, Sally
We probably now feel that the text is bland, a sort of flat landscape in
which each bit of information is doled out without any overall sense of
direction or organisation, and with equal weight given to all the elements of
the message. Language teachers might recognise in this jejune version some
of the characteristics of low-level learners' early attempts at letter- of 2 Discourse analysis and grammar
essay-writing, hampered by impoverished grammatical resources, or the
lack of confidence to transfer features from L1. What is missing from our
postcard are strategic decisions to 'stage' the information and to put it into
a discourse framework with the foregrounding of certain elements, such as
is found in natural discourse. A third version, with discriminating use of
fronting, seems more natural:
(2.6) Dear Joan,
I'm sitting here at my desk writing to you. Outside my window is a
big lawn surrounded by trees, and in the middle of the lawn is a
flower bed. It was full of daffodils and dips in the spring. You'd
love it here. You must come and stay sometime; we've got plenty of
room.
Love, Sally
In any spatial description of this kind, spatial orientation of the reader1
listener is important, and writerslspeakers naturally give prominence to this
function. The second sentence in (2.46) does this by front-placing location
adverbials. The remaining sentences are neutral, with subjects in initial
position. Linde and Labov's (1975) data of people describing their
apartments also contain frequent front-placings of spatial adverbials,
revealing the speakers' staging strategies.
In spoken narratives and anecdotes, speakers will often front-place key
orientationai features for their listeners. These are most obviously time and
place markers ('once upon a time', 'one day', 'then, suddenly', 'at the
corner', 'not far from here', etc.), but may also be foregrounding of key
participants and information about them felt to be important for the
listener. This is particularly noticeable in left-displaced structures, which
are extremely common when a participant is being made the focus of
attention as a main actor in the subsequent discourse, as in these extracts:
(The extracts are from anecdotes about coincidences and from ghost
stories.)
(2.47) And the fellow who rang up from Spain that night, he's
coincidence-prone . . .
(2.48) That couple that we know in Portsmouth, I don't hear of her for
months, and then, . . .
(Author's data 1989)
But another version of left-displacement is also common: when one partici-
pant is mentioned in the theme-slot, but only to provide a link with a new
participant who will take the stage in the story (see (2.49) and (2.50)). The
speaker can thus create a new topic or sub-topic framework, by activating
different elements of the context, and using the theme-slot is one way of
making a subject what we have called the 'focus of attention', the particular
topic being addressed at any one time. Here are some examples horn data: 2.3 Theme and rheme
(2.49) One of the men, his wife was a swimming instructor, and she said to
me.. .
(2.50) This friend of mine, her son was in hospital, and he'd had a serious
accident, and he . . .
(Author's data 1989)
Concentrating on the themes (or topics) of dausa doa not tell us much
about the rest of the clause, which may be call4 the rheme or comment of
the clause. In fact, when we look at themes and rhemes together in
connected text, we see further patterns emerging. We can &vide our
postcard text into themes and rhemes:
theme (topic)
1. I
2. outside my window
3. In the middle of the lawn
4. This bed
5. You
6. You
7. We
hem (comment)
'm sitting here . . .
is a big lawn . . .
is a flower bed.
was full of daffodils . . .
'd love it here.
must come and stay;
've got plenty of room.
Two different options can be seen to be realised herc: (a) the rheme of
sentence 3 contains an element (the flower bed) which becomes the theme of
sentence 4; (b) the theme of sentence 5 is the same as the theme of sentence
6. These two textual options may be expressed thus:
Option (a):, theme1 - rhemel
5 heme2 theme2 -
theme? - etc.
Option (b): theme1 - rheme'
5.
theme1 - etc.
We can see these options at work in real texts:
(2.51) As you will no doubt have been told; we have our own photographic
club and darkroom. The club is called 'Monomanor' and there is an
annual fee of f 5. The momy goes towards replacing any equipment
worn out by use, or purchasing new equipment. Monomanor runs an
annual competition with prizes, judging being done and prizes
awarded at the garden party in the summer term. Besides the
competition, we also have talks and/or film shows during the other
terms.
(Advemsancnt for student camera c1u.b; author's data) 2 Discourse analysis and grammar
Emact (2.51) reflects option (a) quite strongly, where elements of rhemes
become themes of subsequent sentences (relevant items are in italics). The
next extract chooses predominantly option (b):
l am
Claudia Cassaigne
I live
rue Martel, Paris
l work
in the centre of Paris
I like
Classical ballet
English humour
Cooking Chinese food
Drinking Champagne
Keep fit exercises
Tall men with green eyes
I hate
'Being badly dressed
&king broke
My perfume is
Feminine
Light
Very chic
For-the evenings
Cavale. C'ett Moi
Dressing up inthe evening
(from Cosmopolitan, September 1985, p. 5)
Looking back at the camera club text, we see that sentences 2,3 and 4 are
slightly more complex than was suggested. The rheme of (2) contains two
elements (Monomanor and £5) which are taken up as themes in the two
separate subsequent sentences, giving us the pattern:
This third option is a hierarchical pattern. For further examples and
discussions of themerheme patterns see Dane; (1974).
But are these patterns not simply questions of 'style' or 'rhetoric'? ,h a
way, they are, insomuch as they are not truly structural, since no combi-
nations are specifically forbidden by &, and indeed, some of what was
traditionally relegated to rag-bag categories such as 'style' has been taken
over as the province of discourse analysis. It is hoped that the discussion so
far has indicated the importance of thematisation as a means of creating
topic frameworks and as an example of audience orientation. Further
investigation would probably also discover links between certain patterns
of theme and rheme and particular registers (e.g. many advertising texts use
the option of returning to the same theme, usually the product name). 2.3 Theme and rheme
Reader activity 10 d
Which pattern(s) of theme and rheme sequencing an predominant in these
extracts? Consider too the author's choice in term of topic frameworks,
and the purpose and register of the texts.
I.
Cost of acid cleanup doubles
B
RITAIN'S privatised electricity
industry will f?ce a bill for cleaning
up acid polJution from its power stations
that is more than double that so far admit-
ted. The cost of meeting an EEC directive
to combat acid rain, approved by minis-
ters in June, will approach U billion,
according to consultants who recently
presented a study on strategies to reduce
acid pollution to the Department of the
Environment (DOE).
The study forms part of a broad review
of technologies to combat acid rain, pre-
pared at the request of the DOE by the
Fellowship of Engineering.
The author of the study is Philip Comer
of Tecbnica, a consultancy. He told a
meeting of the British Consultants
Bureau in London last week that "with
only a modest increase in electrical energy
consumption, the DOE targets for pollu-
tion abatement will not be met. . . There
is a divergence between stated policy and
achievable objectives. "
(from New Scientist, 22 October 1988, p. 29)
skull.lt~~~lbfnthOft)##ood
pumpedoutbytheheartateachbeat
The brain looks not unlike a huge
~k~ftisdams~with
awrinkled~,andisintwohahnw
~lnthelniddle.Comingoutfrom
thebaseofthekainlikeastaikblha
~crdsm.~bthe~topOf
the~cwd,wMchrunsondown
toour'tan'.P8rbOfthebcBin~
conbPlourmarrtbadc~
-, - b-, -km and
-=
(from The Observer, 16 October 1988, p. 2) 2 Discourse analysis and grammar
Patterns of sequencing of theme and rheme are tendencies rather than
absolutes. Very few texts (except perhaps highly ritualised ones such as
religious litanies) repeat the same thematising patterns endlessly. We have
suggested that low-level learners might be trapped in unnatural patterns
owing to limited grammatical resources or lack of confidence in a new L2,
but most advanced learners are likely to have a good feel for creating topic
frameworks and orienting their audience. The grammatical structures that
are underplayed in grammar books (e.g. left displacements, object-fronting)
may be produced unconsciously by learners, but awareness and monitoring
on the part of teachers is necessary to ensure that natural production using
the wide resources of the grammar is indeed taking place.
So far, we have concentrated on thematising in clauses, but it should not
be forgotten that sequencing choices of clauses within sentences, and
sentences within paragraphs are of the same, discourse-related type. For
instance, it has been observed that first sentences often tell us what the
whole paragraph is about, a macro-level front-placing of an element
signalling the framework of the message. Such sentences are often called
topic sentences, and are considered important for skills such as skim-
reading. It is often possible, just by reading the first sentence, to state what a
paragraph is about (the paragraph theme), though it is not possible to state
what the text is saying about its theme (the paragraph rheme). However,
this does seem to be an oversimplification, and many paragraphs have
initial sentences that do not tell us what the paragraph is about. Jones and
Jones's (1985) study of cleft and pseudo-cleft sentences in discourse shows
that the presence of a cleft structure, even if not paragraph-initial, is often a
more reliable signal of paragraph topic, and anyway, relatively little is
known about why writers make paragraph divisions where they do.
Finally, ideally, we should also consider sentences that contain more
than one element other than the subject brought to front place, such as this
very sentence you are reading. The first fronted element (finally) organises
the text sequentially a--that the section is coming to a close (a
textual function); ideally signals my attitude towards what I have to say,
and has an interpersonal function. The next element, we, is part of the
content or ideational meaning of the message, or, as Halliday (1985: 56)
calls it, the topical theme. The unmarked (most frequent) order for complex
themes can thus be stated as textual + interpersonal + ideational:
Themes Textual lntetpersonal Ideational
Examples moreover frankly Joe Smith . . .
likewise obviously burglars . . .
for instance personally I.. .
(Adapted from Halliday 1985: 534)
58 2.4 Tense and aspect
A natural example of this ordering is seen in this sentence from a student
essay on language and gender:
(2.53) Conversely, possibly, females felt more at ease responding to a
non-specific female address.
(Author's data 1989)
The notion of theme and how it is realised in English is an area where
grammatical structure and discourse function seem most closely allied, and,
if discourse analysis is to have an influence on how language is taught, then
ways of presenting variations in clause structure in relation to discourse
functions may be a good place to start. In the past, emphasis on invented
sentences and on writing (in both theoretical and applied linguistics) has
led to the relegation to the fringes of some structures found in natural talk.
But natural data show that variations of standard SVOA order are much
more frequent than might be thought. Furthermore, languages vary in how
they deal with thematisation: Japanese has a particle wa, widely used to
topicalise elements in clauses (Hinds 1986: 157), and Tagalog (the language
of the Philippines) apparently topicalises at the end of clauses (Creider
1979). Other languages are similar to English; Duranti and Ochs (1979) give
examples of left-displacement in Italian speech and discuss its functions in
discourse management. Mixed nationality groups of learners may therefore
present a variety of problems at various levels, just as is the case in
conventional grammar teaching.
2.4 Tense and aspect
A great deal of attention has recently been paid to the relationship between
tense-aspect choices and overall discourse constraints. By examining
natural data, discourse analysts are able to observe regular correlations
between discourse types and the predominance of certain tense and aspect
choices in the clause. Equally, the emphasis-in bi~ourse anzlysls on
interactive features of discourse such as speakerlwriter perspective and
standpoint, and the focusing or foregrounding of certain elements of the
message, has led to reinterpretations of conventional statements about
tense and aspect rules.
An example of the first type of approach is Zydatiss (1986), who looked
at a number of text types in English where present perfect is either
dominant or in regular contrast with past simple. Zydatiss observed that
three basic functions of the present perfect, all under the general heading of
current relevance, frequently recur over a wide range of text types. He
names these functions: (1) conveying 'hot news', (2) expressing experiences,
and (3) relating to present effects of changes and accomplishments.
'Hot news' texts are mostly found in broadcast and written news reports, 2 Discourse amlysis and grammar
but are also common in everyday speech. An examflk (taken from British
television news) is: 'The government has announced a muki-million pound
scheme to retrain the unemployed, but union chiefs have pledged all-out
opposition to it.' This choice of tense and aspect will occur time and time
again, and can be tapped as a rich source of illustrative material for
language teaching (see for example, Swan and Walter 1990: 50, who use
just such news events to illustrate present perfect usage). Lcrms-to-the-
editor and agony-column letters, Zydatiss claims, contain frequent present
perfects performing the 'experiences' and 'changes and accomplishments'
functions. Idot news texts, present perfect regularly contrasts with past
simple in the same text, where the topicalising sentence uses present perfect,
while the details of the narrative are in past simple, for example: 'A British
firm bas laded a huge shipping contract in Brazil. The deal was signed at a
meeting today in London.' Biographical sketches and obituaries are also a
source of this shift of tense. Zydatiss lists many text types which seem to
have such correlations. The usefulness of such investigations is not that
they necessarily tell language teachers anything they did not already know
or might conclude from intuition, burthat they offer a short-cut to useful
data sources and statistical back-up to intuition.
In specialist and academic texts such as scientific articles, correlations are
often observable between discourse segments and tense and aspect choices.
Medical research articles in journals such as the British Medical Journal,
for instance, regularly use past simple in the abstract section, and shift to
predominantly present perfect in the introduction section, at the end of
which there is a shift back to past simple where the discourse begins its
'narrative' of the particular research experiment reported. Also in academic
texts, one finds interesting correlations between the tenses used to cite other
authors and the current author's standpoint: one might compare alternative
citations such as 'Johnson (1975) suggtsts/has suggestdlsuggestcdlhad
suggested that . . .'.
Reader activity 1 1 d
Consider this sentence taken from the end of an essay by a learner of
English. In what way is her use of tense and aspect inappropriate? hw
would you correct it and what rule or guideline could you give her
regarding rense and aspect in different sections of academic essays?
Conclusion
In this essay, I try to discuss the different types of information which
the matrices give about words. Also some other information which
matrices can convey are suggested in the last seaion.
(Author's data 1989) 2.4 Tense and aspect
A particular day-today context worth noting is the telling of stories, jokes
and anecdotes. Schiffrin's (1981) data shows regular correlations between.
discourse segments and tense and aspect choices. Schiffrin considers prin-
acipally the shiL from 'historic' present (i.e. using the present tense to
describe actions and events in the past) to past simple in English oral
anecdotes. She takes a model of narrative based on Labov (1972), in which
the main elements are orientation (establishing ti- place and characters),
complicating actions (the main events that make the mry), resolution (how
the story reaches its end), and evaluation (cornmuas on the events).
Historic present tense verbs cluster in the complicahg &on segments,
and, within those segments, particularly in the middle of the-VS, and
not typically in the initial or final clause. Historic present is also sometimes
accompanied by changes from simple to progressive aspect where the time
sequence seems to be broken and a particularly strong focus is given to
actions. In the following extract, the speaker is recounting a ghost story;
note the shift. in tense and aspect at crucial junctures:
(2.54) A: Not all that long since, perhaps ten years ago,. this friend of mine,
her son was in hospital, and he'd had a serious accident and he
was unconscious for a long time . . . anyway, she went to see him
one day and she said 'Has anybody been to see you?', and he says
'No, but a right nice young lady came to see me,' he said, 'she
was lovely, she stood at the foot of me bed, you know, she . . .
had a little word with me.' Well eventually he came home, and
they'd a lot of the family in the house, and Emma, this friend of
mine, brought these photographs out, of the family through the
years, and, passing them round, and he's looking at them and he
said 'Oh! that's that young lady that came to see me when I was
in bed.' She'd died when he was born . . . so.
B: Good God.
A: He'd never seen her.
B: No . . . heavens.
(Author's data 1989)
Note how 'he says' prefaces the significant event of the appearance of the
'lady'. Historic present occurs again, accompanied by progressive aspect
(he's looking) at the highest moment of suspense in the tale.
In Schiffrin's data, historic present often occurs in segments where the
episodes are understood by the listener as occurring in sequence and in the
time-world of the story; therefore, to some extent, the grammatical
marking of pastness may be considered redundant. Schiffrin compares these
segments of narratives with sports commentaries, recipe commentaries (the
speaker describing the process as it happens) and magicians' commentaries
on their tricks. The historic present in anecdotes is really an 'internal
evaluation device', focusing on the events that really 'make' the story. 2 Discourse analysis and grammar
The data for tense and aspect we have looked at can all be interpreted in
the light of the speakerlwriter's perspective and as projections of shifting
perspectives. The tenses and aspects do not gem so much strictly bound to
time as to issues such as the sender's purpose, the focus on different
elements of the message, and the projection of a shared framework within
which the receiver will understand the message.
Tense and aspect vary notoriously from language to language and are
traditional stumbling-blocks for learners. The classic 'aspect' languages
such as the Slavic tongues make choices of perfective and imperfective
aspects which are quite at odds with the English notion of describing past
events in terms of 'now-relevance' (present perfect) and 'break 4th the
present' (past simple). However, some features, for example tve use of
historic present in anecdotes, seem widely distributed across Ianguages (in
Europe the Nordic and theRomance languages share this feature). Whether
or not such features are transferred by learners without difficulty is another
matter, and one worthy of close observation. Certainly in the genre-specific
occurrences such as the medical articles discussed above, learners some-
times experience difficulties or show unawareness of rhe conventions of the
genre.
This chapter has taken a selection of grammatical. concepts and has
attempted to show how discourse analysis has contributed to our under-
standing of the relationship between local choices within the clause and
sentence and the organisation of the discourse as a whole. When speakers
and writers are producing discourse, they are, at the same time as they are
busy constructing clauses, monitoring the development of the larger dis-
course, and their choices at the local level can be seen simultaneously to
reflect the concerns of the discourse as an unfolding production, with an
audience, whether present or projected. A discourse-oriented approach to
grammar would suggest not only a greater emphasis on contexts larger than
the sentence, but also a reassessment of priorities in terms of what is taught
about such things as word order, articles, ellipsis, tense and aspect, and
some of the other categories discussed here.
If grammar is seen to have a direct role in welding clauses, turns and
sentences into discourse, what of words themselves? What role does
vocabulary choice play in the discourse process? It is to this question that
we turn next. 2.5 Conclusion
Further reading
The most detailed work on grammar above clause level is Halliday (1985), but
some prefer to treat this as a reference work rather than as reading.
Monaghan (1987) is an interesting, though sometimes difficult, collection of papers
on different aspects of grammar and discourse.
For a detailed description of cohesion in English, Halliday and Hasan (1976) is
unsurpassed, though Hasan's (1984) revision of lexical cohesion should also be
taken into account.
The room descriptions in Dutch in Ehrich and Koster (1983) contain further
examples comparable to Linde's.
Another interesting study of substitution is Jordan (1986).
Ellipsis in conversation is examined in detail in Ricento (1987).
More on expressing cause in conversation may be found in Schiffrin (1985a).
On the question of the significance of front position in the clause in the world's
languages, see Fuller and Gundel (1987).
For word-order phenomena in various selected languages, see Givon (1984).
On front-placing in Spanish see Rivero (1980), and for French, see Barnes (1985).
Kies (1988) contains a good discussion on variations of word order in English data.
Discussion of the different theme-rheme patterns can be found in Danes (1974), and
further discussion of theme in P. H. Fries (1983).
For the distribution of theme-rheme patterns in written texts, see Eiler (1986) and
Francis (1989).
Topic sentences in paragraphs are discussed by Grellet (1981: 96-8).
A good general survey of different treatments of 'given' and 'new' in relation to
. theme and rheme may be found in Allerton (1978).
A combined investigation of present progressive, deictic that. and pronominali-
sation in spoken technical discourse can be found in Reichman-Adar (1984).
For more on tense in learned citations, see Riddle (1986).
Aspect in the Slavic languages is exemplified in Hopper (1979 and 1982) with
reference to Russian discourse.
Aspect and discourse in French is dealt with by Monville-Burston and Waugh
(1985) and Waugh and Monville-Burston (1986).
At the more advanced level, the papers in Schopf (1989) on tense in English are
worth pursuing. 'When I use a word,' Humpty
Dumpty said, in rather a scorn-
ful tone, 'it means just what I
choose it to mean - neither
more nor less.'
'The question is,' said Alice,
'whether you can make words
mean so many different things.'
3.1 Introduction
Bringing a discourse dimension into language teaching does not by any
means imply an abandonment of teaching vocabulary. Vocabulary will still
be the largest single element in tackling a new language for the learner and
it would be irresponsible to suggest that it will take care-of itself in some
ideal world where language teaching and' learning are discourse-driven.
The vocabulary lesson (or pan of a lesson) will still have a place in a
discourse-oriented syllabus; the challenge is to bring the discourse dimen-
sion into vocabulary teaching alongside traditional and recent, more com-
municative approaches (e.g. Gairns and Redman 1986). Therefore, in this
chapter we shall look at research into vocabulary in extended texts in
speech and writing and consider if anything can be usefully exploited to
give a discourse dimension to vocabulary teaching and vocabulary activi-
ties in the classroom. Most are already in agreement that vocabulary
should, wherever possible, be taught in context, but context is a rather
catch-all term and what we need to do at this point is to look at some of the
specific relationships between vocabulary choice, context (in the sense of
the situation in which the discourse is produced) and co-text (the actual text
surrounding any given lexical item). The suggestions we shall make will be
offered as a supplement to conventional vocabulary teaching rather than as
a replacement for it. 3.2 Lexical cohesion
3.2 Lexical cohesion
One recent attempt at studying vocabulary.patterns above sentence level is
Halliday and Hasan's (1976) description of lexical cohesion. Related
vocabulary items occur across clause and sentence boundaries in written
texts and across act, move and turn boundaries in speech and are a major
characteristic of coherent discourse. The relatians between vocabulary
items in texts described by the Halliday-Hasan model are of two principal
kinds: reiteration and collocation.
It is debatable whether collocation properly belongs to the notion of
lexical cohesion, since collocation only refers to the probatjility that lexical
items will co-occur, and is not a semantic relation between words. Here,
therefore, we shall consider the term 'lexical cohesion' to mean only exact
repetition of words and the role played by certain basic semantic relations
between words in creating textuality, that property of text which distin-
guishes it from a random sequence of unconnected sentences. We shall
consequently ignore collocational associations across sentence boundaries
as lying outside of these semantic relations.
If lexical reiteration can be shown to be a significant feature of textuality,
then there may be something for the language teacher to exploit. We shall
not suggest that it be exploitcd simply because it is there, but only if, by
doing so, we can give learners meaningful, controlled practice and the hope
of improving their text-creating and decoding abilities, and providing them
with more varied contexts for using and practising vocabulary.
Reiteration means either restating an item in a later part of the discourse
by direct repetition or else reasserting its meaning by exploiting lexical
relations. Lexical relations are the stable semantic relationships that exist
between words and which are the basis of descriptions given in dictionaries
and thesauri: for example, rose and flower are related by hyponymy; rose is
a hyponym of flower. Eggplant and aubergine are related by synonymy
(regardless of the geographical dimension of usage that distinguishes them).
In the following two sentences, lexical cohesion by synonymy occurs:
(3.1) The meeting commenced at six thirty. But from the moment it began,
it was clear that all was not well.
Here, commence and begin co-refer to the same entity in the real world.
They need not always do so:
(3.2) The meeting commenced at six thirty; the storm began at eight.
In (3.2) commence and begin refer to separate events, but we would still
wish to see a stylistic relationship between them (perhaps to create dry
humourlirony). Decoding the co-referring relationship in (3.1) is an inter-
pretive act of the reader, just as occurs with pronouns (see section 2.2). In
(3.3), cohesion by hyponymy occurs: 3 - Discowse analysis and vocabulary
(3-3) There was a fine old rocking-chair that his father used to sit in, a
desk where he wrote letters, a nest of small tables and a dark,
irnpo~ing bookcase. Now all this furniture was to be sold, and with it
his own past.
The superordinate need not be an immediate superordinate in the family
tree of a particular word; it can be a general word (see Halliday and Hasan
1976: Ch. 6). Instead of furniture we could have had all these itemslobjectsl
things, which are examples of geneial superordinates. Other genera1 super-
ordinates, covering human and abstract areas, include people, creature,
idea and fact. Reiteration of this kind is extremely common in English
discourse; we do not always find direct repetition of words, and very often
find considerable variation from sentence to sentence in writing and from
turn to turn in speech. Such variation can add new dimensions and nuances
to meaning, and serves to build up an increasingly complex context, since
every new word, even if it is essentially repeating or paraphrasing the
semantics of an earlier word, brings with it its own connotations and
history of occurrence. In the case of reiteration by a superordinate, we can
often see a summarising or encapsulating function in the choice of words,
bringing various elements of the text together under one, more general
term. Reiteration is not a chance event; writers and speakers make
conscious choices whether to repeat, or find a synonym, or a superordinate.
Discourse analysts have not yet given us any convincing rules or guide-
lines as to when or why a writer or speaker might choose a synonym for
reiteration rather than repetition, though some research suggests a link
between reiteration using synonyms and the idea of 're-entering' important
topic words into the discourse at a later stage, that is to say bringing them
back into focus, or foregrounding them again (see Jordan 198.5). Other
research claims correlations between boundaries of discourse segments (as
opposed to sentences or paragraphs) and re-entering of full noun phrases
instead of pronouns (see B. Fox 1987). We may also be dealing with a
lexical parallel to the grammatical topicalisation discussed in section 2.3. In
(3.4), we can observe the importance of the words route and way in the
foregrounding of the topic in this short extract, which is how to or ways of
getting a contract, as indicated by the headline:
THE NORMAL route is to
HOW
build up a following through
live shows, send in tapes to -
to get a record companies and then wait
until someone 'discovers" you.
contract But there are other ways ...
(from News on Sunday, 14 June 1987, p. 22) 3.2 Lexical cohesion
Such usage as this is very common in English discourse. However, in
practice, since our knowledge is inadequate, language teachers must
content themselves with observing each case as it-arises and, for the
moment, work on raising an awareness of such phenomena where
awareness is lacking, and,-most important of all, the lexical
equipment in L2 and practice of the skills to enable learners to create texts
that resemble naturally occurring ones themsekes. It means that it is
important to make learners aware that synonyms are not just ways of
understanding new words when &ey crop up in class, nor are they some
abstract notion for the organisation of lexicons and hjuri, but they are -
there to be used, just as any other linguistic device, in the creation of
natural discourse.
Another implication for language pedagogy is that material writers who
create their own texts or who simplify naturally occurring ones should
remember that disturbing the lexical patterns of texts may lead to unnatu-
ralness and inauthenticity at the discourse level; simplification may mean
an unnatural amount of repetition, for example, compared with the vari-
ation between exact repetition and reiteration by other means found in
natural texts.
An analysis of the following newspaper extract according to Halliday
and Hasan's principles, shows lexical cohesion at work:
RITAIN'S green and Anti-hunt campaigners estimate
pleasant meadows yes- that 7,500 young hounds will be
terday became "killing destroyed because they fail to
fields" with the start of the fox mabe the grade.
cub hunting season. And many experienced hounds
More than 6,000 young foxes will be killed because they are too
eqjoying their first flush of life will old to hunt.
be hunted down in the next three The cub hunting wason is just a
months to give inexperienced curtain-raiser to the traditional
young hounds a blood lust. pastime of kitling adult foxes.
But the dogs will also suffer.
(from News on Sunday, 2 August 1987, p. 10)
Fox cub is reiterated as the near-synonymous young foxes; young hounds is
repeated, but also covered by the superordinate dogs in the third para-
graph. Destroyed and killed are also synonymous in this context (para-
graphs 3 and 4).
Learning to observe lexical links in a text according to Halliday and
Hasan's model could be useful for language learners in various ways. For
one thing, it encourages learners to group lexical items together according
to particular contexts by looking at the lexical relations in any given text.
One of the recurring problems for learners is that words presented by the
teacher or coursebook as synonyms will probably only be synonymous in
certain contexts and the learner has to learn to observe just when and where
individual pairs of words may be used interchangeably. 3 Discourse analysis and vocabulary
Little is known about the transferability of these lexical features 6f text
-. .
from one language to another. Some languages may have a preference for
repetition rather than linking by synonymy (such as is often said of literary
and academic styles in Spanish, for example); sometimes learners may find
the transfer of these skills to be easy and automatic. In either case the
learner may need to use a range of vocabulary that is perhaps wider than
the coursebook or materials have allowed for. Additionally, an awareness
of the usefulness of learning synonyms and hyponyms for text-creating
purposes may not always be psychologically present among learners; there
is often a tendency for such areas of vocabulary learning to be seen as word
study divorced from actual use, or at best only concerned with receptive
skills. Conventional treatments of vocabulary in published materials often
underline this word-out-of-context approach. Redman and Ellis's (1989
and 1990) vocabulary materials are exceptional in this respect.
Trace all subsequent lexical reiterations of the underlined words in the text
below. Are the reiterations in the form of near-synonyms, antonyms or
hyponymslsuperordinates!
Cruise guards Lwere asleepg
W a group al- of owe
peace campiigners to
breach a missile se-
curity cordon yester-
day
The women protesters
claimed to have walked
right up to cruise
launchers.
As sentries slept. they
tiptoed pest sentries at
3am and inspected a
crulse convoy in a woody
copse on Wsbury Plain.
Greenham Common
campaigner Sarah
Graham said : 'For the
sake of maki
% thm more realistic, e copse
was protected by soldiers
dug into fox-holes.
'And there were dogs
rather than the usual
reels of barbed wire."
But, she claimed. the
American airmen were
dodng by the launchers.
"One was kipping ben-
eath one of the
vehicles," she added.
(from News on Sunday, 2 August 1987, p. 15)
Eventually, one of the
airmen "woke qp" and
spotted the women, who
had been trailing the
convoy from the
Greenham Common
base in Berkshire since
Tuesday.
The Ministry of De-
fence confirmed there
had been an incident.
Ten women had been
arrested. cha
trespassing an reled
on bail.
F "th
3.3 Lexls in talk
There is no reason why the model of lexical relations in text outlined above
should not also be applied to spoken data (see Stubbs 1983: 22-3). When we 3.3 Lexis in talk
do this, we find that interesting observations can be made concerning how
speakers reiterate their own and take up one another's vocabulary selec-
tions in one form or another from turn to ~m and develop and expand
topics in doing so. We shall refer to this phmomnon as relexicalisation.
Let us look at a piece of data from Crystal ad Dpvy (1975) and analyse it
according to the general principles of the Hahday-Hasan model:
'(3.6) (Two women are taking about 'Eonfire Night', the night when many
people in Britain have large bonfires and iircworks in their gardens.)
A: No, I don't think we can manage a large boafitr but the fireworks
themselves er we have a little storc of, . .
B: Oh yes, they're quite fun, yes.
A: Mm yes, the children like them very much so I think as long as
one is careful, very careful (B: Oh yes) it's all right.
B: Mm.
A: But em I ban bangers, we don't have any bangers (B: Yes) I can't
stand those (B: Yes) just the pretty ones.
B: Sparklers are my favourites.
A: Mm Catherine Wheels are my favourites actually but er you
know we have anything that's pretty and sparkly and we have a
couple of rockets you know, to satisfy Jonathan who's all rockets
and spacecrafts and things like this.
(Crystal and Davy 1975: 28)
In A's first turn, she concludes a few previous exchanges about bonfires and
then shifts the topic to the closely associated fireworks. B accepts the topic
and just says that fireworks are fun. A takes up B's use of fin, and
relexicalises it as like them and then adds that one should be careful. B
simply replies 'mm'. A (who seems to work hardest at this point in
developing topics) returns to the fireworks themselves and talks of par-
ticular fireworks: bangers and pretty ones. B continues this with spark.
A comes back with Catherine Wheels, then repeats pretty and sparkly and
expands to rockets. At the same time she exploits the double association of
rocket to bring in its near-synonym spacecrafi, thus expanding the topic to
talk about her child, Jonathan.
Meanwhile, other relexicalisations are discernible: fun in B's turn, which
becomes like in A's, is taken up as can't stand in A's next turn, then as
favourites by B, and finally as favorrites again by A, representing, by
moving from near-synonym to antonym and vice versa, the sub-topic of
'likes and preferences' with regard to fireworks. Another relexicalisation
chain can be seen in the sub-topic of 'precautions and restrictions': carebl,
ban, don't have carry this strand over the turn boundaries. This small
number of lexical chains accounts for almost all the content items in the
extract. The intimate bond between topic development and the modifi-
cation and reworking of lexical items already used makes the conversation 3 Discourse analysis and vocabulary
develop coherently, seeming to move from sub-topic to sub-topic as a
seamless whole. In this way the scope of the topics is worked out between
the participants, with neither side necessarily dominating. This accords
with the ethnomethodological approach to discourse analysis, which sees
conversation as a joint activity that has to be worked at. Topics unfold
interactively, rather than 'existing' as static entities; Wardaugh (1985:
13P-40) refers to topic as a 'consensual outcome'. This is quite clearly so
here. Speakers can throw topics into the ring, but whether they are taken up
or die depends on the other speakerts); if one speaker insists on pursuing
hislher topics, ignoring the wishes of others, this is precisely when we
recognise deviance into monologue or complain later to our friends that 'X
was hogging the conversation'. Utterances by one speaker are an invitation
to a response by another (see Goffman 1976); the initiating utterance puts
an obligation on the responding speaker to make hislher turn both relevant
to the previous turn and a positive contribution to the forward moving of
the discourse (see Vuchinich 1977). Relexicalisation of some elements of the
previous turn provides just such a contribution to relevance and provides
other important 'I am with you' signals to the initiator.
Topics unfold, and the vocabulary used by the speakers offers openings
for possible development, which may or may not be exploited. The 'con-
versation' class where topics are pre-set may be a straitjacket to this natural
kind of development; a safer course of action might be to see pre-set topics
merely as 'starters' and not to worry if the discourse develops its own
momentum and goes off in unpredictable directions.
Reader activity 2 d
Look at this extract from Svartvik and Quirk's data and trace the repe-
titions and relexicalisations of the italicised items, in the way that was done
for the fireworks text (the transcription is simplified here):
A: You're knitting. . . what arc you knitting, that's not a tiny
garment.
B: No (A: laughs) no it's for me, but it's very plain.
A: It's a lovely colour.
B: It's nice.
A: Yeah, I never could take to knitting except on these double-0
needles with string you know, that's my sort of knitting.
B: Yeah.
A: It grows quickly.
B: Yeah I get very fed up.
A: It's just the process though . . . do you sew? I used to sew a lot
when . . .
B: No I don't. 3.3 L.exis in talk
A: In the days when I was a human being.
B: I have aspirations to make marvellous garments you know.
A: Well it's so cheap you know, dw is the thing.
B: Yes.
A: Particularly, I think you prohhly like dw sort of clothes I like
anyway, which is fairly simplq things like summer dresses which
are just straight up and down you know, with a SCOOP neck.
B: Particulariy with those shifts, I mean you'lr well away aren't you.
A: Yes, oh yes, terribly cheap.
(Svartvik and Quirk 1980: 83-4)
Other linguists' data, in analyses where they have been interested in
discourse features such as agreement/disagreement patterns and everyday
discussion, also show regularly recurring vocabulary patterns where
speakers use synonyms, hyponyms and antonyms to perform conver-
sational functions (see Pomerantz 1984 and Pearson 1986, for example). In
Pearson's data, people did not typically agree or disagree with phrases such
as 'I agree' or 'I disagree' (beloved of English coursebook writers); rather,
there seemed to be a preference for simply using some son of lexical
relation between turns.
The way in which we can observe speakers moving from superordinates
to hyponyms and from synonyms to antonyms and back again is a common
feature of conversation and learners can be equipped to use this skill by
regular practice. As with written texts, in English at least, speakers do not
just repeat the same items endlessly. This may be so in all languages and the
behaviour itself may be easily transferable (but see Hinds 1979, for interest-
ing observations on the preference for direct repetition in Japanese conver-
sation). However, to behave in this natural way in a foreign language, the
learner needs to have a fairly rich vocabulary, and to have at hislher
fingertips the synonyms, antonyms, etc. of the words that are 'in play'.
Once again, the issue is how to relate abstract notions such as synonymy
and hyponymy to discourse skills, rather than just teaching them as
disembodied properties of word lists.
Encouraging recognition of the communicative value of these lexical
relations can start at quite an early stage in language learning, as soon as
the necessary vocabulary is encountered. Simple cue and response drills for
pairwork can train the learner in immediately associating synonyms and
antonyms, or a superordinate with its hyponyms, and vice versa (see
Redman and Ellis 1989 for examples). 3 W analysis and vocabufary
9.4 Textual aspects ol bxkal competence
A somewhat different type of lexical relation in discourse is when a writer
or speaker rearranges the conventional and well-establishad lexical rela-
tions and asks us, as it were, to adjust our usual conceptualisations of how
words relate to one another for the particular purposes of the text in
question. In one way or another, our expectations as to how words are
conventionally used are disturbed. A simple example is the following
extract from a review of a book on American military planning:
(3.7) The depressing feature of Allen's ddments is the picture which
emerges of smart but stupid military planners, the equivalent of
America's madder fundamentalists, happily playing the fool with the
future of the planet.
(The Gwrdian, 13 November 1987: 15)
Here, two words, smart and stupid, frequently occurring in the language as
antonyms, and therefore incompatible, are to be interpreted as compatible
descriptions of the military experts. To do this we have to adjust our typical
expectations of how the two words operate as a related pair. One reason-
able interpretation would be that the -experts are clever ('smart') but
morally reckless Cstupid'); to interpret them as meaning 'intelligent but
unintelligent' would clearly be a nonsense.
Similarly, groups of informants faced with the following advertisement
text react with mild surprise if the last two words are first covered up and
then revealed:
(3.8) Just brush .one generous
coat of Hammerite di-
rectly on to metal. Within
15 minutes it's dried to
a smoothi harnmered-
enamel finish that shru s
off dirt and water 'ust li f e
a non-stick pan. Gou get
all of this in a choice of
ten attractive colours.
Plus black. (from Weekend, 23-29 May 1984, p. 19)
In many situations black is an unexceptionable member of the 'colour' set
of adjectives (such that the remark 'helshe wears really attractive colours,
blacks and reds, you know . . .' would be quite normal). Here we are
expected to place black outside of the range of 'attractive colours' and to
consider it as a separate entity. Such an adjustment probably has no great
permanent implications for the place of black in our mental lexicon
(though we might be unconsciously on our guard and less surprised if we 3.4 Textual aspects of lexical competence
encountered the relationship of exclusion again, especially 'in the context of
paints, perhaps) and, as in the case of smart and stupid, no necessary
implications that such relations have language-wide validity.
Alongside these eye-catching disturbances of our lexical expectations are
other, less obvious kinds of lexical readjustments. These are lexical rela-
tions that are valid in particular texts only, and whose interpretations may
not correspond to dictionary definitions. The good readerllistener has to
decide when words are being used as more or less synonymous (or in what
Bailey (1985) calls 'functional equivalence') and, conversely, when those
same words may be being used in a way that focuses on the difference in
meaning-potential.
Discourse-specific lexical relations can be called instantial relations,
borrowing the term from J. Ellis (1966) (see also Hasan 1984). They are
found frequently in spoken and written texts, and are probably a universal
feature in all languages. The problems learners tend to encounter with such
uses are usually more psychologically-generated; it is not that they have
never encountered ad hoc rearrangements of predictable lexical usage, but
more that they come to texts (especially reading comprehension texts), with
the expectation that words have rather fixed relationships with one another
because they have correspondingly fixed meanings, and vice versa. The task
of the teacher is mainly to raise an awareness that typical vocabulary
relations are often readjusted in individual texts, and, of course, to assist
learners where necessary in interpreting such reorderings. Instantial rela-
tions often represent important stylistic features in texts, either in the sense
of creative lexical usage, or perhaps as devices of evaluation or irony or for
particular focus (e.g. the smartlstupid relation); by definition, each case has
to be interpreted individually.
Reader octivity 3 d
lnstuntial relations
Financial and economic are very often used synonymously (e.g. 'The
government has closed down the unit for financialleconomic reasons').
How are they used in the following text? What possible interpretations
could be put on the writer's choice of the words? (The writer is criticising a
proposal to close a railway line in the north of England.)
The accountants can produce as many figures as they like to prove
that there are financial reasons for closing it. But there are no
economic reasons. Already the campaign to keep the line has inspired
many new initiatives along its length. It is an asset only now being
fully appreciated in every sense.
(Country Living, May 1988: 19) 3 -DSCDUPS~ amalysis and vocabulary
Vocabulary and the organising of text
A distinction is often made between grammar words and lexical words in
language. This distinction also appears sometimes as hnction words versus
content words, or empty words versus full words. The distinction is a useful
one: it enables us to separate off those words which belong to closed
systems in the language and which carry grammatical meaning, from those
that belong to open systems and which belong to the major word classes of
noun, verb, adjective and adverb. This, that, these and those in English
belong to a closed system (as do the pronouns and prepositions) and carry
the grammatical meaning of 'demonstratives'. Monkey, sculpture, noise
and toenail belong to open-ended sets, which are often thought of as the
'creative' end of language. In between these tw~ extremes is another type of
vocabulary that has recently been studied by discourse analysts, a type that
seems to share qualities of both the open and the closed-set words. Let us
consider a paragraph taken from an article in a learned journal:
(3-9) Here I want to spend some time examining this issue. First I propose
to look briefly at the history of interest in the problem, then spend
some time on its origins and magnitude before turning,to an
assessment of the present situation and approaches to its solution.
Finally, I want to have a short peek at possible future prospects.
(W. J. Kyle, Annals of the GGAS, University of Hong Kong, 1984, no. 12: 54-66)
What is this article about? Controlling pests on fruit trees? Designing
examinations for secondary schools? The possibilities are countless. What
we are lacking here is the vocabulary that would identify the fisld of
discourse. These sentences tell us a lot about the structure of the article, but
nothing about the author's subject matter. They tell us that tfie tenor is
relatively formal (it is hardly likely that this is someone explaining infor-
mally to a friend why he/she has never liked boiled eggs), but with an
element of informality ('a short peek'). They tell us that a problem and its
possible solutions will be examined, and that one part of the text will deal
with the past, another with the future. So the words in our example do
quite a bit of lexical work (they are not as 'empty' as grammar words are
often said to be), but, in another sense, we need to seek elsewhere in the text
for their content, what we shall call their lexicalisation. In our mystery text,
the this of 'this issue' tells us that we can look to the preceding text to find
out what the issue is; the lexical meaning of issue tells us to look for
something problematic, something that is a matter of public debate, etc.
'The problem' works in a similar way. Assessment will identify with a
portion of the text where something is being judged or evaluated; solution
will be matter which can be counterposed to the 'problem', and so on. So
these words stand in place of segments of text (just as pronouns can); a
segment may be a sentence, several sentences or a whole paragraph, or 3.5 Vocabulary and the organising of text
more. We, the reader, (or listener if our example had been, say, a lecture)
match the words with the segments, and, if we have decoded the text
correctly, can render an account of what 'the problem' is, or what 'the
prospects' are, according to the author. We shall call w~rds such as issue,
problem and assessment discourse-organising words, ska it is their job to
organise and structure the argument, rather than am br its content or
field. They are examples of the general phenomenon of @ing discussed
in Chapter 1. Further examples may be seen in this extract:
(3.10)
Week by week the amount of car traffic on
our roads grows, 13 per cent in the last
year alone.
Each day as I walk to work, I see the
ludicrous spectacle of hundreds of com-
muters sitting alone in four or five-seater
cars and barely moving as fast as I can
walk.
Our traffic crisis now presents us with
the classic conservation dilemma - too
many people making too much demand on
inadequate resources.
There are four possible solutions: One,
provide more resources, in this case build
more roads and car parks; two, restrict
the availability of motorised transport by
artificially raising the price of vehicles and
fuel; three, license only those with a good
reason for needing motorised transport
and prohibit unnecessary use; four, reduce
the average size of motor vehicles, espec-
ially those used for coinmuting purposes.
(from Cambridge Weekly News, 22 September 1988, p. 11)
The reader may be curious to know what extract (3.9) was about: in fact
it is a study of the pollution of Hong Kong's streams, coastal waters and
seashore. Pollution as a subject could be presented to the reader in a variety
of ways; the author might have presented a series of claims and counter-
claims about pollution, or perhaps a general statement about types of
pollution and then details of these types. Our author chooses to present it as
a problem, with responses ('approaches') to the problem and an euuluation
('assessment') of responses, in other words as a problem-solution text (see
section 1.10). This is clearly signalled to the reader in our quoted extract. So,
as well as representing text-segments, some of the discourse-organising 3 Discourse analysis and vocabulary
words we are examining additionally give us indications of the larger
text-patterns the author has chosen, and build up expectations concerning
the shape of the whole discourse.
From this account of the work of certain words in organising discourses
it will be apparent that the language learner who has trouble with such
words may be disadvantaged in the struggle to decode the whole text as
efficiently as possible and as closely as possible to the author's designs. If
the discourse-organising words are seen as signals of the author's intent,
then inability to understand them or misinterpretation of them could cause
problems.
But just how many such words are there in a language like English? What
is the size of the task facing the teacher and learner in this particular lexical
area? Some linguists have attempted to provide answers, but probably no
one has compiled a complete list. Winter (1977 and 1978) has provided
checklists, which teachers and material writers may find useful, of what he
calls vocabulary 3, a precisely delimited sub-set of this more general set of
discourse-organising words. Here is a selection sf the list from Winter
(1978) :
(3.11) achieve, addition, alike, attribute, basis, case, cause, change,
compare, conclude, confirm, consequence, contrast, deny, depend,
differ, distinction, effect, equal, exemplify, explanation, fact, feature,
follow, form, general, grounds, happen, hypothetical, instance,
instrumental, justification, kind, lead to, manner, matter, means,
method, opposite, point, problem, real, reason, replace, respect,
result, same, similar, situation, state, thing, time, truth, way, etc.
Francis (1986) focuses on what she calls atzapboric nouns and gives
extensive examples of nouns that frequently occur to refer back to chunks
of text in the way that 'this issue' did in our first example. Here is one of her
lists:
abstraction
assumption
comparison
consideration
distortion
evaluation
falsification
hypothesis
illusion
investigation
notion
pipedream
realisation
scenario
analysis
attitude
concept
deduction
doctrine
evidence
fantasy
idea
inference
misinterpretation
opinion
position
reasoning
speculation
approach
belief
concoction
diagnosis
dogma
examination
finding
ideology
insight
mis judgement
perspective
rationalisation
recognition
supposition
assessment
classification
confusion
distinction
doubt
fabrication
formulation
identification
interpretation
misreading
picture
reading
reflection
surmisal 3.5 Vocabulary and the organising of text
tenet theory
viewpoint vision
thinking view
(Francis, 1986 15)
Another useful source is Jordan (1984), which brings together a large
number of texts and has a vocabulary index. These works are good sources
for teachers and material writers interested in this area, but many teachers
will find it as easy simply to collect examples of such words from the press,
where non-narrative texts, of the type where the author is presenting views
and arguments and where such vocabulary is most readily found, are
plentiful. In vocational/specialist courses, the best sources are learners' own
subject material.
It might, at this point, be worth reminding ourselves that discourse-
organising words operate predictively in text as well as retrospectively:
if a discourse organiser does not already have its lexicalisation in the
earlier text we expect it to come later in the text and are on the lookout for
it, at least the efficient reader is. In (3.10) above, dilemma and solutions
point forward in the text and are lexicalised in the subsequent dis-
course.
Predictive skills are often emphasised in current reading skills materials
(see, for example, Greenall and Swan 1986); the study of vocabulary and
discourse organisation offers the possibility of a more structured approach
to this kind of teaching and practice activity.
Reader activity 4 d
The italicised words in the following texts represent either preceding or
subsequent segments of the discourse. Identify those segments by underlin-
ing the appropriate words:
I am always being asked to agree with the proposition that the British
are the most anti-intellectual people in Europe. What other European
language contains that withering little phrase 'too clever by half?
Where else do thinkers squirm when they are called intellectuals?
Where else is public support for the institutions of intellectual culture
- the universities and the subsidised arts - so precarious?
Behind these questions lies a deep-seated inferiority complex in the
post-imperial British middle-classes about the parochial philistinism
of their culture, . . .
(Michael Ignatieff, The Observer, 25 February 1990: 17)
2. The issues which emerge have beset the personal social services for
generations - accountability, relationships with voluntary bodies,
what their role is, for example, but the context is different.
(New Society, 28 August 1987: ii) 3 Digo~rse anulysis and vocabulary
Winter's work, and its extension in that of Hoey (1983), Jordan (1984) and
Francis (1986), raises some interesting questions. First there is the question
of whether it is possible to delimit a procedural vocabulary of such words
that would be useful for readerstwriters over a wide range of academic
disciplines involving varied textual subject matters and genres. The notion
of a procedural vocabulary is currently under debate in applied linguistics
(see Widdowson 1983: 924; Robinson 1988). The procedural vocabulary is
basically words that enable us to do things with the content-bearing words
or schematic vocabulary. Another unanswered question is what hippens if
the most common signalling words are not known by the learner? Is
coherent textdecoding seriously impaired or are such words the icing on
the cake, especially in the case of production? Thirdly, if all languages have
such text-organising vocabulary, can the teaching/learning process capital-
ise on transfer in some way? Are there direct and reliable translations for
words like point, argument, issue and fact to and from other languages? Do
languages with cognate words (e.g. French probl&me, Swedish faktum,
Spanish cuestion) have an advantage here, or do they harbour false friends?
These questions cannot all be addressed in a book of this limited scope,
but the vocabulary teacher and the learner can embark on their own
research within their own situation as part of the 'learning-to-learn'
process.
Look back over the last few pages of text and note how many times I have
used discourse-organising words to structure my text. Were,you conscious
of my use of them at .the time of first reading? If solnot, what implications
might this have for how language learners approach reading texts?
3.6 Signalling larger bxlual patterns
So far, the discourse-organising words we have looked at in greatest detail
have been illustrated in their role of representing segments of text, parcel-
ling up phrases and whole sentences. But we also noted in section 3.5 that
they often have a broader textual function too, and that is to signal to the
reader what larger textual patterns are being realised. We shall now look
further at this phenomenon. In section 1.10, we saw an illustration of a
problem-solution pattern. Discourse organisets often contribute to our
awareness that a problemsolution pattern is being malised. In the follow-
ing texts, items have been picked out in bold to exemplify this point. In 3.6 Signalling larger textual patterns
the first example, only the headline, the first paragraph and-the last para-
graph of a rather long newspaper atiicle are given to show how organising
words have been used to 'wrap round' a long problem-solution text:
(3.13) Headline TV Violence: No Simple Solution
Opening sentence There is no doubt that one of the major concerns
of both viewers and broadcasters is the amount
and nature of violence on our television screens.
(main text)
Closing sentence The chief 'lesson' of all our viewing, reading and
discussion is that there is no simple solution to
the problem of violence on television.
(The Observer, 16 November 1986: 42)
The words in bold predict (solution in the headline, concern) and reinforce
(solution, problem) the problem-solution pattern of the longer text
(omitted here for space reasons), in which various responses to the problem
of television violence are discussed and evaluated.
(3.14) In the past, the search for other
worlds has been hamrered by
two factors. First, planets are
tiny objects compared with
stars: for instance, the sun, a
typical star, is 300,000 times
more massive than the Earth.
Second, planets do not shine but
only reflect light dimly kom stars.
But Dr Campbell and his col-
leagues got round this problem
by using high-resolution spectro-
scopy to measure accurately
variations in a star's light. Slight
differences in a star's light
showed that many were being
pushed and pulled out of their
paths by unseen planets.
(from The Observer, 5 July 1987, p. 4)
Here both problem and hampered contribute to activating the problem-
solution pattern, while got round indicates a positively evaluated response.
We can now begin to see that a number of vocabulary items character-
istically cluster round the elements of larger patterns in texts. Words that
often occur in the environments of the elements of problem-solution
patterns include the following:
Problem concern, difficulty, dilemma, drawback, hamper,
hindterlance), obstacle, problem, snag
Response change, combat (vb), come up with, develop, find,
measure(s), respon(d/se)
Solutionlresult answer, consequence, effect, outcome, result, solution,
(re)solve
Evaluation (in)effective, manage, overcome, succeed, (un)successful,
viable, work (vb)
Likewise, other items characteristically cluster round the elements of claim- 3 Discourse analysis and vocabulary
counterclaim (or 'hypothetical-real') patterns, items such as claim, assert,
state, mcth, false, in fact, in reality, etc. Such words have been picked out in
the following text:
(3.15) HisWhs are !merally l!ES!
Brltishsodetyisfwndedona~
, .
-,bUtthq(m-d&@dthe
origins of that ph#asophy. Some trace it
badctothemiddleages,othersW~to
theriseof~~.Butthe~
isthatthe~ofthissodetyhas
been the nudearfamily-where man the
breadwkHler hokls dominance ouer hi
dependent wife and children. The vaiues
of individual freedom, self-reliance, indi-
vidualadvancementandcroclally,the
&i@hn of farnity duty to look after
one's own in time of need are central to
its qwatkn. Within sbict limits and
under careful regulation, helping those
less fortunate than oneself has been
as part of the individual's obligation to
society.
But,althoughmostwould~that
thssevalueshavemdomi,thgc
would also achw&& thztt the devel-
OQmentofcapitalist~Sawthe
parallel growttr of anoahec idedogy.
Against individualism with its emphasis
on individual freedom has been m-
terPosed collectivism with its egalitarian
values,andstressonthebIjadlthatone
individual's freedom cannot be paid for
by lhe denial of keecknn to to. The
19th century growth of trades unions,
the cooperative movement and organised
socialkt political rovements are all
Mm of this opposition tu dominant
idedogy. Because of this recognition
of colledhre rights and responsibil-
ities, feminists have always
granting and safeguarding of women's
rim as lying within this socialist
tradition.
(from New Society, 28 August 1987, p. 10)
Jordan (1984) is a useful work for teacherslmaterial writers wishing to look
at how particular vocabulary items have a tendency to cluster in each
different segment of text-patterns such as the problemsolution pattern. He
gives reference lists for the many textual examples he presents in his book
and has a coding system for whether particular words typically occur in the
'problem' section or wherever. Part of his word list for the claim and
counterclaim (or hypothetical-real) pattern is listed below:
(3.16) Whenever a writer needs to indicate doubt or uncertainty he uses a
signal of hypotheticalicy to indicate this. Here are examples of such
signalling words in the examples.
according to estimated might seems
apparently .evidently old wives' tale should
appears1 expected perhaps signs
-ably forecast potential so-called
believes imagine probably speculation
claimed likely promises to be suggests
considered look reported thought -
could may says
(Jordan 1981: 148) 3.6 Signalling larger textuu! patterns
These recurrent features of textual patterning may be exploited in
vocabulary teachindearning as a todown phenomenon: once conscious
of a larger text-pattern, the learner can be brought to an awareness of the
rich vein of vocabulary that regularly realises it. As a bottom-up phenom-
enon, learners can bring together in their vocabulary records items that
regularly occur% similar textual environments, e.g. dK typical 'response'
vocabulary of problemsolution patterns. Such lists can be added to over
time to build up a rich, textually-based lexicon. It is yet another alternative
to the random vocabulary list and the decontextualised, semantically-
motivated list.
Pick out words in the following texts which are strongly associated with
either the problemsolution pattern or the claim-counterclaim pattern:
1. All western countries face a crisis in coping with
the demands made on welfare provision by their
growing elderly populations. The problem of
resource scarcity is a real one. But perhaps not
all countries have adopted so rigorously [as
Britain] the view that care should be based on the
family model.
Scandinavia, for example, provides residential
facilities for elderly people not wishing to remain
at home or to live with their families, and those
facilities are often available for use by local
pensioners on a daily basis. Elderly people in the
United States have developed communities of
their own, supporting each other and running
them by themselves, as their answer to increas-
ing dependency. Some have argued against
these 'age-dense' solutions, likening them to
ghettos, but research suggests a high degree of
consumer satisfaction.
Examples from other camtries demonstfate
that there are abrnaMve ways of tackling the
issues of caring and dependency. The family
model of care with the high demands made on
women and lack of choice and frequent loneli-
ness for the dependents is not the only solution.
(from New Society, 28 August 1987, p. 12) 3)-+ 3 Discourse analysis and vocabulary
2. Local authorities believe Wgly in the involve-
ment of the public sector and the need for public
planning. They think that it is more important to
protect jobs which are already in their area than
to attract more from outside. And since they hold
that productim is the key to economic revival,
they think it is more important to sustain rnanu-
facturing industry than to switch to alternatives,
such as the service industry.
Central government, on the other hand, places
more faith in the private sector for its schemes,
and it considers that public planning hinders
rather than helps redevelopment. It usually dis-
misses planning as 'red tape'. Government is
also more interested in attracting new jobs than
protecting dd ones. Above all, it believes that the
market decides what sort of job should and
should not be done.
(from New Society, 28 August 1987, p. 20)
3.7 Register and signalling vocabulary
In claiming that particular vocabulary items tend to cluster round certain
elements of text patterns we are ignoring the important fact that register
(see page 32) is closely tied to lexical selection. Among the signals of the
problem element we proposed problem, drawback and snag (see page 79).
Clearly we might not expect to find snag occurring in this way in a formal
scientific report, nor perhaps come up with as a signpost for response
(develop would be a more predictable choice). Therefore, as in all matters,
the relationship between vocabulary and register needs to be brought out
when studying textual signalling. Lexical choice within the identified
clusters will depend on the con text (textbook, mazagine, news report, etc.),
the author's assumptions about the audience (cultured/educatdreaders of
the popular tabloid press, etc.) whether the style is to be read as 'written' or
'spoken', and so on. Most of the texts we have looked at so far have been
toward the 'written/formal/cultured' end of the spectrum. Mere are two
more, this time with a more informal, colloquial tone. They are presented
to illustrate the fact that discourse-signalling words need not necessarily be
only rather 'dry' academic words taken from the Graeco-Latin vocabulary
of English. The relevant words are underlined: 3.7 Register and signalling vocabulary
Put ordinary exterior varnish on your doors and window frames and in no
time at all you'll wish you hadn't.
Wood shrinks and stretches when the temperature and humidity changes.
Ordinary varnish, doesn't, so it cracks.
If you don't strip it off and start again you'll be in real trouble, your wood
will be open to attack from fungus and rot, and quite frankly, it will look
awful.
(Advertisement for Cuprinol from The Observer, 12 July 1987, p. 5)
Alongside more neutral items like develop and reduce the risk are informal,
direct addresses to the reader: you'll wish you hadn't and quite frankly, it
will look awful which create a pseudo-conversational register in which the
element of problem is realised.
(3.18) Decide to tackle that tiublesome moss
on your lawn and you could find yourself
going round and around in circles. Or at
least backwards and forwards to your
local garden centre.
Conventional moss treatments sim~ly
keep moss away for any length of
time. You apply it and shortly after-
wards your moss blackens and dies. You
thtnk all of vow worries are over. Far
from it. The little so and so's will turn up
a as sure as the proverbial bad
penny.
You're back where vou started.
And left with the choice of getting
down on your hands and knees to weed
it out or traipsing off to the shops for
some more moss treatment.
So if you want to save vourself heart-
ache, backache and a considerable
amount of shoe-leather, insist on
Lawnsrnan Mosskiller from ICI. Youll
be rewarded with a moss-free lawn for
the rest of the season.
Mix the sachet with water, stir, and
sprinkle over your lawn. It's that simple.
(from The Observer Magazine, 6 April 1986, p. 12)
Here idiomatic phrases are used as signals of the response and its occur-
rence after a previous negatively evaluated response ('conventional
treatments'). Idioms are often a problem for the teacher insomuch as it is
not always easy to find natural contexts in which to present them. Research
by Moon (1987) suggests that writers and speakers use idiomatic phrases to
organise their discourse and to signal evaluation, far more frequently than
previous linguistic studies of idiomaticity have suggested. Idioms are good
metaphors for the kinds of textual segments we have been looking at
(problem/response, etc.). Consider how some of the following could be
used in informal discourses to suggest the problem-solution pattern:
(to be) in a fix to be up against a brick wall
to come up trumps (sth) does the trick
to have a crack at (doing something) to have a brainwave
(to be) up a gum tree
Speakers and writers use these in informal situations to perform the same
kind of organising and signalling functions that the more formal vocabu-
lary does in written argumentation. 3 Discourse analysis and vocabulary
We can now begin to see just how important certain vocabulary items are
in organising discourses. Admittedly, we have concentrated on reporting,
expository and argumentative texts, but learners frequently have to tackle
quite daunting and lengthy examples of these in their textbooks, and
syllabus specifications often demand -that they be studied. They are pre-
cisely the types of text that come festooned with comprehension questions
in coursebooks and exams, and are regularly cited as being 'difficult',
'boring' and 'demotivating' for students by teachers. They are the texts that
are hardest to unpack. Significantly, the kind of discourse-organising
vocabulary that has occurred in most of our example texts, the Graeco-
Latin words found in argumentation and exposition, is typical of the kind
of vocabulary that research has claimed produces a 'lexical bar', a serious
obstacle to progress in education, for children learning their first language
(see Corson 1985). We should not underestimate the difficulties second
language learners may experience with these words, particularly those who
do not come from a Romance- or Germanic-language background.
Discourse-organising words are best presented and practised in their
natural contexts. Sintply looking them up in a monolidgual dictionary can
lead to a circularity of abstract definitions. Note how even a good, modern
learner's dictionary like the Collins COBUILD (1987) dictionary defines
problem in terms of difficulty, and difficulty in terms of pro6lem:
(3.19) problem /pr~blam/, probk.
1 A problem is 1.1 a situation
or a state of affairs that causes
diaculties for people, so that
they try to think of a way to
deal with it. EG. ... how fami-
lies can try to solve these prob-
lems.. . . . .the social problems
in modern society... I think we
may have a problem here ...
She has a weight problem ...
The problem is that she can't
cook.
difkdty /Wa'ltia/, difkul-
ties. 1 A dif&&y is some-
thing that is a ptoblem for
you. EG. There are lots of dif-
ficulties that have to be over-
come. .. The main dimulty is a
shortage of time.
2 If something causes dif6-
cnlty, it causes problems
because it is not easy to do or
understand. EG. This can
cause di!ulty.. . . . .questions
of varying difiulty.
(from Collins COBUlLD EngliJh Language Dictionary, pp. 1143,391)
One contribution that the study of vocabulary in naturally occurring
discourses has made is to point up the all-pervasiveness of modality in
spoken and written language. Modality is often thought of as the province
of the closed class of modal verbs. (must, can, will, may, etc.) and treated as
part of the grammar of English, but a large number of 'lexical' words 3.8 Modality
(nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs) carry the same or similar meanings
to the modal verbs. For this reason, modality is dealt with here in our
chapter on vocabulary rather than in Chapter 2.
Two notable studies of modality in large amounts of discourse, Holmes
(1983) and Hermerin (1978), show a wide range of uses of the traditional
class of modal verbs and of a vocabulary of lexical items carrying modal
meanings, from the classic epistemic modality (concerned with degrees of
certainty and possibility) to the root modalities (volition, permission,
obligation). Both Holmes's and Hermerkn's data show that, put together,
other word classes express modality more frequently than modal verbs. The
vocabulary of modality includes verbs such as appear, assume, doubt,
guess, look as if, suggest, think, adverbs such as actually, certainly,
inevitably, obviously, possibly, and nouns and adjectives related to them
(for a full list, see Holmes 1988). In terms of frequency, the verbs and
adverbs are considerably more frequent than the nouns and adjectives.
All these words carry important information about the stance and
attitude of the sender to the message; they are concerned with assertion,
tentativeness, commitment, detachment and other crucial aspects of inter-
personal meaning (as opposed to ideational, or content, meanings). In the
Hallidayan model of register they form a part of the tenor of the discourse.
If we take a later part of one of our earlier texts, extract (3.10), we can see
how modal vocabulary represents another aspect of discoursal meaning
over and above the organisational and more general signalling vocabulary
already analysed. Modal items are picked out in bold:
(3.20) Inevitably, objections will be,raised to the promotion of the motor
cycle as the saviour of our environment.
It is dangerous: it can be but three-fifths of all serious motor
cycling accidents are caused by cars. So, by transferring some drivers
from cars to motor cycles, the risk can immediately be reduced.
Department of Transport statistics have shown that a car driver is
nine times more likely to take someone else with him in an accident
than a motor cyclist, so riding a motor cycle is actually making a
contribution to road safety.
(Cambridge WeekJy News, 22 September 1988: 11)
Discourse analysts have demonstrated that modality is fundamental in the
creation of discourse; all messages choose some degree of modality, even if
it is only to make a neutral choice of bald assertion (e.g. 'The cat sat on the
mat', as compared with the heavily modalised 'I suppose it's possible the
cat just may have sat on the mat'). Language teachers have always paid
attention to the modal verbs but, Holmes (1988) shows, in her survey of
four ESL textbooks, that the larger vocabulary of modal lexical items is
often under-represented in teaching materials, and there does seem to be a
need to redress the balance in light of what natural data shows. 3 Discourse analysis and vocabulary
Reader activity 7 d
Underline words conveying modality in this text:
.FOOD AND HEALTH
Can citrus
peel harm?
Didyaulrnavthadlrnnmrd
Qmgepaelisdwithwax
and chemids?
Thetskinofalmostallcitrus
fmit sold in the UK is imated
with fungicides to stop it going
ddy. And th43 glossy
surEaceistbsresultof~
the fruitin wax
Could tb fungicides used
on citrus peel be harmful -
particularlysince~ssonae
evih~btory~
that, in sufikht quantities,
*mayprod--=
mutations in animals?
~GovemmentdoesnYfeel
tbmisanynsedtoworry
because the levels d fungicide
permittad ate very law. The
levels are based on the
semmmhtiws af UK and
htematioaal advimybodias
for the rrmount that can be
cod daily without any
t&dfkweffed
(from Which? January 1989, p. 4)
The study of vocabulary in discourse is concerned with patterns in text
generated by the vocabulary relations that are found over clause and 3.9 Conclusion
sentence boundaries, the role of certain words in organising discourses and
signalling their structure, and the relationship between these features of
textuality and. the register of the end product. Such an approach also offers
an alternative motivation for the construction of word lists to supplement
the traditional semantic-field orientation. Students themselves can be
encouraged to collect items along discourse-functional lines, something
which becomes more and more important as they embark on composition
writing and argumentation in general, and something which can offer an
organised backdrop in learning areas normally lefi to organise themselves.
Once more, though, the whole enterprise depends on adapting what is
useful in discourse analysis to current practices, and on teachers and
material writers paying greater attention to the insights offered by naturally
occurring data.
Further reading
The standard work on lexical cohesion is Halliday ad Hasan (1976); Hasan has
since revised their model (see especially 1984).
Overall, not much research has been done on vocabulary and discourse, but further
discussion of instantial relations may be found in McCarthy (1987 and 1988),
and in Carter and McCarthy (1988: Ch. 5).
Cruse's (1975 and 1977) papers on hyponymy are innovative in that they look at
language in use, while P. H. Fries (1986) and Ellis (1987) look at instantial
synonymy.
On the use of superordinates in discourse, Wisniewski and Murphy (1989) is
interesting.
McCarthy (1990) looks at further vocabulary features that cluster around text-
organising words, and Lindeberg (1986) links lexical relations with thematic
development in text.
A further paper that considers the re-entering of full noun phrases as opposed to
pronouns is Hinds (1979).
Benson and Greaves (1973: 54-68) offer practical suggestions for the analysis of
lexical relations in texts, based on the idea of lexical sets, and their paper on
'field of discourse' (1981) ties up the Hallidayan idea of collocation with the
topics and institutional focuses of texts.
For more on topics as negotiated by participants see Richards and Schmidt (1983),
and Brown and Yule (1983: 89).
Hoey (forthcoming) contains a thorough analysis and a novel view of the function-
ing of lexical cohesion.
King (1989) takes further the discussion of discourse-organising vocabulary.
Stubbs (1986) is a good, general paper on modality in discourse.
For more on modality see Perkins (1983) and Westney (1986) Alice felt even more indignant at
this suggestion. 'I mean,' she
said, 'that one can't help
growing older.'
'One can't, perhaps,' said
'
Humpty Dumpty, 'but two can.'
Lewlr Carroll: ~~ fhe Leaking
GIsse
Under the heading of phonology in this chapter we shall take a brief look at
what has traditionally been thought of as 'pronunciation', but devote most
of our attention to intonation. This is partly because the most exciting
developments in the analysis of discourse have been in intonation studies
rather than at the segmental level (the study of phonemes and their
articulation) and partly because intonation teaching, where it has taken
place, has proceeded on the basis of assumptions that are open to challenge
from a discourse analyst's viewpoint.
4.2 Pronunciation
Traditional pronunciation teaching has found its strength in the ability of
linguists to segment the sounds of language into discrete items called
pbonemes which, when used in the construction of words, produce
meaningful contrasts with other words (e.g. the phonemes /p/ and /b/ in
English give us contrasts such as pump and bump, pat and bat, .etc.), The
position and manner of articulation of phonemes in a language like English
are well described and can be presented and practised in language classes
either as isolated sounds, in words, in contrasting pairs of words or in
minimal contexts. Such features will probably long remain the srock-in-
trade of pronunciation teaching and, if well done, can undoubtedly help
leaners with difficulties. 4.2 Pronunciation
Seen from the viewpoint of connected stretches of naturally occurring
discourse, the problem becomes more complex. When words follow one
another in speech, phonemes may undergo considerable changes. A simple
example is the difference between the normal spoken rendition of 'good
evening' [gadi:vn~rj], and that of 'good morning' [gabm~:nrg]. The Id/ of
the citation form of good (the way the word is said when isolated, out of
context) becomes more like a /b/ when it precedes the bilabial /m/ of
morning. As G. Brown (1977: 57) puts it: 'every consonant and every vowel
will be affected by its neighbouring consonants and vowels and by the
rhythmic structure in which it occurs.' Brown lists many examples of such
assimilations, and of elisions (where sounds from the citation form are
'missed out' in connected speech: 'most men' will be said without a It/ in
natural, conversational speech).
Reader activity 1 d
Assimilations and elisions
Consider how the following would be articulated in informal conversation
in Standard British English (or, if you speak another variety, in that
variety). What changes would take place to the way the pronunciation of
the individual words in isolation are represented in dictionaries?
1. ten or eleven months ago
2. I asked him what went on
3. not her! not Mary!
4. considering my age, I ran miles
Good advanced learners of English use assimilations and elisions naturally,
but a surprising number of quite advanced learners continue to articulate
the citation-form phonemes of English words in casual, connected speech.
This will not usually cause problems of communication but is undoubtedly
a contributing factor in 'foreign accent', and there may be a case for explicit
intervention by the teacher to train students in the use of the most com-
monly occurring assimilations and elisions by practising pronunciation in
(at least minimal) contexts. Alternatively, the answer may be to tackle the
problem simultaneously from a 'top-down' and 'bottomup' approach, on
the premise that articulation, rhythmicality (see below) and intonation are
inextricably linked, and that good intonation will have a washback effect
on articulation in terms of reduced and altered articulations of individual
phonemes, alongside the specific teaching of phonemes and the most
common altered and reduced forms. 4 Discourse analysis and phonology
In some respects the most neglected aspect of the teaching of pro-
nunciation has been the relationship between phoneme articulation and
other, broader features of connected speech. Pennington and Richards
(1986) argue that pronunciation is important as an aspect of discourse-
oriented language teaching and that three areas, or components, should be
addressed: segmental features, voice-setting features, and prosodic
(intonational) features. The segmental, or phoneme-based, view of teach-
ing, they argue, needs to be supplemented by concern with 'general articu-
latory characteristics of stretches of speech'. These include voice-setting
features, such as, for example, the general tendency towards retroflex
articulation in Indian speakers of English, which can cause persistent
difficulties for the non-Indian listener. The prosodic component consists of
stress and intonation. Pennington and Richards see pronunciation as a
constellati~n of features manifested not just in the articulation of particular
phonemes but in the stream of connected speech that is natural discourse.
Things such as voice-setting features are difficult to tackle, and are
largely ignored in present-day teaching materials, but advice to learners on
the typical settings of the speech organs that give each language its unique
character when heard can help to improve the overall sound of the learner's
performance. In fact, Honikman (1964) advocates establishing the voice-
setting first, and then the details of articulation, thus taking a top-down
approach.
4.3 Rhythm
When we listen to a stretch of spoken English discourse, we often feel that
there is a rhythm or regularity to it, which it a characteristic sound,
different from other languages and not always well-imitated by foreign
learners. The impression of rhythm may arise out of a feeling of alternation
between strong and weak 'beats' in various patterned recurrences:
/ -- / - - /--
(4.1) Most of the people were visitors.
-1- 1- / -1
(4.2) A friend of mine has bought a boat.
- / -- / / -- I
(4.3) A week at the seaside is just what I need.
Brown (1977) found such recurring patterns in her recordings of broadcast
talk. But other natural speech is often not as regular as this, nor will the
patterns necessarily recur in the same way at different times. If we dip at
random into natural data, we find stretches such as:
- / --- I /-I
(4.4) and the speed limit was five miles an hour 4.3 Rhythm
- - - /
(4.5) there was a sharp turn at the end of this village
(Author's data 1989)
Sometimes, in order to capture a felt rhythmicality, we can mark silent
beats to maintain the rhythm:
- - / -- / (--)I- -
(4.6) there's a house over there, isn't there
Another way of looking at this is to say that utterances can be divided up
into groups of syllables that have more or less the same duration, called feet
(a foot as a unit must contain one stressed syllable). Within each foot,
syllables will be 'stretched out' or 'squeezed together', depending on how
many there are, to maintain the rhythmic time span, as in:
i/i/ i / i / i
(4.7) j This is the ! one that Frank j bought /
where the first foot has two weak beats, the second has one, and the third
and fourth have none, but where all the feet are perceived to be of more or
less the same duration.
Reader activity 2 d
Imagine contexts for these utterances and then mark them with / for
stressed beats and - for unstressed beats:
1. What's the matter with Mary?
2. I knew she would come in the end.
3. Put salt on those chips if you want to.
4. He works on a farm, doesn't he?
In fact, instrumental analysis may reveal that the 'beats' are anything but
precisely regular in real time and as we shall see, there are problems with
such an account of rhythm. Nonetheless, the overall experience of rhythm
is often still present. This general feeling we shall refer to as rhythmicality
(see Couper-Kuhlen 1986: 55).
Traditionally, rhythm has been considered an important element in the
teaching of spoken English. This is probably due to two main factors.
Firstly, there does seem to be rhythmicality in varying degrees in long
stretches of speech, especially carefully considered deliveries such as broad-
cast talks, fluent reading aloud, speeches and monologues, as well as some
ordinary conversation. Secondly, the concept of English as a stress-timed 4 Discourse analysis and phonology
language, deeply rooted in theoretical and applied linguistics, has dorni-
nated approaches to the teaching of rhythm.
To take the second factor first, the notion that the languages of the world
can be classified according to rhythmic criteria has persisted throughout
this century. The principal distinction is made between stress-timing and
syllable-timing. Broadly speaking, languages such as English and Arabic
are said to have more or less equal time spans (or interstresses) between
stressed syllables, so that any intervening syllables, the number of which
may vary, are made to fit into the available space between stresses. Stressed
syllables are longer in duration than unstressed ones. Languages such as
French and Spanish, on the other hand, have regular syllable length for
both stressed and unstressed syllables, and are thus timed according to their
syllables, or syllable-timed. While this distinction may correspond to some
strongly felt perception of the different characteristic rhythms of languages,
there is little hard instrumental evidence for it. In fact, in recent years, quite
a lot of convincing counter-evidence has been presented. Dauer (1983)
examined data in English, Thai, Spanish, Italian and Greek, and concluded
that interstress intervals were no more regular in English than in Spanish, a
so-called sylla ble-timed language, and several other investigations similarly
challenge the stress-timedlsyllable-timed distinction (e.g. Borzone de
Manrique and Signorini 1983). We are forced to conclude, therefore, that
the notion that English is stress-timed is unproven, and that perceptions of
rhythmicality may have their origins in other phenomena of connected
speech. The lack of evidence anyway undermines those teaching
approaches that advocate training in reproducing utterances according to
carefully timed beats on stressed syllables, using metronomes, table-tapping
or hand-clapping (e.g. Greenwood 1981).
Bolinger (1986: 37-45) attempts to simplify the timing of interstresses and
to account for rhythmicality with a few basic rules, and his account has
been advocated as a basis for the teaching of rhythm by Faber (1986).
Bolinger's description is based on the idea that English has two kinds of
vowels, fbll and reduced. The reduced vowels are schwa /a/, /z/ as in
'silliness', /el as in 'soloist, and 'syllabic' consonants (e.g. 'rabble'). Other
vowels are full vowels. Full (F) and reduced (R) correspond to syllable types
which can be called long (L) and short (S). For example:
(4.81 an unforgettable person
R F R F R R F R (vowels)
S L S LSS LS (syllables)
Bolinger's rule is simple: if an F is followed by another F or by a pause, then
the first F becomes 'extra'-long (LL); compare the syllable rhythms of seller
and sell-by: 4.3 Rhythm
(4.9) the seller's advice
F R
L S
(4.10) the sell-by advice
F F
LL L
It must be noted that Bolinger is talking about the timing of the whole
syllable, not the extending or drawling of the vowel. Another way of
articulating the rule is that LL is the norm for full-vowelled syllables, but
when followed by any S, the S 'borrows' time from LL, making it only L, as
in hat-box and hatter:
(4.11) hat-box hatter
LL L L S
Reader activity 3 t.8
Analyse the following utterances according to Bolinger's principles, label-
ling them with F and R for vowel-types and LL, L and S for syllable-types.
Then try a loud reading of the phrases. Does Bolinger's system produce a
natural rendition?
1. Which hat shall Jo wear to the drinks party?
2. I met Bill Smith in town at lunchtime.
3. A bottle of mineral water.
'Borrowing', as illustrated in (4.11), means that rhythmic groups of
approximately the same duration are produced in connected speech. The
theory is appealing in its relative simplicity, but it suffers from a worrying
circularity in that reduced vowels are only reduced because they are
unstressed, whereas Bolinger's rule tends to take the question of stress out
of the equation. The traditional stress-timing view, despite its short-
comings, recognises that vowel length and quality are dependent on stress.
It is also difficult to see how such rules could be transferred into the
language class except in the form of practice in repeating small chunks of
ready-made language of phrase- or clause-length in the hope that some
underlying competence will develop that can be transferred to the situation
of natural speech production. Faber's optimism on the classroom appli-
cability of Bolinger's theory may be somewhat misplaced.
It seems then that there is some basis in the notion of rhythmicality, if
only as an as yet ill-described characteristic of English, but it is difficult to 4 D&course analysis and phonology
see how the stress-timing notion can be of much direct use in the language
class where the emphasis is on natural discourse.
Not enough is yet known about rhythmicality in talk, or what its
functions, if any, might be, and speculation abounds. Some phonologists
feel that, in spoken interaction, the rhythm a .speaker establishes and
conforms to represents an underlying tsmpo (basically the pace or speed of
speech, just like the relationship between rhythm and tempo in music),
which governs interaction and which gives important clues to participants
concerning things such as turn-taking (Scollon 1982). Others see a different
organising function in rhythm, in the dividing of information into coherent
chunks for the listener (Taylot 1981), and yet others have argued for the
importance of the role of rhythm in the overall perception of stresses on the
part of the listener (Gumperz 1982: 109). But .none of these accounts is
entirely convincing.
The idea of stress-timing has been reinforced by a phonological tradition
concerned with analysing literary texts, careful readings, broadcast talks
and the like. Natural conversation certainly does mt lend itself to regular
rhythm-tapping, even though the flow of talk is -punctuated (often reg-
ularly) with perceived stresses, and the business of spontaneous speech
production hardly gives time for careful rhythmic pre-planning and
'keeping the beat' (even more so for the non-native speaker struggling with
all the other encoding difficulties). Rhythm training in the classroom can
only work with textual products rather than the process of creating rhyth-
mic talk, and, indeed, forcing learners to indulge in artificially 'cramming'
stressed and unstressed syllables into a regular rhythm may take their
attention away from the genuinely interactive aspects of stress, not least the
speaker's choice as to what is to be stressed and what not. It is to the
interactive arena of where and when stress is placed that we next turn.
4.4 Word stress and prominence
At this point, it is useful to change our terminology slightly and introduce
the term prominence. Syllables which stand out in the flow of talk, because
the speaker has uttered them with relatively greater intensity, or duration,
or pitch variation compared with surrounding syllables (and our per-
ception of this phenomenon will usually be due to a variety of such
features), will be referred to as prominent syllables (see Brazil 1985a and b).
It is helpful to have this special term, prominence, so as not to confuse word
stress, which words bear in their citation forms (sometimes called their
isolate pronunciations), with what concerns us most here: the choice of the
speaker to make certain words salient by giving prominence to syllables.
This is therefore a more precise use of the term prominence than is found in
some sources (e.g. Cruttenden 1986: 7). 4.4 Word stFess and prominence
A word such as lapanese in citation form would have a word-stress
profile of:
where 1 represents so-called primary stress, and 2 secondary stress. But it is
clear that prominence can occur differently on these two syllables, or
indeed not at all, depending on the speaker's choice as to where the main
stress (the 'sentence stress', or 'tonic') is placed in the utterance; the main
stresses are underlined.
(4.13) Actually, she's iapaNESE
(4.14) a JApanese SHIP-owner's been KIJnapped
(4.15) i thought SHE. was japanese, NOT HIM
So word stress, as it is traditionally understood, and prominence, as we
shall use it here, are two distinct levels. Where they overlap, of course, is in
the fact that prominences may not be distributed just anywhere in the word,
but may only fall on certain syllables. Where two prominences can occur in
the same word, as is often the case with a whole class of words such as
IApanESE, UNiVERsal, conGRAtuLAtions, etc., the second will always be
the stronger. Thus Japanese may commonly receive prominence on ]A or
NESE or both, but will rarely if ever be realised as jaPAnese. Many other
polysyllabic words may only have one prominence but may still have primary
12 1 2 1 2
and secondary word stress (e.g. CAtalyst, CONfiscate, WHEREabouts).
So, when describing a word in a dictionary entry we can state which
syllables are prone to prominence and which are not:
(4.16) UNemPLOYED she's UNemPLOYED
an UNemployed WORker
not: * she's unEMployed
CONfiDENtial this is VEry confiDENtia1
a CONfidential MEmo
not: * a conFIdential memo
For the learner of English, information about which syllables may be
prominent is useful; it is a natural part of the lexical competence of native
speakers. In this regard, the traditional distinction between primary stress
and secondary stress (see above) may be misleading, and it may .be more
helpful simply to indicate to the learner which syllables are prominence-
prone (as Brazil's system of annotation in the Collins COBUILD (1987)
dictionary does, for example). Otherwise, the learner may be misled into
&nking that primary and secondary stress must be maintained at all costs.
Thus Swan and Walter's (1984: 9) citation-form stress patterns for nation-
ality words such as japaNESE are all right when the word is spoken in
isolation, or in a context such as (4.13), but not for (4.14) (see above). 4 Discourse analysis and phonology
For the following list of words, do as in the example: first mark primary
and secondary word stress, and then indicate, by underlining, which
syllable or syllables may be made prominent in discourse. For example:
2 1
confrontational CONfronutional
1. disused
2. complicated
3. application
4. dinosaur
4.5 The placing of prominence
When and why do speakers attach prominence to syllables and, thereby, to
the words that contain those syllables in their utterances? Consider the
following:
\
(4.17) a CUP of TEA
(4.18) the THIRD of Mril
(4.19) WHERE'S the BREADknife?
The non-prominent words (a, of, the) are, as it were, taken for granted;
they do not represent any choice from a list of alternatives: 'a cup of tea' is
not an alternative to 'a cup bylfrom tea' in most conceivable circumstances.
But, equally, 'the breadknife' is not in any real sense a selection from
mylyourlalM rs Jones's breadknife in most situations, since the speaker
assumes, or projects the assumption that the missing knife is the one in
normal use in the household and that it does not need to be specially
identified more than by the. There will, of course, be circumstances in
which speakers deem it necessary to make prominent items which in most
other circumstances can be'taken as understood, as in (4.20) and (4.21):
4.20 -9 NO it's part the course, NOT just an optional mtra
(4.21) i can TAKE you right the door if you WISH
In these two examples, words that are otherwise usually taken for granted
are signalled as significant selections by the speaker. (4.21) could equally
well have been rendered as 'RIGHT to the DOOR', but the speaker has
chosen to highlight the preposition to. It is this that is meant by interactive 4.5 The placing of prominence
choice as realised in prominence, as opposed to the relatively stable
patterns of word stress. So when we consider prominence in discourse we
are considering the extent to which speakers' and listeners' worlds con-
verge, and what is signalled as prominent (i.e. selected by the speaker from
a list of possible alternatives and projected as a significant element of the
message), as against that which can be assumed as part of the taken-for-
granted elements of the message.
Reader activity 5 d
Try and picture the contexts of the following utterances and decide which
syllables the speakers will be most likely to make prominent. Here is an
example:
(passenger to bus-driver)
Does this bus go to Parkside?
DOES this bus go to PARKside?
or: does THIS bus go to PARKside?
1. (customer to waiter in restaurant)
Does the soup contain meat?
2. (you telephone a friend at 11.30 p.m.)
Sorry to ring you so late.
3. (at a car-hire office)
Will you accept a cheque?
In doing the reader activity, you may have noticed that it was not only
small, function-words that were being made non-prominent. The tradi-
tional statement that lexical words are stressed and grammarlfunction
words are not is only a general statistical tendency, not a rule, even though
some consider it a useful fact to impart to learners (e.g. Currie and Yule
1982). It is quite likely that contain (I), ring (2) and accept (3) will receive
no prominence, as they are part of the taken-for-granted elements of the
discourse. By the same token, grammarlfunction words may well be made
prominent for a variety of reasons:
(4.22) we WERE hoping to get there beFORE tea
(4.23) she SAID to leave it HERE, but there's Nowhere leave it
(4.24) Pupil: i aRRIVED to the AIRport at SIX
Teacher: aRRIVED
Pupil: AH, i aRRIVED AT the airport at six 4 Wurse analyslj and phonology
This last example is a very typical one in the language classroom. For the
purposes of the interaction (to signal to the pupil that a mistake has been
made), the teacher makes prominent a word that would normally be a
non-selected, taken-for-granted item. The teacher is reacting naturally to
the situation, but there is a danger that, in correcting with prominence on
at, the pupil might judge the teacher's rendition to be the normal one.
Words like surprised, accept and contain, when they are non-prominent,
may still be heard to retain traces of word stress (so that even non-
prominent surprised may be heard as surPRISED rather than SURprised),
or they may lose their word-stress pattern altogether; phonologists call this
'the intermediate accent rule' (Knowles 1987: 124-6).
If a speaker makes a word prominent which would not normally be made
prominent, listeners seek motivation for the prominence as part of the
general desire of participants to find coherence in discourse. The listener
may decide, for instance, that some contrast is being suggested; if someone
says:
(4.25) i STUdied IN London FIVE YEARS ago
they may be heard as suggesting some significance for the word in (chosen
as opposed to near, or outside of, for example), which may be
unintentional. Sometimes it is even more difficult to make a coherent
interpretation of prominence, as in these attested non-native speaker
examples:
(4.26) my SISter HATES flying JUST a$ much as i
(4.27) can i PAY by credit CARD?
Listen carefully to any non-native speaker that you know when he/she is
speaking English naturally. Are any words made prominent at
inappropriate or incomprehensible places? Is there any pattern in the
misplacing of prominence?
Speakers of some languages have a tendency when speaking English to
make the last element of an utterance prominent, regardless of whether it
would normally be prominent in English. Other problems with prominence
can sometimes be traced back to misunderstandings about word stress,
especially in compound words, so that a 'marked' version of the item is
produced in contexts where there is no reason to do so:
14.28) i've BROken a coffee CUP 4.6 Intonational units
(4.29) i HAVE to mister at the police =tion to STAY in ENGIand
Teachers have first and foremost to train themselves to observe learners,
listening carefully for any problems that might be consistently related to
misplaced prominence. Many available language teaching materials give
learners practice in deciding which words to make prominent in sentences
and dialogues, though such exercises are generally conflated under the
heading of stress with exercises aimed at practising the word stress of
citation forms. Bradford's Intonation in Context (1988) specifically
addresses prominence in the sense we are using it here (see the Teacher's
Book: 34)' though in the Student's Book the term highlighting is used
instead.
4.6 Intonational units
Many phonologists believe that it is possible to divide speech up into small
units in which each unit has at least one main, or nuclear prominence. This
prominence will be marked by some variation in pitch, either predomi-
nantly rising or falling (see 4.7). The unit thus defined may then have other,
non-nuclear, prominences (usually just one), and other, non-prominent
syllables. The nuclear prominence is the last prominence in the unit, and
such units are usually called tone units or tone groups. Typical tone groups
would be (from now on we shall show the nuclear syllable in bold to
distinguish it from prominent, non-nuclear syllables):
(4.30) / she WORKS for the Government /
(4.3 1) / i KNOW the FACE / but i CAN't put a NAME to it /
(4.32) / WHERE'S that FRIEND of yours /
Tone groups often have a slight pause after them, and are claimed to
correspond most frequently in natural data with grammatical clauses
(Halliday 1967), as do our examples above. In actual fact, it is not at all
easy to isolate tone groups in natural data, especially in rapid, casual
speech, and some linguists have abandoned the attempt altogether, as we
shall see below. But the tone group is central to the school of linguists who
see intonation as being concerned with the information structure of
utterances. Halliday (1985) is principal among these. For Halliday, tone
groups are informational units; the speaker decides how to segment the
information to be transmitted and encodes each segment as a separate tone
group. The nuclear prominence, or tonic as we shall now call it, projects
what the speaker decides is new (in the sense of 'newsworthy') in the tone
group. So in example (4.30), the newsworthy focus was on government, in
(4.31), on face and name, and in (4.32) on friend. The rest of the tone group
may be said to be given, but only in the sense of 'the background or 4 Discourse analysis and phonology
framework in which the newsworthy items operate' rather than 'given'
meaning 'already mentioned or understood'; the terms used by linguists can
often be confusing because of their non-specialist meanings.
In the Hallidayan system, the unmarked or neutral unit of information is
the clause, with the tonic on the last lexical item. This is reminiscent of the
grammatical idea of theme and heme in the clause (see Chapter 2), where
the rheme (the portion of the clause from the verb onwards) characteristic-
ally contains the newsworthy information:
theme rherne
(4.33) I 've PUT it in the FRIDGE
(4.34) YOU PUSH that little Button
Many utterances will not follow this neutral, unmarked pattern, and the
nucleus may be located in a number of different places; for example, the
theme may occupy its own tone group for purposes of foregrounding or
contrast:
(4.35) / the WINE / was Awful 1 but the FISH / was SUPERB /
And the many cases of marked themes discussed in Chapter 2 will bring the
nucleus on to those themes:
(4.36) / the CArrots / we GROW ourSELVES / but the poTAtoes / we BUY
in the MARket /
(4.37) / in the afterNOON / we went SWIrnming /
Reoder activity 7 d
Imagine contexts for these utterances and decide on the division into tone
groups. Then mark the tonic syllables and any other prominent syllables. If
possible, compare your results with someone else's, but remember that
there may be more than one possible contextualisation.
1. I've lost my car keys.
2. Suddenly a cat jumped out.
3. It's Mondays I hate most.
4. David I know quite well; his sister I don't know at all.
It is the speaker who decides how the information is to be distributed in
tone groups and where the tonic is placed, and the decisions rest on an
assessment of what needs to be highlighted for the listener. Neul and given,
as stated above, are not simply a matter of what has already been men-
tioned and what has not; an entity already mentioned may be highlighted to 4.6 Intonational units
reassert it as a topic in the conversation or to contrast it with another entity;
on the other hand, an entity may be treated as given because it is obvious in
the context, even though it has not been mentioned at all. Because all such
decisions are in the hands of the speaker, it may be argued that the notion
of an unmarked or neutral information structure (i.e. one that uses the
single tone-unit clause in which the information is distributed as given +
new and the tonic is on the last lexical item) is irrelevanh and that, in
language teaching, to teach such a structure as if it were an autamatic reflex
upon which 'special' or marked decisions are overlaid is misleading, since
the decision-making and assessment of the state of the interaction on the
part of the speaker are constant.
The tone group is a powerful, basic structure for the analysis of talk.
After all, we do not speak in sentences, and often not even in regular
clause-length chunks, and so if we can isolate a unit whose basis is the tonic
prominence and relate this to informativeness in talk, we can begin to
formulate rules for a grammar of speech, in which the tone group is the
minimal useful contribution to any discourse. Research on such grammars
of speech, operating in tandem with, but not subordinate in any way to, the
traditional grammar of clauses and sentences, is in its infancy.
However, not all linguists are agreed that it is a straightforward matter to
isolate tone groups. Evidence shows that even trained native speakers find it
very difficult to break talk up into such units and to identify tonics in
speech (Brown and Yule 1983: 158). Brown and her colleagues have
abandoned the tone group and instead prefer to work with longer 'pause-
defined' units. Long and extended pauses may be seen as 'constituting
boundaries of phonological units which may be related to information
units' (ibid.: 164). They also abandon the tonic as the single focus of
information and instead mark all prominences equally, thus doing away
with the complexities of deciding exactly what is meant by given and new.
Prominence then simply acquires a 'watch this!' function, and may be used
to draw the listener's attention to a wide variety of phenomena in the
discourse, including marking the beginning of a speaker's turn, a new topic,
special emphasis or contrast, or new information.
Brown and her associates are concerned with how speakers manage large
stretches of interaction, in terms of turn-taking and topic-signalling and
how speakers use pitch level to interact. For instance, there seems to be a
direct correlation in English between the beginning of a new topic in speech
and a shift to a higher pitch (see also Menn and Boyce 1982; Cruttenden
1986: 129). Correspondingly, there is a tendency for the speaker to drop
low in his or her pitch range at the end of a topic or sub-topic. These
phenomena are particularly noticeable where one speaker has a long turn
or series of long turns, and is likely to be less noticeable where there is
multi-party talk where no speaker dominates, and where there are
sequences of short turns (see Schaffer 1984). The evidence certainly seems 4 Discourse analysis and phonology
convincing that this is a basic function of raised pitch in English, and one
that can be directly taught if it is seen to be lacking in the learner's spoken
production.
Brown and her associates work with a unit they call the paratone, defined
as 'a short sequence of units beginning with a stressed peak high in the
speaker's voice range'; the unit then shows a descending order of pitch
height on subsequent prominent syllables till the final prominence, which is
a fall from high to low pitch. Paratones are related to topic, rather than to
information structure. A typical transcription of speech using this approach
is reproduced here; Brown and her colleagues use three lines, rather like a
simplified musical stave, on which changes in the speaker's pitch level and
the direction of pitch movements can be plotted. The three lines represent
the low, mid and high average bands of the speaker's pitch range. It should
be noted that this is a transcript of Scomsh (Edinburgh) English, which
does not have the large pitch movements associated with Received
Pronunciation.
(4.38) I found my drink was a great problem with them because
at that time I drank whisky and lemonade + and I would
go and ask for whisky and lemonade and I would get
whisky and lemon + because you have to ask for whisky 4.6 lntonatiod units
or scotch and seven up + you know + I
cottoned on to it + but + and they couldn't get over
the fact that I didn't like! ice in whisky and of course
they either gave me ice whether I wanted it or not or
they stacked the glass up + right up to the level that 4 Discourse analysis and phonology
you would normally have if you had ice in your drink
(from Brown and Yule Discourse Analysis 1983, pp. 102-3)
Consider the advantages and disadvantages of Brown's system of tran-
scription compared with the Hallidayan one of tone units and tonic
syllables, not so much in terms of which one accounts best for all the details
of intonational features, but in terms of their pedagogical usefulness.
Which system would learners be most likely to find usable and helpful? Are
there other, more user-friendly ways of transcribing intonation?
Turn-taking is another important aspect of pitch level in this view of
intonation. The speaker can signal a desire to continue a speaking turn by
using non-low pitch, even at a point where there is a pause, or at the end of
a syntactic unit, such as a clause. Equally, a down-step in pitch is often a
good turn-yielding cue. The intonational cues interact with other factors
such as syntax, lexis, non-verbal communication and the context itself, and
are typical of how the different levels of encoding have to be seen as
operating in harmony in a discourse-oriented view of language (see Schaffer
1983).
The approach to intonation characterised by the work of Brown and her
associates need not necessarily contradict the Hallidayan, informational
view. In terms of pedagogical usefulness, a Hallidayan approach using tone
groups could be a useful framework for practising prominence at lower
levels of language proficiency, and for practising different tones (see 4.7),
both alone and in combination. The Brown approach to intonation
undoubtedly has advantages from our point of view in its concern with the
management of longer stretches of discourse and with turn-taking and
topic-framing, and doing away with tone groups certainly avoids an
analytical difficulty. The system of transcription, though, is not particularly
user-friendly, and language teachers may want to adopt their own ways of
indicating pitch level and prominences, using other types of visual repre-
sentation. What is more, the interactive approach outlined in 4.7.4 below
could be taken as a global set of principles which subsume local phenom-
ena such as yielding the turn or changing the topic. 4.7 Tones and their meanings
17 Tones and their meanings
4.7.1 Types of tones
The prominent syllables in an utterance are the carriers of any significant
variation in pitch that the speaker might use. At recognisable points in the
utterance, the pitch level may rise, fall, or be carefully kept level. Pho-
nologists disagree as to the number of discrete types of significant falling,
rising and level tones that are used in English; some distinguish between as
many as eight, others work with four or five. For our practical purposes five
will be a useful number to consider. These are:
1. Fall \
2. Risefall /b
3. Fall-rise V
4. Rise /"
5. Level +
It is worth noting that the tone contour can often spread itself out over
more than one syllable or word (especially tones 2 and 3). Indeed, it will
often be difficult to separate consecutive occurrences of a fall and a rise
hom a single fall-rise that spreads over several words, though speakers
sometimes clearly indicate by running words together (often into the same
tone group) in a broad 'sweep' of the voice that the tone is a complex one
spread over word boundaries. In the following piece of natural data,
speaker A utters the last part of his question in one sweep, and speaker B
says the words seen one in a single sweep in her reply. But then B clearly and
deliberately separates seen and one in her next utterance by making one the
tonic (to emphasise that it was only one) and by placing the risefall on one
only, making seen a non-tonic, level-toned prominence:
(4.39)
7'
A: / are there MANY good hops in town? I
B: / i DON'T know about'^^,#/ but i've
L
(Author's data 1989)
In our example utterances, it will be sufficient to mark the tone on our
bold-face tonic syllable, with the understanding that other features of the
delivery may extend the domain of the tone over more than that syllable.
Though opinions vary widely as to the functions of the different tones,
most phonologists are agreed on a broad distinction between tones that end
with a falling contour (fall and risefall), and tones which end with a rising
contour (fall-rise and rise). What is more, the distinction seems to be a 4 Discourse analysis and phonology
linguistic universal and to have some universally common functional con-
trasts attached to it (see Cruttenden 1986: 168-9). But such is the confusion
amongst descriptive and applied phonologists as to just what particular
tones mean that it is worth taking a close look at different views-to see
where they seem to be pointing, if indeed there is sufficient common ground
to merit any general conclusions.
4.7.2 Grammatical approaches
One widely held view is that intonation has a grammatical function, that is
to say, that there are 'correctx intonations for things such as questions,
sentence-tags, subordinate clauses, and so on. Most common among these
views is that 'yes-no' type interrogatives end in a rising tone, as in:
a
(4.41) .I d'you feel qNGry? I
Conversely, wh- interrogatives are held to be uttered with a fall:
(4.42) I WHAT'S the ~i$l~lern? I
In fact, there seems to be little hard evidence that this is so, and much
evidence to suggest that there is no one-to-one relationship between
sentence-type and tone. C. C. Fries's (1964) data had 61 per cent of
questions with a falling tone, and he concluded that 'there seem to be no
intonation sequences on questions that are not also found on other types of
utterances, and no intonation sequences on other types of utterances that
are not found on questions'. Other researchers have come to just the same
conclusion. Our opening example of the comedy sketch in Chapter 1 also
underlined this lack of correspondence between grammatical form and
discourse function, and it would seem open to question whether any direct
intonational and grammatical correlates exist, whether for interrogatives or
other grammatical structures. Tags, for instance, display that speaker-
controlled variability that is the hallmark of interaction:
WAS~T it? /
(4.43) I it was BOB SMITH \ / /A
I \W>S%T~~?I
Both are interrogative structures (i.e. inverted verb and subject), but the
choice of fall or rise seems to depend entirely on the speaker's assessment of
the mutual state of knowledge between speaker and listener.
The more we look at intonation and grammar, the mare we are forced to
conclude that they are separate systems which work independently, but in
harmony, to contribute to &iscourse meaning. 4.7 Tones and their meanings
4.7.3 Attitudinal approaches
By far the most common view of intonation is that it is related to attitude
and/or emotion, that some intonations express 'surprise', or 'detachment',
and so on. This seems particularly so when we look at utterances such as:
\ \
(4.44) 1 JOHN! / HOW nice to SEE you! / (high fall: surprise)
L 4
A
(4.45) I he's Coming on FRIday I Isn't that GOOD! / (rise-fall: excitement)
/ L / L
Very often, though, it is simply the lexis that misleads us: the selfsame
intonation patterns can be used without any emotive implications, or else
with completely different ones:
(4.46)
'7'
A: I CAN i invite my SIJter? I
\
B: I ?ES! I BRING her aLONG! I (high fall: enthusiasm? friendly
L acceptance?)
L
\
(4.47) I the CHILD is ~~&ianr / BEST in the CLtSS I (risefall: purely
/
informative? enthusiasjic? sarcastic?)
We can see what a mess can be got into if we try to attach attitudinal or
emotive labels to tones out of context, for it seems almost any emotion can
be accompanied by any tone, and that without lexical or contextual
information or other vocal clues we cannot reliably label a tone contour as
displaying a particular attitude or emotion. The most we can say is that
emotional intensification tends to be accompanied by wider pitch contrasts,
but that is far from attributing particular emotions and attitudes to par-
ticular tone contours.
Reader activity 9 r.O
Try saying the utterances on the following page as they are labelled, and
then try to change the words to any other words that fit the same pattern,
but retaining the same tone contours, as in the example. How does your
interpretation of the attitudinal or emotive aspect of the utterances change?
\ 7' \
Example: / MARK 1 WHAT'S the MATTer? /
. V
\ 7" \
/ YES / MAYbe FRIday /
\" ?
L
\
1 pbssibly / i DON'T KNOW I
v L 4 Discourse atralysis and phonology
1. I he's a STUpid F~L! 1
4l
2. 1 if you Opened your bd 1 you'd S!E it! I
3. 1 JI&? I i DON'T be9VE it! /
The attitudinallemotive approach to intonation is deeply entrenched in
English language teaching. Boyle (1987) says that 'stress and intonation are
employed in that area of language which deals with attitudes, moods,
emotions'. Roberts (1983) suggests step-by-step intonational analysis of
dialogues with students and considers dre attitudinal analysis to be crucial,
as seen in the instructions to teachers:
(4.48) Step 3: This step must not be omitted. Pick a line or lines in which
the attitude is very clear and where stress and intonation patterns are
easily recognised; e.g. "what a beautiful day!".
(Roberts 1983)
The teacher then utters this with level pitch which the students must
'correct' to a high falling pitch, because the speaker is 'happy', not 'sad'.
The assumption is that level pitch would convey an attitude of sadness, and
yet it is clear that level tone can be used by someone who is perfectly polite,
happy and interested, as in this attested example of a telephone
switchboard operator speaking to a caller:
It is context, rather than the tone itself, which denotes whether someone is
happy, sad, or whatever.
The point about attitude can be further underlined with two examples
from teaching material by Thompson (1981): identical tone patteos in the
two responses realise quite different attitudinal contexts:
(4.50) (a) Alan: SO& about the noise last night, J 6
L Jo: I should think so too
L (b) David: . . . Sorry to ring so 1 Ll re
I
Jo: Not at all
We must conclude that it is probably a fruitless enterprise to teach
intonation as 'attitude' or 'emotion'. How people express attitudes and
emotions is a complex combination of vocal cues, intonation, lexis, non-
verbal behaviour and contextual factors. Such matters may well be cultural
108 4.7 Toms and their meanings
universals; there is certainly not enough evidence to suggest major differ-
ences that warrant direct pedagogical intervention. When attitudinal cues
are misunderstood, as in judgements such as 'speakers of language X
always sound arrogant in English', the reason is likely to be traceable to
misleading signals concerning what assumptions the speaker has encoded
by tone choice with regard to such things as the state of the hearer's
knowledge, what is recoverable from context and what is 'newsworthy' or
the centre of focus, that is to say, the interactive level of signalling that
intonation can be shown to convey. L1 interference may also play a $art:iif
a speaker has as L1 a language with a narrower pitch range than English
(e.g. Danish), then heishe may well sound 'flat' and monotonous in English,
or if LI is a language with a tendency to 'jump' regularly in pitch (e.g.
French), then the speaker may sound 'excitable'. But the remedies here
would seem to be training in typical English pitch range and tone contours
rather than anything to do with teaching learners how to express
emotions.
4.7.4 Interactive approaches
The interpretation of tone choice that seems most reliable and which seems
to make most sense, given what we have said about the fundamentally
interactive nature of the other parts of the intonation system (prominence,
tonic placement) is to see tones as fulfilling an interactive role in the
signalling of the 'state of play' in discourse. The speaker has to judge how
n, deliver the tone group. Should it be delivered as open-ended, as incom-
plete in some way, as non-conducive with regard to a possible response (i-e.
not restricting the possible field of response), as background to what is the
main message, as referring to common ground? Or on the other hand,
should it be delivered as possessing a finality or completeness, as 'telling'
rather than simply referring to background, as conducive towards the
response of the hearer, or as the main core of the message? Tone choice in
English seems to fulfil these opposing functions, and Cruttenden (1981) has
&red to a major distinction between open and closed meanings, while
Brazil (198Sa and b) talks of referring and proclaiming functions. In British
Raeived Pronunciation, the open or referring functions are carried by
ending in rises; the closed or proclaiming functions by those ending in
falls. When there is no orientation on the part of the speaker to either of
functions, the tone is neutral or oblique, and is realised by a level
pitch. Let us consider some examples:
:JSI) / IF youLgtE/ we can GO via dA$Jchester /
:an)
\ 3
A: / are YOU mr BWE? /
\ 4 Disc0~1s.e analysis and phonology
(4.53) A: 1 N?)~ I YOU must be mr B* I
B: 19yl
a A: I d9m I mom TWENW- I? I
(4.54) A: I arc YOU mr ~bd? I
B: /dl
',
A: I AI$ I the ~breary 1 would like a
L
In (4.51), 'if you like' is treated as background or subordinate information
to the main message. But subordinate here is not intended in the grammati-
cal sense; the speaker might have considered the grammatically subordinate
clause to be-the main message and the (grammatically) main clause to be the
background or 'common ground' information:
\ \
44-55) I we COULD go via @chcner I bur ONLY if you WAF to I
In (4.52), 'Are you Mr Blake?' is an open-ended utterance: it calls for some
completion or closing, in this case an answer that establishes the unknown
polarity (a 'yes-no' question). Mr Blake's answer provides the finality that
was missing. Speaker A in (4.53) is sure that this is Mr Blake, and so uses a
closed and conducive tone. But in (4.54), Mr Blake is not satisfied that
things are final and closed, and his rising-tone answer has an implicit
'why!' or 'who wants to know?' in it, and an incompleteness that is only
closed by A's utterance, followed by a confirmation of the closure by Mr
Blake's 'oh'.
Reader actMty 10 d
Label the tonics (the main prominences in bold) in thew utterances with
either fall-rise (\f ) or falling ( ) tones, according to whether you
judge them to be 'openlreferring' meanings or 'closedlproclaiming'
meanings:
1. 1 IF you see TIM / CAN you ask him to RING me? /
2. A: / i met JOsie COLEman 1 in TOWN /
B: / JOsie COLEman? 1
A: I YES I
3. A: 1 IS it five O'CLOCK? I
B: / FIVE TO /
A: 1 AH! / GOOD! 1 JUST in TLME! / 4.8 Key
In this interactive view of tone choice, the speaker is constantly making
assumptions as to what should be treated as background or common
ground, what may be uttered with a conducive tone, what is open-ended,
and what should be delivered as world-changing in the perception of the
hearer.
Brazil (198Sa and b) attaches a further interactive significance to the
internal choice represented by rise-fall as opposed to fall, and rise as
opposed to fall-rise. Rise-fall and rise are seen to be dominant-speaker
choices; at any given point in a conversation, one speaker will typically
exercise dominance, though dominance may change frequently in casual
conversation among equals. Dominant speakers have the option of using
the dominant tones or the non-dominant ones; non-dominant speakers will
only use non-dominant tones. In a situation such as a classroom, it is most
likely that the teacher will exercise the dominant-speaker option; pupils who
do so may be misheard as insolent. The following is most likely to be a teacher
giving the class information rather than a pupil answering a teacher question:
(4.56) 6
7
/ it's TOOK / T 0 / is the past tense of TAKE /
/ I/ F /
The interactive approach to tone choice seems to be the most convincing of
the explanations we have looked at in 4.7.2-4. Nonetheless, there are
unresolved difficulties for pedagogical application. For instance, it is diffi-
cult to conceptualise why wh- questions are very often uttered with a falling
tone, when they seem every bit as 'incomplete' and 'open-ended' as yes-no
questions. One has to remind oneself that the choice of tone is independent
of the choice of grammatical form, and that it is the speaker's assessment of
the conducive (and therefore non-open) character of the question that is
important. 'WHAT'S the TLME?', uttered with falling tone, invites the
hearer to choose from a catalogue of possible alternatives, and can be seen
to be conducive, but such explanations often seem to be pushing the
interactive terminology to its limits, and may not sound convincing in class
or in teaching materials. However, until we have more satisfactory terms
for interactive functions, the interactive approach as a whole can be
adapted and simplified for teaching purposes and used productively.
Bradford (1988) offers just such an adaptation.
4.8 Key
The relative level of pitch between one part of an utterance and another can
often be heard to change, to jump upwards, or to drop Hnd trail off. We are
all familiar with utterances where the speaker's pitch level suddenly rises, as
in B's reply in (4.57), where we can show the jump by moving to the line
above in our transcription: 4 Discourse analysis phonology
(4.57)
f
A: 1 IS that ~d~singof~oursmJl here? 1
sister NOT my
B: 1 she's my * I cb~! I
B ems to be expressing something contrary to A's expectations; there is a
contrast between cousin and sister. Sometimes, though, the pitch level
drops:
(4.58) 1 h I THAT'S )I. then I I
& & THAT'Sbished
Here the spea.ket is indicating that 'that's finished' does not add anything
new to the discourse, but rather that it is to be heard as functionally
equivalent to 'that's it then', as saying more or less the same thing. ~he4
two choices Brazil (1985a and b) refers to as high key and low key,
respectively. When speakers are speaking in the middle of their average
pitch range, they are speaking in mid-key, and the utterance simply adds
more to the ongoing discourse. These three functions, high for contrast-
iveness, mid for addition, and low for reiteration are the key system of
English; they represent a further layer of speaker choice in intonanon.
The jump to high key and the drop to low have also been seen as
important cues in topic management, with high key marking the initiation
of a topical segment, and low key its ending (see the remarks on paratones
in 4.6). Bradford (1 988) again provides useful pedagogical applications of
Brazil's account of key choices.
Reader activity I 1 IrO
Consider points where the speakers would be likely to jump to high key or
to drop to low key in these utterances: -
1. A: I i'll ASK &NOS lktbrazilian /
B: 1 was? I he's d~ean I DIDn't you kdw? I
2. A: I 17TH@S I you've been VERY 4.9 Pitch across speakers
4.9 Pitch across speakers
A final observation needs to be made concerning how pitch-level choices
operate across speaker turns. Matching or concord in pitch between
speakers is a phenomenon noted by Brown, Currie and Kenworthy (1980:
23-4), and dealt with by Brazil (198Sa and b) under the heading of
termination. Brown's team show with their data how speakers sometimes
begin a new topic by asking a question which begins high in the speaker's
pitch range, and how this high pitch is echoed by the hearer with high pitch
at the beginning of the answer. A typical topic-opening sequence might be:
iydcy? v
(4.59) A: / HAVE you ever been to I
\ \
A: / it's a GREAT COrNtry 1 RE,&lly /
This kind of 'termination' choice exercises constraints on the listener as to
what sort of key will be used in the answer. In example (4.59), the speaker
expects the hearer to produce a high-key, contrastive answer (a true yes-no
polarity).
High-key concord is used not only at the beginning of topics; in (4.60),
speaker A responds in high key to agree with B's assessment of a situation
which is contrary to normal expectations:
(4.60) (A and B have been discussing a photocopier which is always
breaking down)
\ \
A: / SHqCKing things / AREN'T they I
L \
a N~w one
B: / they ARE / \ I and %$'s I I
~ES
IS
A:/ &/
(Author's data 1989)
If a speaker uses low termination, as B does in (4.61), the constraints on the
hearer to continue are minimal:
\
(4.61) A: I so THAT'S IJ then I
\
B: /Y~AH/
4
THAT'S 4 I
A:/\ 1
RIGHT
Y 4 Discourse analysis and phonology
4.10 Summary
The picture we have painted of intonation may suggest a complexity that
will never lend itself to straightforward pedagogy. However, the distinct
advantage of an interactive description such as Brazil's, with discrete layers
of choice, or, for that matter, any description that adequately separates the
functions of prominence, tone and pitch level, is that separate parts of the
system can be dealt with individually, while not losing sight of either the
overall discourse significance of the different levels of choice or the unified
sense of the importance of speaker choice and adjustment to rhe constantly
changing state of play between participants in the talk. Interactive
approaches to intonation, as wdl as being intuitively more satisfying, do
away with much of the confusing labelling of attitudinal approaches and
offer a more systematic framework for innovative pedagogy. Decisions will
still have to be made about presentation and how to make a complex set of
concepts appealing to learners, but good language teachers have never
lacked the ability to translate new types of description into useful practice.
Should intonation be left to develop for itself, or should we teach it? There
do seem to be some good arguments for the,latter view. For one thing, while
all languages seem to Lse intonation in some form or another, it is by no
means certain that realisations are the same. Even within dialects and
varieties of English, particular tones seem to have different functions. Some
researchers claim to have found significant differences from English in the
distribution of tones in other languages and how learners use English tones
(e.g. for German, see Scuffil 1982, A. Fox 1984, and Rees 1986; for Dutch,
see Willems 1982). But learners' problems may not all be explained away by
contrastive analysis, Lower-level learners often have to encode utterances in
L2 word-by-word, and under such conditions, appropriate tone-grouping,
prominence, tone and key may simply not be realised. This fact might argue
for giving learners the opportunity to practise intonation using words and
phrases they are already familiar with and do not have to struggle too much
with on the level of lexico-grammatical encoding. Or else other modes of
spoken language such as scripted drama might be used; Johns-Lewis (1986)
shows how quite wide pitch variation is found in acting situations (in
comparison with conversation and reading aloud), and drama could offer a
context for spotlighting intonation features.
There are certainly practical conclusions to be drawn from the inter-
active descriptions we have examined. For one thing, the simple fall and the
fall-rise are definitely the most useful tones to present and practise first,
since they fulfil such basic, everyday functions, and they can be presented in 4. I 1 Conclusion
contrast with each other in the same utterance or exchange, as in examples
(4.51-55). The key system is also relatively straightforward and easily
graspable, and contextualised dialogues and situations can be devised to
elicit different keys. Pitch rise and drops at topic and sub-topic boundaries
can be practised in prepared talks and anecdote-telling. Such discrete-level
practice is probably more manageable than trying to elicit the whole
complex system of choices in one go.
Reader activity 1 2 d
To finish this chapter, we might look at what a short piece of natural
discourse looks like when transcribed for all its relevant features (promi-
nence, tone and key) in the kind of transcription we have been using in this
chapter. Do you think the transcription is pedagogically usable as it stands?
Is it too complicated? Ought it to be changed in some ways, or might other
types of transcription more effectively convey the same amount of infor-
mation?
(The extract is taken from a recording of a senior prison officer in a
British gaol talking about his job in an informal interview.)
\
COULD you TELL us a bit
(4.621 Interviewer: /
L I about
7'
TINE?
your Everyday rou /'/
ELL B~EN
Officer: I / i've 4 in the / k~dice I for about
", P
FIFteen Y~~RS / bur UNlike my PREvious Yupatlon I
\ \ fl
we're DEtLing I N$W / with PEOPLE who are
\
ures / of OTHer agencies I they've k0(mally I
\ 7! V,
FAILed the / proBAtion service I and superV
*-+ Y \
/ and SO . . . / that IS? a MARKED DIFFerence I from
v
my \
/
PREvious occupation
b
+ WHEREas b$0&
Interviewer: I /SO/ I you
L - were DEALing with . . . / AS it WERE. . . / both the
\
WOULD it be TRUE to
GOOD Am-bt 1 $d 1
Y 4 Discourse analysis and phonology
WY \
/ you're ONLY dealing with the BAD now 1 in
4
Officer: I
that's RI&
\ 7. k" there are QBviously / PEOPLE who .4Y I they
\
SHOULDn't be us / because they DIDn't $) I
WHAT was adi,EGg they've done I BUT the
. 4, \
majority of peofle I acd~ I that they've DONE
\-. fl
~ONG 1 and -re I acCEPT the
Y v
\
COINsequences I . . .
(Author's data 1985)
This chapter ends the investigation of the contribution of discourse analysis
to the three main levels of linguistic description which are already the basis
of language teaching: grammar, lexis and phonology. The rest of the book
will consider descriptions of speech and writing based on discourse models
and will address the questions of how natural speech and writing can bst
be described and how-such descriptions can be related to the concerns of
language teachers, especially in the areas of speakingllistening and reading1
writing skills. 4.1 1 Conclusion
Further reading
The most accessible works that deal with intonation in discourse in general are
Brown and Yule (1983), Brazil (198Sa and b) and Cruttenden (1986), but there
are many other sources dealing with particular features.
On the importance of relating articulatory and other broader features of speech see
Wong (1986), and for more on teaching voice quality settings, see Esling and
Wong (1983).
On the notion of feet see Abercrombie (1964).
The concept of stress-timing is explained in Pike (1945); also useful for the
arguments concerning rhythm and stress is Ladd (1980: 34-46).
Brazil, Coulthard and Johns (1980) and Coulthard and Brazil (1982) provide
further explanations of prominence, and a very interesting study of how teachers
use prominence in language classes is Hewings (1987).
For more on the relationship between tone groups and clauses, see Schubiger (1964)
and Lindstrom (1978), and for further examples of the Brown approach, see Yule
(1980a and b) and Brown (1983).
For intonation and turn-taking, see Brown, Currie and Kenworthy (1980: 24) and
Cutler and Pearson (1986).
On the lack of correlation between grammatical categories and tones, Stenstrom
(1984) and Geluykens (1988) are worth reading.
An example of a different distribution of tones in a non-RP variety of English is
Guy et al.'s (1986) study of Australian intonation.
Finally, for another discourse-oriented approach to teaching intonation, see the
very practical functional categories in V. J. Cook (1979). 'Speak when you're spoken to!'
the Queen sharply interrupted
her.
'But if everybody obeyed that
rule,' said Alice, who was
always ready for a little argu-
ment, 'and if you only spoke
when you were spoken to, and
the other person always waited
for you to begin, you see nobody
would ever say anything.'
Lewis Carroll: 77wugh dhe LogWlrg
Glsss
So far in this book we have looked at discourse analysis in general and, in
greater detail, at the way grammar, lexis and phonology have been
approached by discourse analysts. Our task now is to look closer at various
manifestations of discourse, in this chapter spoken and in the next written,
with a view to potential applications in language teaching. We have already
stated as our ongoing concern the establishment of as accurate a picture as
possible of natural discourse, in order to have this as a yardstick for judging
approaches to language teaching and for evaluating what goes on in
classrooms and the output of learners.
Spoken language is a vast subject, and little is known in hard statistical
terms of the distribution of different types of speech in people's everyday
lives. If we list at random a number of different types of speech and consider
how much of each day or week we spend engaged in each one, we can only
roughly guess at some son of frequency ranking, other than to say that
casual conversation is almost certainly the most frequent for most people.
The rest will depend on our daily occupation and what sorts of contacts we
have with others. Some different types of speech might be:
telephone calls (business and private) 5.2 Adjacency pairs
service encounters (shops, ticket offices, etc.)
interviews (jobs, journalistic, in official settings)
classroom (classes, seminars, lectures, tutorials)
rituals (church prayers, sermons, weddings)
monologues (speeches, stories, jokes)
language-in-action (talk accompanying doing: fixing, cooking,
assembling, demonstrating, etc.)
casual conversation (strangers, friends, intimates)
organising and directing people (work, home, in the street)
Until large corpora of natural speech are assembled (and that is no small
task given the problems of recording such data), we have to rely on
intuition as language teachers to decide which forms of talk are most
central and useful to investigate and practise with groups of learners. But
we can be confident that such areas as casual conversation, language-in-
action, monologues of various kinds, telephone calls, service encounters
and, from the point of view of evaluating what goes on in classrooms,
classroom talk, will all be worth investigating and understanding more
clearly.
We have already touched on classroom talk as described by the Birming-
ham school of discourse analysts in section 1.5, and on conversation in
section 1.7 in connexion with the ethnomethodological approach. Here we
shall look closely at what has been said about the forms and patterns of
different types of talk and consider whether there are things that can be
taught or practised to assist language learning. We shall, as always, not
necessarily assume that, because something can be described, it must
therefore be taught. We shall begin with small units and work up to larger
ones.
5.2 Adjacency pairs
Pairs of utterances in talk are often mutually dependent; a most obvious
example is that a question predicts an answer, and that an answer presup-
poses a question. It is possible to state the requirements, in a normal
conversational sequence, for many types of uperances, in terms of what is
expected as a response and what certain responses presuppose. Some
examples might be:
Utterance function Expected response
greeting greeting
congratulation thanks
apology acceptance
inform acknowledge
leave-taking leave-taking 5 Spoken language
Pairs of utterances such as greeting-greeting and apology-acceptance are
called adjacency pairs (see Schegloff and Sacks 1973). The mutual depend-
ence of such utterances is underlined by the fact that we can only be
absolutely sure of the function of the initiating utterance (the first pair-part
as it is usually called) when it is contextualised with the response it gets (the
second pair-part), and vice versa (thus 'hello' in English could be a greeting,
a request to a telephone caller to identify themselves, or an expression of
surprise: 'Hello! What's this here?'). This is to reiterate the problem of form
and function raised in section 1.2. In example (5.1) the imperative first
pair-part can be classified functionally as an informing move, in light of the
acknowledging second pair-part it receives:
(5-1) (On a train)
Ticket collector: (inspecting passenger's ticket) Change at
Peterborough.
Passenger: Thank you.
(Author's field notes)
Reader activity 1 rr.8
Look at these extracts from natural data and consider the different func-
tions of thank you in each case. Follow-up moves such as 'not at all' I 'that's
okay' 1 'you're welcome' would not be appropriate here in British English;
why not? Can you think of any culture or language where they would be
realised?
1. Bus conductor: One pound twenty.
Passenger: (gives £1.20)
Conductor: Thank you.
Passenger: Thank you.
2. (University seminar; lecturer is facing the class, using an
overhead projector.)
Student: It's not focused.
Lecturer: Thank you (adjusts the projector).
Adjacency pairs are of different types. Some ritualised first pair-parts may
have an identical second pair-part (hello - hello, bappy New Year - happy
New Year), while others expect a different second pair-part (congratula-
tions - thanks). Equally, a second pair-part such as thanks will presuppose
quite a wide range of first pair-parts (offers, apologies, informing moves,
congratulations, commiserations, etc.). Other first pair-parts have various
possibilities and generate further expectations too; take, for example,
invitation: 5.2 Adjacency pairs
(5.2) A: Would you like to come over for a drink tomorrow?
B: Yes, that would be nice. (accept)
Yes, if it could be after six. (accept with condition)
No. (reject)
We probably react against the bald No answer; politeness codes demand a
more elaborate structure for the response:
(5.3) B: Thanks very much, but I'm afraid I'm booked up tomorrow night,
what about. . . (etc.)
We can segment the polite refusal of the invitation into appreciation
('thanks very much'), softener (I'm afraid'), reason ('I'm booked up') and
face-saver ('what about . . . '). This pattern 'would typically be found
between adult friends, colleagues, etc. in informal but polite situations.
More intimate situations may well omit the 'softener'. Each of these
elements will have several possible realisations, and these can be practised
in language learning in a systematic way.
Different roles and settings will generate different structures for such
adjacency pairs, and discourse analysts try to observe in natural data just
what patterns occur in particular settings. Scarcella and Brunak (1981)
compared native and non-native speakers' strategies for giving informal
invitations. The native speakers prefaced their invitations (e.g. 'I was
wondering, uh, we're having a party . . . '), while the non-natives were
sometimes too formal or too blunt (e.g. 'I would like to invite you to a
party'; 'I want you to come in a party'). Similarly, it seems that native
speakers usually preface disagreement second pair-parts in English with
partial agreement ('yes, but. . . ') and with softeners (Pearson 1986). This
sort oi observation has direct implications for the design of role play and
similar activities and what linguistic elements need to be pre-taught, where
learners are instructed to behave in ways specified by the activity and where
the goal is a simulation of 'real life' discourse.
Observation of the behaviour of native and non-native speakers is
all-important, and differences in such behaviour can enable teachers to
pinpoint linguistic deficiencies which can be made up by concentrating on
particular areas and realisations. Trosborg (1987), for instance, who
studied apology strategies, found that because of lower linguistic com-
petence, her non-native speaker subjects resorted more to ritualised
apology formulae than did native speaker subjects. The native speakers
used other strategies such as 'repair offers' (e.g. 'oh dear, let me get you
another one'), or even challenged the accusation. In short, the native
speakers elaborated the apology, but one must have the linguistic equip-
ment to do this in an L2. Again, this emphasises the importance of
pre-teaching particular strategies and the language that realises them;
otherwise, role plays can become no more than tests that learners are
certain to fail. 5 Spoken language
Data-based observations of the kinds referred to above question the
adequacy of formula-based 'functional' teaching of the type that swept into
fashion in English language teaching in the late 1970s, and underline the
wisdom of the trend towards a broader-based and eclectic lexico-grammati-
cal input to enable the learner to 'behave' naturally. However, this is not to
deny the usefulness of formulae as a survival kit at the most elementary
levels, nor should we forget that much native-speaker language is formu-
laic; it is simply that the native speaker usually has a vastly greater range of
formulae to call upon for use in a wider range of,strategic domains, along
with a flexible and adaptable lexicon of non-formtlla bad items.
The principle of adjacency pairs and how they are realid in natural
speech point to the importance of creating minimal contexts in the teaching
of common communicative functions and the limited value of teaching
single utterances. We have seen once again that the structure and elab-
oration of the adjacency pair is determined by role and setting, and that the
functions of its component utterances depend on the co-presence of both
pam. In Chapter 1 we additionally noted the importance of the follow-up
move in signalling function. Considering the follow-up move as well brings
us back to the notion of the exchange as a significant unit of discourse.
Chapter 1 described the exchange as the central unit in the Birmingham-
type analysis of classroom talk, and showed that it could be applied outside
of the classroom too (section 1.6). Exchanges are independently observable
entities; adjacency pairs may be found within their boundaries, but first and
second pair-parts do not necessarily coincide with initiating and respond-
ing moves. In (5.4) below, there is such a coincidence, but in (5.5) adjacency
pairing occurs in the initiation and response (statement of achievement -
congratulation), and in the responding and follow-up move (congratu-
lation - thanks):
(5.4) A: Congratulations on the new job, by the way.
B: Oh, thanks.
(5.5) A: I've just passed my driving test.
B: Oh, congratulations.
A: Thanks.
Particularly noticeable in the Sinclair-Coulthard data was the pattern of
the three-part exchange in traditional classrooms, where the teacher made
the initiation and the fdllow-up move, while pupils were restricted to
responding moves. In a good many language classes this is still the pattern,
especially in situations where large classes of perhaps 40 to 50 pupils is the
norm. Where this happens, it is likely that pupils will have the chancc to 5.3 Exchanges
practise only a very impoverished range of utterance functions. In such
language classrooms, learners rarely get the opportunity to take other than
the responding role, and even in cases where students are encouraged to
initiate, the follow-up move is often still in the hands of the teacher, and
learners get little or no practice in this particular discourse function.
It is worth looking at some common follow-up moves in eliciting
exchanges in everyday talk. While speakers outside classrooms do not
usually behave like teachers and evaluate the quality of one another's
utterances (in terms of correctness, fluency, etc.), they often evaluate (or
at least react to) its content; we might compare what can sometimes
happen in the classroom (5.6) with what is likely to happen in the-real
world (5.7):
(5.6) Teacher: Now Maria, you ask Fumiko.
Maria: What did you do at the weekend?
Fumiko: I went to Wales.
Teacher: Good, now Fumiko, you ask Marco, . . . (etc.)
(5.7) Maria: What did you do at the weekend?
Fumiko: I went to Wales.
Maria: Oh, really? Where did you go?
Follow-up moves of this latter kind might include: how nice, that's interest-
ing, oh dear, how awful, lucky you, oh no, I see, did you, right. These
evaluations can also occur in the responding move in informing exchanges.
They are of interest because they are often not directly translatable lan-
guage to language (compare Swedish sager du det?, Spanish jay! iq~e'
horror!, with English realisations such as really? and how awful!). What is
more, they are often noticeably absent from the learner's natural conver-
sational discourse, where instead we may get a range of vocalisations or
'noises' that can be 'culturally peculiar' to the English ear (cf. the Japanese
tendency to use an extended o-o-o-o-h in reply to a wide range of initiations
and responses).
Reader activity 2 d
One possible way of getting learners to practise adjacency pairs and
exchange structures in the classroom after the necessary realisations have
been taught is to use function-chain activities. A sequence of functions is
decided upon and role cards given to pairs of learners instructing them to
play out a sequence of events calculated to generate the desired functions.
On the following page there is a real example of two non-native speakers
acting out their instructions, which are reproduced before the transcript.
To what extent do you think the activity achieves its aims? Is the exchange
structure natural, and are the adjacency pairs realised in natural ways? 5 Spoken language
Language for pre-teaching in the presentation segment of the lesson:
asking for and giving topical information; saying one is unable to
give information, etc. (e.g. 'What's been happening?'; 'catch up on
sth'; 'Sorry, I can't tell you'; exciting events', 'be up to date', etc.).
Role card A:
You've just come back from a holiday abroad and are talking to a
friend/colleague, B.
1. Try and catch up on the national news you've missed while away.
2. Try in particular to find out if anything important has happened on the
political scene. Get as much detail as you can.
3. Find out about an important sporting event you know you have missed.
Role card B:
You are talking to your friendlcolleague, A, who has just returned
from a holiday abroad.
1. Tell himher you are not really up-todate either and explain why.
2. You do know of one important political event; tell himlher what it
was.
3. Apologise for not knowing what's been happening in the world of
sport, and explain why.
Sample transcript:
A: Well, what happened in this country in the last six weeks?
B: I really cankll you, I haven't read any newspapers.
A: Wasn't there a big event in politics?
B: Yes, it turned out the Democrats got a new leader.
A: Oh, I see, that's interesting, can you tell me more about it?
B: Awfully sorry, I heard it on the radio but I was too tired and I
don't remember.
A: Doesn't matter. What about Manchester United's game?
B: Sorry, I'm not interested in football.
(ICC data I%&-90)
There does often seem to be a need for encouraging learners to practise
common follow-up strategies of the type we have looked at, and design of
speaking activities will once again be crucial, especially the roles learners
are to perform. Getting students to interview one another on given subjects
should yield questionanswer sequences with opportunities for the qua- 5.3 Exchanges
tioners to use follow-up moves, but if the questioner perceives hislher role
as a 'journalistic' interviewer rather than learning about someone and
exchanging information, then the journalistic role, with its typical low
occurrence of follow-up moves, may be the one played out. There is
evidence of this in the following piece of learner dialogue, where student A
is interviewing student B. B is recounting his career:
(5.8) B: Well, I studied theology and qualified as a priest.
A: Oh!
B: But after I saw this job, this job as a priest is nothing for me, I . . .
A: Did you not like it?
B: It was much too stressing.
A: It. . . is it not a bit like a social worker?
B: Yes, it's . . . most part of it is social work, but that, that troubles
and the psychological troubles, they, they told to me, ah, I
couldn't manage to, to stand all, you understand? And then I get
sick, and my heart was and so . . .
A: Became ill.
B: Yes, ill, and, and I left the job. It wasn't, I wasn't able to stand it.
A: Do you think you were too young?
B: Perhaps, I thought, yes, perhaps this is . . . the, the young people
didn't come to the church, and @ere were too less young people,
and too ma . . . too mu . . . too many old peoples, and I felt I'm
too young for this job, I, in ten years perhaps . . .
A: You might go back?
B: Or in fifteen I can go back, yes . . .
(ICC data 1988-90)
The interview continues in this vein throughout. Only in her first turn in the
extract does A evaluate B's utterance, with a simple 'oh!'; at other potential
follow-up move slots she is concerned with helping B in his utterances
('became ill', 'you might go back'). We get none of the typical interactive
follow-ups listed earlier that are found in natural conversation; speaker A is
competently playing out the role of 'questioner' imposed by the interview-
ing situation, with the addition of giving support to her interlocutor.
Reader activity 3 dl
Look at this further piece of learner-learner interview data on the following
page and consider the follow-up moves (or lack of them). Taking also into
consideration the initiating moves, what evidence is there of how the
speakers perceive their roles? (Student B is explaining his surname to student A.) -
B: The name Akkad is a very, has a very long story, it goes back to
at least 2,000 years. It was a state between Syria* Iraq and Jordan,
they called it the the Akkada . . . and this is where my name been,
ah, deriven from, you know . . . I'm not bluffing, but this is a
small story about name.
A: It's quite interesting, and em, so you, where are you from?
B: Syria, Middle East.
A: And you live here in Switzerland?
B: Yes, ah, for about 23 years.
A: Can you tell me a bit about you?
B: About myself, well, I . . .
A: About what, what . . .
B: What I've done here? Wdl, I've, erm, when I first came to
Switzerland, I've studied first a little German language.
A: Yes.
B: I mean I learnt the German language, it was very difficult.
A: It's hard, isn't it?
B: Yes, particularly the Swiss German . . . (etc.)
(ICC data 198&90)
Close examination of learner data can tell us a lot about how activity
design affects output. The absence of a feature in learner talk may not
necessarily mean that the feature has not been acquired; it may simply be
that the activity does not generate its natural use. The intimate relationship
between exchange structure and role and setting means that designing
activities for speaking involves variables that will have an effect on the
exchange patterns of the output. Interview-style patterns are fine if
interview-language is the desired goal; they are a poor substitute for natural
conversational patterns if that is the goal. Conversational data do contain
stretches where initiate-respond-initiaterespond is the pattern, but rarely
for long periods, such a pattern extended over a whole conversation would
almost certainly lead the person on the receiving end of the questions to
assess the event as having been 'like an interrogation'. This is not to
underestimate the difficulty of designing activities which will generate
natural conversational exchange patterns among learners, nor to say that
such an enterprise is doomed to failure; it is simply to isolate one of the
levels of difficulty involved. Discourse analysis can highlight problem
areas; it cannot give simple solutions to the problems. Much has been made in discourse analysis of the study of turn-taking, and
one can hardly write an introductory survey of discourse studies without
noting the work done in this field. In the classic ethnomethodological way,
discourse analysts have observed how participants organise themselves to
take turns at talk. In any piece of natural English discourse, turns will occur
smoothly, with only little overlap and interruption, and only very brief
silences between turns (on average, less than a second). People take turns
when they are selected or nominated by the current speaker, or if no one is
selected, they may speak of their own accord (self-selection). If neither of
these conditions applies, the person who is currently speaking may con-
tinue (Sacks et a!. 1974). While the current speaker is talking, listeners are
attentive to the syntactic completeness or otherwise of the speaker's contri-
bution, and to clues in the pitch level that may indicate that a turn is
coming to a close (see section 4.6). There are specific linguistic devices for
getting the turn when one is unable to enter the normal flow of turn-taking
or when the setting demands that specific conventions be followed. These
vary greatly in level of formality and appropriacy to different situations ('If
I may, Mr Chairman', 'I wonder if I might say something', 'Can I just come
in here', 'Hang on a minute', 'Shut up will you, I can't get a word in
edgewise'). There are also linguistic means of not taking the turn when one
has the opportunity, or simply of making it clear to the speaker that we are
attending to the message. Thqse are usually referred to as back-channel
responses, and consist of vocali~ations such as mm, ah-ha, and short words
and phrases such as yeah, no, right, sure (see Yngve 1970). Back-channel
realisations vary interestingly from culture to culture (some languages have
back-channel vocalisations that sound odd in English, such as eh-eh, or
highly nasalised sounds). Another feature of turn-taking is the way
speakers predict one another's utterances and often complete them for
them, or overlap with them as they complete; we saw this happening to a
certain extent in the way our student interviewer helped her partner in
extract (5.8).
Natural conversational data can often seem chaotic because of back-
channel, utterance-completions and overlaps, as in this extract:
(5.9) (A and B are discussing domestic pets.)
A: Well, of course, people who go to the vet's are
B: [ Mm.
A: interested in the cats and dogs, ain't they?
B: L Yeah, but the people that first
have pets kit-pets er don't realise what's involved, do they?
A: [ care [ Well it sorts them
out, you know, those that don't care that's it so . . . but
B: LM~ LM~ 5 Spoken language
A: if you wanna, you know, somebody that's keen on having a pet
B: L ~rn L ~rn
A: and want it in good order.
B: [ Done . . . done properly, that's right, yeah.
(Lawley data 1987)
This extract is not at all untypical. Such a transcript looks so messy that we
would probably never dream of using it in an English language class as a
dialogue for learners. Even on the rare occasions when authentic dialogue is
transcribed in teaching materials, it is usually so 'cleaned up' that it bears
little resemblance to raw data. Such real data are a reminder of how
idealid are the representations of speech not only in teaching materials,
but in novels, so-called 'verbatim' reports (such as reports of parliamentary
debates), radio and television soap operas and drama in general. Raw data
of this kind, if well-recorded, still have a use in extensive listening activities
for more advanced learners, but we have to resign ourselves to the inevita-
bility that most conversational data used in class or transcribed in materials
will have ordered, non-overlapping turn-taking.
The traditional classroom, as observed by Sinclair and Coulthard, has
very ordered turn-taking under the control of the teacher, and pupils rarely
speak out of turn. More recent trends in classroom organisation, such as
pair and group work, attempt to break this rigid turn-taking pattern; but do
not always succeed in recreating more natural patterns. Often the problem
lies, as before, in activity design. We are all familiar with role plays where
individuals are so intent on formulating their contributions and making
them at the 'right' moment as determined by the activity rubric, that they
pay little attention to the contributions of others, and the natural patterns
of back-channel, utterance completion, etc. simply do not occur. The
looser the restrictions on what and when people may speak, the more
naturally the turn-taking emerges. Extract (5.8), for all its faults, contains
fairly natural turn-taking, as one would expect in an interview, and it also
contains utterance completion, which one might not expect if the 'journal-
istic' role were fully dominant all of the time.
It is not a question of telling learners that speakers take turns; they know
this naturally from their own language. The problem is to make sure that
activities generate the natural sorts of turn-taking that occur in the targct
discourse type and so not inhibit typical turn-taking patterns. But two other
problems might arise in connexion with turn-taking: one is the fact that
dominant and garrulous speakers often grab too many turns (gender can be
a factor here), and the other is the question of culture-specific conventions.
Problems of dominant speakers can be partially solved by giving people
with such tendencies restricted roles in activities, and quieter learners will
often rise to the challenge of a major speaker role in the comparative
anonymity provided by role plays and similar activities. The culture- specific problems are more complex. For instance, in some cultures, silence
has a more acceptable role than in others. Many teachers will be familiar
with individuals or groups from cultures where longer silences seem to be
tolerated in conversation (e.g. Finns), or where the 'thinking time' before a
response is forthcoming seems agonisingly long (a tendency observable
among Japanese learners). Discourse analysts have looked at such phenom-
ena and try to describe the different norms that speakers from different cul-
tures orient to during such behaviour. A set of norms in one culture might
decree that talk must be kept going, whenever possible, even if only to 'buy
time'; another culture might decree that face must be preserved wherever
possible, and not put at risk by unconsidered talk. Rule-conflicts of this type
are often seen to be the underlying cause of conversational breakdowns (e.g.
for Japanese versus American norms, see Noguchi 1987). It is not easy to see
how the language teacher can solve such problems, except to draw attention
to the typical behaviour of the target culture, and to warn learners of the
possible consequences of transferring L1 conventions to the L2 context.
Other features of how turns are given and gained in English may also
prompt specific awareness training where necessary; these include body
language such as inhalation and head movement as a turn-seeking signal,
eye contact, gesticulation, etc., as well as linguistic phenomena such as a
drop in pitch (see Chapter 4) or use of grammatical tags.
Lexical realisations of turn management can be taught directly. In
addition to the range of phrases mentioned above for getting the turn and
not being interrupted in formal and informal settings, there are conven-
tional phrases for interrupting ('Can I interrupt for a moment?', 'Hang on a
minute, I've got something to tell youY, 'Sorry to butt in, but . . . '), for
pre-planning one's turn ('I'll try to be brief, but there are a number of things
. . . '; 'There were three things I wanted to say'; 'Just two things, Mary,
. . . ') and for closing ('And just one last point'; 'One more second and I'll
finish', 'One last thing, Bill', 'And that's it').
Our overall conclus~G is that turn-taking in itself is something that may
not need to be 'taught', but specific linguistic realisations can be presented
and practised and significant cultural differences can at least be pointed out
to the learner.
Reader activity 4 d
Look at this transcript of a natural conversation, which has the turn-taking
transcribed just as it occurred naturally. 'Clean it up' (i.e. make it presenta-
ble as a dialogue to be read in class with a group of learners). Make the
turn-taking sequential by removing overlaps and back-channel utterances
and add any extra punctuation you feel is necessary. How does it now look?
Does it still feel natural, or has it lost too much in the revision? S Spoken language
(B has just arrived, after a long car journey, at A's house.)
A: Sit down . . . you're all right then?
B: Yes okay Jack, I er I did a daft thing though, I planned the
route out you know I had it all written out
C: 1 Yeah
B: 1 and
unlike most people, you sex a signpost Repley so I took it.
C: 1 Yeah.
B: And I came over Mistham by the reservoirs, nice it was.
A: [ Oh, by Mistharn, over the top
. . . nice run.
B: Colours are pleasant, aren't
C: Yeah.
A: Nice* that.
B: Yeah, we enjoyed it . . . wasn't the way we intended but as
A: [ No.
. . . it was nice.
A: We were just talking about that.
B: Oh yes, it was all right.
(Author's data 1989)
5.5 Transadions and topics
5.5.1 Transactions
Here we are concerned with how speakers manage longer stretches of talk.
In Chapter 1, we looked briefly at transaction boundary markers and noted
that, although they are most marked in settings such as classrooms,
doctor's surgeries and formal interviews, they are also present in conver-
sation, especially marking out openings and closings. We also considered
the question of realisations of markers in different languages.
The teacher can isolate, present and exemplify a set of useful transaction
markers such as right, now, so, okay, and so on, for example, by drawing
attention to how helshe uses markers to divide up a lesson. It is often
interesting to get learners to see if these translate directly into their L1, and
to ask them to consider what words L1 uses to mark such boundaries and to
compare these across languages if possible. But providing contexts in which
learners can then practise these markers is more difficult. If it was the
teacher who traditionally marked out the boundaries of chunks of business
in the classroom, then the most obvious way to hand over to the learner this
particular function is to generate activities where the learners themselves
are responsible for segmenting the business, and where activities need to be 5.5 Transactions and topics
opened and closed within a specified time limit. Task-based learning seems
especially well suited to this sort of learner-management of the larger
discourse, when groups and sub-groups have to achieve a specified goal,
arrive at decisions or produce some other recognisable 'real-world'
outcome as stages along the way of completing some preconceived task or
set of tasks. One actual example from which the next data samples are
taken is a task where advanced learners, in groups, have to decide on how
to arrange a room for a school open day. They must make decisions on the
disposition of the furniture and what extra furniture will be needed in order
to write a note for the school caretaker to act upon (the next stage of the
task). When observed in their discussions (there were no predetermined
'chairpersons'), various members of both sub-groups spontaneously used
opening and closing markers with the characteristic falling intonation
followed by a jump to high key for openings and a drop to low key for
closing markers (see section 4.8). For example:
\
\
WHERE shall we have the TABLES?
(5.10) A: / RIT / J4 1
\
WHAT about the REAding area?
(5.11) B:II$~w/ L /
\
(5.12) C: / RIGHT /
THAT'S~TI
L
(Author's data 1989)
These were advanced learners, but it is the activity itself and their responsi-
bility for its conduct rather than their level of English alone that generates
the natural use of these transaction markers.
Another way of raising awareness of boundary markers and producing
data for discussion is by using 'topping-and-tailing' activities. A dialogue is
taken, and the beginning and end removed, so that what is left is clearly the
'middle' of a piece of talk (just as in extract (1.5) on page 10 and the reader
activity that follows it). The instruction to the learners (in pairs or in
groups) is to add a beginning and an end so that the dialogue represents a
meeting between two friends who talk briefly and then have to part. This
generates greeting and leave-taking adjacency pairs, but also produces a
need for opening and closing markers (e.g. 'Hello, what's new?', 'Anyway, I
must go', 'Well, I'll give you a ring soon', 'Look, I can't stop now').
5.5.2 Topics
Several questions arise around the notion of topic, not least, what is a
topic? Another set of questions concerns how topics are opened, developed,
changed and closed, and what linguistic resources are available for this.
The question 'What is a topic?' may strike many language teachers as otiose, but there are different ways of looking at topic. Topics could be
defined, on the formal level, as stretches of talk bounded by certain topic
and/or transactional markers, such as lexical ones (by the way, to change
the subject), or phonological ones (changes in pitch). Or we could take a
semantic framework, and try to express the content of different segments of
talk according to single-word or phrasal titles (e-g. 'holidays', 'buying a
house'), or else we could usk interactive criteria and say that something is
only a topic if more than one speaker makes an utterance relevant to it. We
could equally take an overall pragmatic approach and say that topics are
strings of utterances perceived as relevant to one another by participants in
talk. Or we could take a purely surface cohesional view, and say that topics
end where chains of lexical cohesion peter out (see section 3.3). All of these
approaches are valid in some measure; the one that tends to dominate
language teaching materials is the expression of topics as titles for the
'subject matter' of speech events. Here we hope to supplement that view
with a consideration of structural and interactive features of topics.
Topics can be the reason for talk or they can arise because people are
already talking. The former situation is exemplified in this extract, where A
has put on some new clothes for a special occasion and B and C are casting
an eye over his appearance, at A's request:
(5.13) (A comes in holding his jacket.)
B: That looks very nice, put it on and let's have a look at you.
A: I don't like the two buttons, I didn't know it had two buttons, I
thought it had three.
C: Well, it's the style of the coat, Ken.
B: Nick's has only got two buttons.
c: [ It's a low cut.
A: [ All right?
B:
c: Very [ Eieautiful.
B: Lovely, lovely.
A: Does it look nice?
B: Yeah, it goes very well with those trousers, there's a colour in the
jacket that picks up the colour in the trousers.
C: Them others he wears are striped, but they clashed, too much
alike.
A: L Two different stripes
C: lBut not matching each other if you
understand what I mean.
B: Yeah, yeah.. .
A: [ i~h;ll! right then, eh?
B: It's very nice, Dad, it looks very, very good.
A: I don't like the, I like three buttons, you see . . .
C: Ken, it's the style of the coat!
(Author's data 1989) 5.5 Transactions and topics
The talk has been occasioned by a set of actions and events taking place at
that time, but there are different ways of describing the 'topic' here. We
could take a pragmatic view, based on relevance criteria, and simply say
'whether A's coat is all right' is the topic. We could give it a semantic-field
'headline' such as 'trying on clothes', since all the utterances are relevant to
that and the main lexical items belong to that semantic field, or we could
make it more functional and call it 'convincing A that his clothes are nice',
since the functions of most of the discourse acts are concerned with that
end, and all three parties are collaborating on that subject. On the other
hand, for A himself, it is clear that 'three-button versus two-button jackets'
is an important 'topic', but if we consider it interactively, it gets short shrift
from the others, especially from C, who interrupts and cuts dead A's
attempt to revive the topic (there are further paralinguistic cues in C's final
turn, such as exaggerated pitch range and extra intensity and diphthong
length on style). We therefore conclude that 'three or two buttons' is a
sub-topic, or merely a speaker's topic that never quite makes it to become a
full conuersational topic (see Brown and Yule 1983: 87-94).
Extract (5.13) was occasioned by particular events, and talk was an
essential ingredient in achieving a specific goal, but in most casual conver-
sations, we find topics being raised for a variety of reasons, often just to
keep the talk going, simply because people are together and 'chatting'. It is
on such occasions that we see most clearly how topics start, grow, shift,
merge into one another and come to a close. In extract (5.14), a group of
four people are having a New Year drink together, and A has been
recounting the story of how his luggage got sent to the wrong airport on a
recent skiing holiday:
(5.14) A: . . . no bother to me, 'cos I happened to have in my side pack a
spare vest and socks you see.
B: [ Ah, I see, that was in your hand baggage
A: [ was And it? I'd got my toilet equipment with me.
B: Yeah, it's a good idea to take a few basic things in the hand
baggage, isn't it, I think in case of that.
A: [Yeah, well it's usually the things you require
first, you see, sometimes you don't have time to unpack all your
luggage when you arrive.
B: Still, pretty horrendous, though.
A: Oh, it was very unsettling, . . . still, so many other unsettling
factors I didn't know whether I was on my head or my heels that
day.
B: Mm . . .
C: D'you do a lot of skiing then?
A: I go each year, yes . . . it's my only chance of getting my weight
down, you see, and it isn't the exercise that does it, it's the fact
that the meals are so far apart. S Spoken language
C: (laughs)
D: Yeah?
A: Yes, I'm not joking. . . if we eat say, right, breakfast eight, lunch
one, evening meal six, perhaps a snack after that then you're
eating four times a day, but
C: I You'd
never get no skiing in would mu?
A: Well, in these places, you breakfast at eight, well, half past eight,
. . . (etc.)
(Author's data 1989)
Within a very short space of time the conversation has moved from losing
luggage at an airport to skiing, to weight-watching and exercise, to meal-
times at hotels. It remains coherent within the overall framework of 'A's
recent holiday', but how does it drift from sub-topic to sub-topic? Struc-
tural features are apparent. The speakers do give lexical and phonological
cues that they feel a particular sub-topic has been sufficiently explored: as
the first sub-topic is exhausted, B and A both use still (a typical boundary
marker, with falling intonation and a short pause), and both give a
summary or general evaluation of what has gone before, another typical
closing move. C introduces the new sub-topic, skiing, with the character-
istic jump to high key we have noted elsewhere. Skiing has been an element
in A's lost luggage anecdote (it was a skiing holiday), and using an element
from a just completed story as the topic of subsequent conversation has
been observed to be a very common speaker behaviour (Jefferson 1978). A's
reply includes a drop in pitch on yes, then a pause, and then a shift to
talking about keeping his weight down, meals and exercise, which are
associatively linked sub-topics (see Stech 1982), triggered off by one
another, an extremely common feature in this kind of casual conversation.
We might also note that topic shifts occur in the vicinity of short silences,
indicated by ' . . . ' in the transcript; this has also been observed as a regular
feature of casual conversation (see Maynard 1980).
Look at this extract from further on in the drinks conversation (5.14). The
talk has drifted to Christmas in the village where the speakers live, which
was the period that A was away on his skiing holiday. Analyse the
sub-topic shifts in terms of the linguistic features at their boundaries. High
and low key are not marked, but where might you expect them to occur?
B: No . . . it was generally very quiet and the weather was . . . what
did it do, it just it was quite sunny actually.
D: [ It was quite sunny a couple of the days. 5.5 Transactions and topics
B: Christmas Day was quite sunny we went for a walk, had a
splendid walk.
D: I In the morning, it rained in the
afternoon.
A: British Christmases rarely change, it's a time for gorging yourself
and going for walks.
B: Yeah, that's right, and you never get any snow.
C: Yes, it was very sunny Christmas Day.
B: Mm.
A: Mm.
B: Mm . . . when are you heading off again, Bob?
A: A week today . . . I shall be off to Munich this time . . . so I'm
just wondering where the luggage is going to go, and looking at
my case now, I find that it's burst open, and whether it's fair wear
and tear I don't know, because last time I saw it it was in perfect
nick.
B: You reckon it might have suffered from its journey.
A: Oh, they get slung about you know, I never used to get a decent
case, I buy a cheap one.
B: Mm.
A: Because they just get scratched.
B: Mm.
(Author's data 1989)
What implications, if any, does all this have for language teaching? Lan-
guage teachers have always concentrated on the vocabulary of topics, and
this makes good sense, for without a wide vocabulary it is impossible to talk
on a topic, and, as we have noted, semantic and associative coherence
between lexical items is an extremely common means of developing and
changing topics. But the interactive features of topics can also be taught and
practised, such as the use of markers, both opening ones (by the way, inci-
dentally, I meant to ask you, talking of X) and closing ones (still, anyway, so
there we are), or summarising a stretch of talk and reacting to it with an
evaluation (sounds atuful, it was all rather unsettling, quite strange, really).
Listening activities can raise learners' awareness of how speakers mark topic
shifts by means of activities focusing on points in the talk where speakers
make summaries and evaluations, and on markers and pitch changes.
The design of classroom activities to replicate casual conversational
settings is notoriously difficult; it is much easier to set up the sort of
functional dialogue exemplified in (5.13) ('convincing X histher clothes
look nice'). However, activities where a short anecdote is recounted and
partners or groups have to develop a conversation based on some element
within the anecdote, or the game-type where a preordained list of topics has S Spoken language
to be talked about in a set time with coherent links between each subject,
can go some way towards creating the conditions wherein topic manage-
ment arises naturally. As with other activities, the output can be evaluated
against what we know about natural data, and design changes effected
accordingly. Perhaps most important of all is to try to recreate the reci-
procity that is typical of conversation; A tells B something about hislher
life, feelings or experiences and, typically, B returns with things about
hislher own life and experiences. The same tends to happen with stories:
one story by one speaker is likely to trigger off a series of stories by others
present. We saw how interview-type activities carry with them the danger
that talk will be one-sided, with a questioner and a respondent trapped in
their roles, and a lack of reciprocity. The activity design, or the teacher as
monitor of the activity, should therefore build in some mechanism for
ensuring reciprocity, such as activities where participants have to find out
what they have in common or where they differ in terms of a specified list of
features relating to opinions, biography, pastimes, etc. (e.g. see some of the
speaking activities in Collie and Slater 1991).
5.6 Interactional and tranrurctlonal talk
A distinction is often made by discourse analysts between transactional and
interactional talk. Transactional talk is for getting business done in the
world, i.e. in order to produce some change in the situation that pertains. It
could be to tell somebody something they need to know, to effect the
purchase of something, to get someone to do something, or many other
world-changing things. Interactional talk, on the other hand, has as its
primary functions the lubrication of the social wheels, establishing roles
and relationships with another person prior to transactional talk, confirm-
ing and consolidating relationships, expressing solidarity, and so on. The
group of speakers in extract (5.13) were engaged mainly in transactional
talk (finalising someone's dress arrangements), while in (5.14) the speakers
were engaged in primarily interactional talk, just chamng about someone's
holiday and enjoying a social drink. The words mainly and primarily are
used to underline the fact that talk is rarely all one thing or the other, and,
in a sense, it is almost impossible to conceive of talk between two people
that does not, in some small way, 'change the world', even if that only
means getting to know someone a little better. Also, it is important to note
that natural data show that even in the most strictly 'transactional' of
settings, people often engage in interactional talk, exchanging chat about
the weather and many unpredictable things, as in these exchanges: the first
is in a British chemist's shop; the second is a university porter registering
some newly arrived students at their campus accommodation: 5.7 Stories, anecdotes, jokes
(5.15) Customer: Can you give me a strong painkiller for an abscess, or else
a suicide note.
Assistant: (laughing) Oh dear! Well, we've got . . . (etc.)
(Author's field notes)
(5.16) Porter: So, Foti . . . and Spampinato . . . (writes their names) are you
Italians? I'm studying Italian Art, only pan time, of course, I
love it, I love Italian Art.
Student: (looking bewildered) Excuse me?
(Author's field notes)
The data in Aston (1988) of service encounters in Italian bookshops show a
constant tendency for customers and assistants to engage in some sort of
friendly chat either before or afier the mainly transactional phase. This can,
at times, be fairly unnerving for the foreign language learner who has
carefully worked out what to say before engaging in a transactional
encounter in L2, only to find it all thrown into confusion by unexpected
friendly chat from the other party.
In illustrating with real data that the borders between transactional and
interactional language are often blurred, discourse analysts are not saying
anything blindingly new or contrary to most sensible intuition, but the
point is certainlyworth remembering in the design of speaking activities for
the language classroom, and there is no doubt that some teaching materials
are imbalanced between the two types of talk.
Belton (1988) criticises what he sees as a tendency in language teaching of
the notional-functional school to overemphasise transactional language at
the expense of interactional, and makes a plea for a better balance between
the two. This implies that some sort of unpredictability be built in to
activities such as service encounter role plays, or, perhaps most effectively,
in listening activities. The general point also reflects the experience of many
Languages for Specific Purposes (LSP) teachers who are told by course
participants that it is the unpredictable social talk that throws them rather
than talk in their specialist contexts.
5.7 Stories, anecdotes, jokes
Almost any piece of conversational data between friends will ~ield occa-
sions where people engage in the telling of stories, anecdotes, jokes and
other kinds of narratives. The ability to tell a good story or joke is a highly
regarded talent, probably in all cultures. As with other types of language
events, discourse analysts have sought to describe what all narratives have
in common. Brief mention was made in section 2.4 of a model of narrative
developed by Labov (1972). The Labov model, rather, like the problem-
solution model we have referred to at various points in this book, specifies elements that are commonly found in normal narratives. They are:
E
Abstract v
a
Orientation 1
U
Complicating event a
t
Resolution I
0
Coda n
Abstracts are short statements of what the story is going to be about ('I
must tell you about an embarrassing moment yesterday'). Orientation sets
out the time, place and characters for the reader/listener ('you know that
secretary in our office, well, last week . . . '). Complicating events are the
main events that make the story happen ('the Xerox machine caught fire').
Resolutions are how the events sort themselves out ('and she got Z2,000
compensation'), while codas provide a bridge between the story world and
the moment of telling ('and ever since, I've never been able to look at a
mango without feeling sick'). Not all stories have all these ingredients;
abstracts and codas may be absent, but the other elements must be there for
it to be a real story. In addition, there is what is termed evaluation,
deliberately set vertically in our list to show it as an element that weaves in
and out of the story constantly. Evaluation means making the story worth
listening tolreading, either by directly telling one's audience ('you'll love
this one'; 'it's not the world's funniest joke, but I like it7) or by a number of
devices internal to the story such as exaggeration ('he came in with this
huge, gi-norrnous watermelon'), recreating noises, etc. ('and she went
scr-r-r-r-u-u-nch, splat, right into the tree') or constantly evaluating indi-
vidual events ('which amazed me really'). As always, the terms used in the
model are simply labels, and may sometimes less than adequately describe
the component referred to; Swan, for example, suggests that validatiott
might be a better label than eualuation (personal communication).
All this would suggest that expecting a learner to tell a decent story in L2
is a tall order, and indeed it is; not everyone is an accomplished storyteller
in their first language. Jokes are particularly difficult to tell in an L2.
However, some things can be observed and taught and practised in relation
to storytelling, and listening activities based on storytelling are a good way
of raising awareness of narrative skills. Real data, as always, supplies a rich
selection of realisations for the narrative elements, and markers of the
elements will not necessarily translate from one language to another. Some
common openers to spoken stories and jokes in English include: 5.7 Stories, anecdotes, jokes
I'll always remember the time . . .
Did I ever tell you about . . .
Then there was the time we . . .
I must tell you about. . .
Have you heard the one about. . .
You'll never guess what happened yesterday .
I heard a good one the other day . . .
I had a funny experience last week . . .
There are also regularly occurring markers for complicating events:
And then, suddenlylout of the blue . . .
Next thing we knew . . .
And as if that wasn't enough . . .
Then guess what happened. . .
Common codas include 'makes you wonder', 'so, there we are', 'and that
was it, really', 'looking back it was all very . . . ', 'and that was as true as
I'm standing here9. Such useful language is never given in dictionaries, and
is often absent from coursebooks too, though it is every bit as important as
the written-text counterparts such as 'once upon a time', which tend to get
more of an airing in teaching.
Two other things are notable when we look at real data. One is that
stories are often told c~ll~borativel~, by more than one person; the details
are jointly recalled and an agreed version arrived at through alternating
contributions (see Edwards and Middleton 1986). The other is that listeners
are active, constantly reacting (usually with back-channel responses) to the
narrative and asking questions that fill out unspecified detail. The follow-
ing data sample illustrates this. A and B are telling a series of stories about
driving incidents to C.
(5.17) A: I remember that journey, we went from Yarmouth, when we had
the car
C: 1 Yeah.
A: and we went into Norwich, and there's a
ring road round Norwich, and this road to Fareham was off this
ring road . . . well, we turned right
if you remember
B: 1 Oh I can't remember
A: land we went right
round this ring road, I bet we did twenty miles, and when we
came back it was the next one on the left to where we'd started.
C: God (laughs).
A: I remember that, I thought we were never going to find it.
C: You went right round the city.
A: Yes.
C: Good God, that must have been frustrating. 5 Spoken language
A: It was expensive as well (laughs) . . .
B: But the time I turned into the police station.
A: Oh . . . dear.
C: Yeah, what was that?
B: Dorset Constabulary Headquarters.
A: [ He says you, you
B: We were going to Lyme Regis.
A: He gave us the map.
B: On this tree there was this wooden thing, it had on 'Lyme Regis'
and there were these big massive gates, big iron gates
A: No, it was Iris and I, we said you turn left here, and he turned
immediate left, instead of going on to the next road, and it said
'Five miles an hour' and we were creeping along, and there were
bobbies looking at us, two of them in a car.
C: (laughs) Well, well, great, yeah.
(Author's data 1989)
A and B work out a joint version of events, and C makes positive contri-
butions, evaluating the stories, and, in the first of the two, summarising
what happened. In conversational data, this sort of joint enterprise with
active listeners is very common; stories are not just. monologues told to a
hushed audience. Another point we have already mentioned briefly is
illustrated here: one story sparks off another along similar lines, and in such
informal situations, each participant who has a story to tell may demand
the floor and tell it.
What difficulties do learners have when telling or listening to stories? For
lower-level learners, the usual problems of moment-by-moment lexico-
grammatical encoding at clause level tend to interfere with the discourse-
level skills, so that we get the bare facts of stories with little evaluation,
either from teller or listener. In extract (5.18), a student (A) has had a
. real-life accident while on a language-school day-trip. The accident was
'seen as an authentic opportunity to get the student to tell his story to others;
a second student (B) was instructed to find out the full srory from A:
(5.18) B: Hello, Manolo, how are you?
A: Em, I'm better, I'm better from my . . . felt in the Lakes.
B: Why. . . why . . . what did you happen?
A: Em, we went to the Lakes for a walk with our teacher of English
here and crm, we erm, dirnb . . . climbed . . . they say climbed,
erm, and, erm, when we came back from the mountain I feel . . .
felt and broke . . . a little broke of my elbow . . . then I went to
the hospital in the night but it take two hours and I must suspect
. . . expect. . . em, for the next day . . . in the morning, and
(points to his sling) I have this slip, I think it's a slip, but I don't
remember, as well.
B: The arm, do you . . . is still hurt . . . still, still hurt?
A: No, no . . . not so much . . . no it's hurting. . . it's not hurting . . . 5.7 Stories, anecdotes, jokes
is, I think it is good because I have my arm very quiet, and it's
good, I don't. . . I sleep well, erm, so well, so, so, and . . . I can
sleep and be
B: Can you have a shower?
A: Yes, yes, every day . . . (etc.)
(ICC data 1988-90)
There is no back-channel from the listener, and she does not react in any
way to the events. She does ask for more details (as she has been instructed
to), and so is active in a small way, but we sense that, if she were speaking
her L1, we might get the equivalent of 'Oh dear, I'm sorry to hear that', or
'That was awful', and so on, as well as constant back-channel responses. At
this level, there is probably little that can be done to help the teller, other
than to point out ways in which he could have made his story more of a
story (perhaps asking him to reproduce, in his own time, a written version
of the events which could then be embellished for later oral retelling).
Teachers who want to train learners in narrative skills would do well to
think of listeners as well as tellers, and activity design should take a positive
role for the listener into account. Activities involving joint telling are also
possible, although published language-teaching materials tend to prefer the
single teller. But data is obtainable for those with access to English-
language broadcasting: radio and television chat shows frequently have
guests recounting narratives with an active listener in the form of the
chat-show host, and one recent Australian and British TV success, the
programme Blind Date, has a segment each week where a previous week's
guests jointly recount a honeymoon-style trip they have taken in the
intervening period at the programme's expense. Soap operas regularly have
people recounting narratives with reaction and evaluation from other
characters. All these make more authentic contexts than the single narrator
telling a tale to a wall of silence.
Reader activity 6 d
Consider this data extract from the point of view of how the listener (B)
behaves. In what way is this particular listener an active one? A has been
telling stories about his neighbour:
A: And on Sunday, we were going for a walk and they were in
B: [ Mm.
the distance walking and they stopped and waited for us to
catch up and introduced us to their daughter.
8: L Oh lovely. A: And he's quite a comic the fellow you know.
B: [ Is he [ ye*.
A: And their daughter's in Australia, and they've mver been to
Australia to see her
B: 1 Oh, havm't they?
A: 1 cog ihey've got a
dog-
B: Oh, I see.
A: They're tied with tht dog, she's a very highly strung dog,
and they don't feel they can leave her in kennels.
3: leave her with anybody, no.
(Author's data 1989)
In this last reader activity, we note that B predicts what A is going to say.
Active listeners, like active readers (see Chapter 6, page 169), are constantly
predicting what the message will be, based on the evidence of their world
knowledge and the type of discourse they are engaged in. Listening activi-
ties can test and encourage the development of predictive skills, just as good
reading activities often do.
5.8 Other -611 dlscoume types
We have briefly mentioned how discourse analysts have studied people
describing their apartments (section 2.2). Apartment descriptions tend to
follow a set patten where the speaker takes the listener on,a 'guided tour'
of the rooms starting from the entrance. This real-world, behavioural
pattern is reflected in regularly occurring language functions (such as we
saw with this and that references in section 2.2) which can be systematically
taught and practised. The same goes for common discourse types such as
giving route directions, a favourite activity in the language classroom.
Telling someone how to get to one's house, or where to locate things on a
map are often the basis of information-gap exercises, and these can be very
successful in generating talk. However, as we have argued throughout this
book, it is also worth taking a look at what discourse analysts have
observed about the organisation of talk in a setting such as direction giving.
Psathas and Kozloff (1976) found a typical three-phase structure in their
data, consisting of situation, infomation and inrtruction and an ending
phase. In the situation phase, the person giving directions must establish (1)
the stamng point, (2) the goal and (3) the means of transport of the person
dired, if these are not already known or obvious. The information phase
is where the main route directions are given and the ending phase funens 5.9 Speech and grammar
to confirm that the route has been understood and closes the interaction. It
is then possible to specify typical linguistic realisations of these phases,
some of which will be formulaic, such as and there you are, got that?, you
can't miss it for the ending phase, and others which will be the familiar
boundary markers we have seen dividing transactions elsewhere ('okay, so
you're at the Market Place . . . right . . . well . . . if you can see the clock
tower, . . . '). Once again, the most satisfactory classroom activities will
attempt to emulate these discourse conditions and will encourage an active
role for the listener, who will typically require more detail, will check that
helshe has understood the directions correctly and will give appropriate
back-channel responses. Activities where these features are clearly part of
the instructions to participants will probably generate discourse more
closely resembling the elements and sequences that discourse~analysts have
observed in their data.
5.9 Speech and grammar
Brief mention must be made here of the role of grammatical accuracy in
unprepared speech. Language teachers tend to work with a set of norms
based on the written language, where clause and sentence structure are
clearly defined. Spoken data, however, present a different picture, and
frequently contain forms that would be considered ungrammatical in
writing. Such 'mistakes' usually go quite unnoticed in natural talk, and it is
only when we look at transcripts that we realise how common they are.
One example is the wh- clause structure with embedded reported clauses, as
in these two attested native-speaker utterances:
(5.19) A: And there's a thermostat at the back which I don't know how it
works.
(5.20) A: There's another secretary too who I don't know what she's
responsible for.
Native speakers of English are also fond of saying things such as 'the thing
is is that I don't know her number', 'the problem is is . . . ', and we have
seen in our data examples how often utterances are grammatically 'incom-
plete' by written standards, such as 'But that time I turned into the police
station' in extract (5.17). Speech abounds in verbless clauses, ellipses that
would be frowned upon in 'good' writing (e.g. omitted pronoun subjects),
lack of concord and omitted relative particles ('there's a few problems are
likely to crop up'), false starts, slips of the tongue and changes of direction
midstream in a grammatical structure ('if you like we could there's food in
the fridge why don't we could have something if you're hungry'). E. K.
Brown (1980) has further examples of such ungrammaticalities in speech.
Language teachers wishing to encourage natural talk may have to adjust 5 Spoken language
their standards when it comes to correcting learners. For example, the
native-speaker wb- clause structures exemplified in (5.19) and (5.20) are
usually quickly corrected when similar structures appear in the writing of
Arab learners of English, and omitted pronoun subjects of verbs are also
corrected. In fact, we do not know enough about the acceptable norms of
grammar in speech, since, up to now, our grammar books have been largely
formulated from introspective and written data. A good grammar of
Spoken English, based on natural data, might well contain a few surprises.
Analyse the grammar of these two learners acting out a speaking activity
from Collie and Slater (1991). As a teacher, which features do you think
need correcting, and which are the sorts of features we might let pass as
typical of the kinds of things found even in native-speaker conversational
data?
(The students are exchanging information about skills they once had
but have lost for one reason or another over the years.)
A: Any particular musicians than more than another.
B: And you play piano with the (mimes).
A: With the papers?
B: Or as sound?
A: No, I was not able play by sound, I was, in fact, I had a piano for
this but it was more too much technical, too much exercises that
was very very hard.
B: But guitar is more more easy.
A: Yes, it was more easy for a short time, then I left it.
B: Prove again with the piano?
A: Yes.
(Author's data 1989)
Spoken discourse types can be dysed for their typical patterns and the
linguistic realisations that accompany them (e.g. service encounters,
business negotiations, telephone calls, chat-show interviews, lectures,
trouble-sharing encounters, etc.), and the periodical literature of discourse
analysis abounds in detailed studies of a vast range of types. These studies
are most often not carried out with any overt pedagogical aim, but are very
useful for language teachers and material writers who want to create 5.1 0 Conclusion
systematic speaking skills programmes and whose goal is to design activi-
ties that will generate output as close as possible to naturally occurring talk.
Complete naturalness is probably impossible in the classroom, but the
feeling that one is engaging in an authentic activity is important to the
learner, as is the feeling that one is being taught authentic and naturally
occurring structures and vocabulary to use in simulations of real-life talk.
Discourse analysis can supply data where intuition cannot be expected to
encompass the rich detail and patterning of natural talk.
This chapter has looked at spoken discourse, from small units to longer
stretches, and has tried to relate studies of naturally occurring speech to the
goals and methods of language teachers in the classroom. It has brought
evidence from data to bear on some of the typical activities that language
learners are asked to engage in, and has compared data from both learners
and native speakers, using the latter to evaluate the former and to suggest
directions for the design of classroom activities. It remains now for us to
consider the world of written text, and what discourse analysis can teach us.
Further reading
On conversation in general, several works are worth consulting: Schenkein (1978),
Psathas (1979), Craig and Tracy (1983), Taylor and Cameron (1987) and McGre-
gor (1984).
On the elaboration of adjacency pairs, Gibbs and Mueller (1988) is interesting.
On the general question of indirectness and politeness, see Brown and Levinson
(1978) and Blum-Kulka (1987), and especially in the cross-linguistic context see
Odlin (1989: Ch. 4).
Edmondson et al. (1984) and Olesky (1989) contain interesting comparative data on
the expression of certain discourse functions (e-g. opening, requesting, giving
compliments) in German and English and Polish and English.
Eisenstein and Bodman (1986) look at how native and non-native speakers express
thanks.
Back-channel in Japanese conversation is dealt with by Locastro (1987).
Formulaic utterances in general in conversation are illustrated in Coulmas (1979
and 1981).
Melrose (1989) is worth consulting on interpreting functions in exchanges and on
situations and roles.
Jokes, stories and anecdotes have been studied in the ethnomethodological tradi-
tion, including Sacks (1974), Jefferson (1978), Polanyi (1982 and 1985).
For everyday discussion and argument, see Schiffrin (198Sb), and for the analysis of
more unordered conversation, see Parker (1984).
Crystal (1981) is good on grammatical and lexical features of natural conversation.
For further work on topic in conversation, see Maynard (1980), Stech (1982), Crow
(1983) and Gardner (1987).
How teachers establish topics in the classroom is discussed in Heyman (1986).
Topic markers and discourse marking in general are dealt with in depth in Schiffrin
(1987). Donaldson (1979) discusses the transactidna~interactid divide, as well as
reciprocity.
The seminal pap on turn-taking is Sacks et al. (1974).
Also from that time Starkey (1973) and Duncan and Niedctebe (1974) are of
interest, but recent rethinking and rriticism-af turn-taking models has come from
Houtkoop and Mazeland (1985) and Power and Dal Maneilo (1986).
How turns operate where visual cues are absent is dealt with in Butterworth, Hine
and Brady (1977) and Beanie (1981).
On telephone calls, see Schegloff (1986).
Toolan (1988) provides a good introduction to narrative, while Hinds (1984)
considers Japanese oral narrative.
More on the language of route directions can be found in Piathas (1986).
Bygate (1987) gives good evaluations of published materials for spoken English,
while Gardner (1984) discusses the general implications of conversation analysis
for language teaching.
Interesting recent works on listening are Richards (1983), C. Brown (1986), and
Anderson and Lynch (1988). 6 Written language
'I haven't opened it yet,' said the
White Rabbit; 'but it seems to be
a letter, written by the prisoner
to somebody.'
'It must have been that,' said
the King, 'unless it was written
to nobody, which isn't usual, you
know.'
Lewis Carroll: Alice's Adventures
in Wonderland
6.1 Introduction
Much of what needs to be said concerning written language has already
been said in previous chapters. Chapter 1 touched on the notions of
coherence, clause relations and textual patterns in written language;
Chapter 2 explored cohesion, theme and rheme and tense and aspect,
taking many of its examples from written texts; and Chapter 3 examined
lexical cohesion and text-organising vocabulary, again exemplifying with a
number of written text extracts. Even Chapter 5, although it was concerned
with spoken language, made points that are relevant to written discourse:
the active listener and the active reader are engaged in very similar pro-
cesses. Also transferable from the rest of this book are two general prin-
ciples: that not everything described by discourse analysts is relevant to or
may have any immediate applications in language teaching, and, on the
other hand, that the more we can learn from discourse analysts as to how
different texts are organised and how the process of creating written text is
realised at various levels, from small units to large, the more likely we are to
be able to create authentic materials and activities for the classroom.
6.2 Text types
Unlike our knowledge of speech, our knowledge of written text has been
147 6 Written language
greatly assisted by the existence of huge computerised corpora of written
material such as the twenty-million word Birmingham Collection of English
Text (the basis of the Collins COBUILD dictionary project), and corpus-
building over the years has led to an interest in detailed taxonomies of
textual types. However, we still lack hard evidence of just how written text
impinges on the day-to-day life of most people. We can obtain statistics for
library-borrowing, or for newspaper sales, and get some idea of what most
people read of these 'mainstream' text types, but a whole hidden world
exists too, of memos, forms, notices, telexes, tickets, letters, hoardings,
labels, junk mail, etc., and it is very difficult to guess just what people's daily
reading and writing is. Once again, the language teacher is left with a typo-
logy based on intuition, or perhaps more often than not, with an imposed
syllabus of mainstream texts, as the raw material of teaching.
Look at this list of everyday written texts and decide how often you read
and write such texts, on an OftenlSometimeslRarelyINever scale. Tick the
appropriate box and, if possible, compare your results with another person.
Red Write
Instruction leaflet
Letter tolfrom friend
Public notice
Product label
Newspaper obituary
Poem
News report
Academic article
Small ads
Postcard tolfrom friend
Business letter
It is certain that most people will read more of the text types listed in the
reader activity than actually write them. Nonetheless, apart from specialist
learners, who tend to have precise reading and writing needs, it is still
difficult to gauge precisely what types of written text are most useful in
language teaching and to find the right balance between reading and 6.3 Speech and writing
writing in most general language courses. For writing purposes, letters of
various kinds will always be a useful type to exploit, but, in addition,
syllabuses and examinations often demand essays or compositions,
whether narrative, descriptive or argumentative, and it is here that teachers
find the greatest challenges in devising interesting and authentic activities.
We shall therefore consider how learners can be assisted in such writing
skills by the insights discourse analysis has provided into text types and the
relationships between texts and their contexts.
6.3 Speech and writing
Both spoken and written discourses are dependent on their immediate
contexts to a greater or lesser degree. The idea that writing is in some way
'freestanding', whereas speech is more closely tied to its context, has come
under attack as an oversimplification by discourse analysts (e.g. Tannen
1982). The transcript of a piece of natural conversation may well contain
references impossible to decode without particular knowledge or without
visual information. Similarly, spoken 'language in action', where language
is used to accompany actions being performed by the speakers, is also
typically heavily context-dependent and may show a high frequency of
occurrence of deictic words such as this one, over there, near you and bring
that here, which can only be decoded in relation to where the speakers are
at the time of speaking. On the other hand, a broadcast lecture on radio
may be quite 'freestanding' in that everything is explicit, self-contained and
highly structured, which may also be true of an oral anecdote, joke or other
kind of narrative.
This same variation in context-dependability is found in written texts. A
sign saying 'NO BICYCLES' is highly context-dependent: it may mean 'it is
forbidden to ridelpark a bicycle here' or perhaps 'all available bicycles
already hiredlsold', depending on where the notice is located. And while it
is true that written texts such as essays, reports, instructions and letters do
tend to be more freestanding and to contain fewer deictic expressions,
written texts may still encode a high degree of shared knowledge between
reader and writer and be just as opaque as conversational transcripts, as in
this extract from a personal letter.
(6.1) Dear Simon,
Thanks for your letter and the papers. I too was sorry we didn't get
the chance to continue our conversation on the train. My journey
wasn't so bad, and I got back about nine.
(Author's data 1989)
We have here references to another text shared by the writer and reader
('your letter', 'I too was sorry'), an exophoric reference to 'the train' (see section 2.2), and the deictic back, all of which depend on mutual know-
ledge to be fully understood. As eavesdroppers on the text, we can only
make intelligent guesses (on mutual knowledge in diwourse, see Gibbs
1987). But even transparent, highly explicit texts are written by someone for
someone and for something, and their form is determined by these factors.
Implicimess and explicimess will depend on what is being communicated
to whom, rather than merely on whether the discourse is written or spoken.
Classroom activities which bring out the differences between context-
dependent and relatively freestanding discourses an be devised based on a
combination of speaking tasks and writing tasks.
In an example of the task-based approach (see also extracts (5.10-12)), a
group of German advanced learners of English were instructed to decide on
the dispositions of furniture and equipment in a room for a school open
day. The first phase of the task was a discussion in the room itself of how
best to arrange the furniture; in the second phase, the group had to write a
note to the school caretaker explaining their requirements. Thus it was
predicted that the spoken phase would be highly context-dependent and the
written text detached from its immediate context in time and space. The
transcript of the discussion in the first phase contained a number of deictic
words and phrases such as 'this corner', 'a little bit to the side', 'there,
where the door is', etc, The discussion also contained the turn-taking,
exchanges and transaction management that we examined in detail in
Chapter 5, as well as reflections on the real-time and planning constraints
of speech in progress ('wait a minute', 'now, what's next?'). In short, all
sorts of elements occurred that would-be out of place in the next (written)
phase of the task.
The written phase (the letter to the caretaker) then involved the learners
in a number of different discoursal problems typical of (though not unique
to) writing: an absent addressee, detachment from the relevant physical
environment as a shared context for sender and receiver and the resultant
need to be explicit, and the choice of how to 'stage' the text (friendly note?
bare list of requirements?). In fact, the two different groups who did the
activity produced quite different written output, and the feedback session
afterwards with the Ntor led to a very interesting discussion on the cultural
differences in sending a letter to a school caretaker in Britain and in Germany.
This is the text one group produced:
(6.2) Group A:
Dear John,
Would you be kind enough to get room no. 4 ready for open day and
as games room.
You will need:
2 square and one rectangular table
1 coffee table
14 chairs 6.3 Speech and writing
5 easy chairs
2 screens
1 dart board
1 monopoly, 1 chess board, 1 set of bridge cards and 1 roulette
Some puzzle and word games and magazines (see librarian)
1. Set up the dart board on the left, on the wall next to door.
2. Arrange 5 easy chairs and 1 coffee table in the left comer near the
window.
3. Separate the darts comer and the quiet comer with a screen.
4. Please put a screen on the edge of left window in order to shield off
the quiet corner.
5. Have a cup of tea to relax. Thanks a lot for your help!
(ICC data 1988-90)
Reader activity 2 F@
Here is the written text produced by the other group doing the activity. In
what ways does it differ from the first group's, and how do the two texts
reflect perceptions as to how one writes to a school caretaker?
Group B:
Instructions
1. Put a dart board between the window and the loudspeaker.
2. Parallel to the windows, install a screen to separate the room at
distance of the loudspeaker.
3. Put two square tables with four chairs each in front of the screen.
4. Put two coffee tables with two chairs each on the right hand side of
the door, between the door and the curtain.
5. In the middle of the room, place another square table with four
chairs.
(ICC data 1988-90)
Similar problems arise with writing activities of this kind to those which
arise with spoken activities: the learners may misunderstand the task
instructions and assume that the caretaker is expecting a note about the
open day, and therefore not include anything but a list of requirements (as
group B's effort seems to do), or else, as mentioned, there may be unseen
differences of cultural perception affecting modes of address. What was
clear was that the participants did not write in a vacuum and had formed
quite clear pictures of whom they should write to and what sort of
relationship they had with this person. Thus the activity not only brings out
linguistic differences connected with such things as deixis and lexical 6 Written language
specificity, but also specific problems that are ever present in writing: who
the reader is, what the writer's relationship with the reader is, what the
purpose of the text is, and what textual form is appropriate, given that
answers to these questions are built into the activity or can reasonably be
expected to be shared knowledge. This set of questions encodes in another
form of words the field, tenor and mode constraints of Halliday's model of
language in its social context (see Halliday 1978).
Letters are a good example of a discourse type where the receiver is
usually a specified individual or group, unlike the classroom or homework
essay, which is often written for an unknown audience, but with the overlay
of knowing that the teacherlexarniner will be the pseudo-reader. Letter-
writing activities can therefore raise all the important questions of the
relationship between discourse structure and contextual factors, as we have
seen. There also appear to be cross-cultural problems concerning letters,
especially business letters. Jenkins and Hinds (1987) found significant
differences in orientation between American, French and Japanese business
letters; the American letters in their data were generally more informal and
reader-oriented, with the writer strongly projecting the reader's needs and
assumed purposes. The French data were writer-oriented, with the writer
intent upon protecting hidher position and remaining more formal. The
Japanese texts oriented towards the mid-ground, the relationship between
writer and reader.
So writing is not fundamentally different from speech. While it is true
that the writer usually has time to compose and think, and is not going to
be interrupted by the reader bidding for a turn or saying 'SorQ, can't stop
now, must rush!', all the other important factors constraining what is said-
and how it is said are present in writing as much as in speech.
6.4 Units in written discourse
In all our discussions on speaking, the sentence was dismissed as being of
dubious value as a unit of discourse (especially in Chapter 4). The sentence
is more obvious as a grammatical unit in writing, although certainly not in
all kinds of writing: signs and notices, small ads, notes, forms, tickets,
cheques, all contain frequent examples of 'non-sentences' (lists of single
words, verbless clauses, etc.). The internal construction of the sentence has
always been the province of grammar, but in Chapter 2, we argued that a
number of things in clause and sentence grammar have implications for the
discourse as a whole, in particular, word order, cohesion, and tense and
aspect. For the purposes of our discussion of these discoursal features, the
sentence will have no special status other than as a grammatical and
orthographic unit which can be exploited where desired for pedagogical
illustration, just as the clause can. 6.4 Units in written discourse
It is possible to devise interactive activities which involve decisions on
word order, cohesion and sequences of tenses in discourse. The following
text-jigsaw has been used successfully with groups at widely different
levels to focus on bottom-up choices of these kinds. A text is read in
class, and any other desired activities carried out on it. When its content
is familiar, it is then presented in jigsaw format, divided up into its
individual sentences (or indeed groups of sentences or paragraphs; the
decision is purely a practical one). What this means is that one group or
individual gets the text with sentences (or paragraphs) 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, etc.
and has to recreate sentences 2,4, 6, 8, etc. in their own words from their
familiarity with the content. The other group or individual gets sentences
2, 4, 6, 8, etc. and has to recreate the odd-numbered ones. When all the
new sentences are ready, the sentences originally provided are discarded,
the two sets of created sentences are put together to see if they make a
coherent and cohesive text, and the pair or group together make any
changes needed until they are satisfied with the finished product. The
activity produces interesting results, as with this group of advanced
learners of English:
(6.3) The original text that was read and then jigsawed was about traffic
problems in cities (see extract (3.10)). The resultant text when the
two sets of created sentences were dovetailed was:
1. At present, 15% of Englands surface area is covered by some kind of
man made material, most of which comes in the shape of long stripes
of concrete bond.
2. And yet the government suggests building even more roads in order
to cope with the problem of too many vehicles in our country; this
can hardly be the answer.
3. While I don't in the least doubt the sincerity of these studies, my own
observations lead me to challenge the very principles with which they
have been carried out.
4. Day by day I watch the traffic jam on my way to work moving even
more slowly than my walking speed.
5. If I was to take this as indicative of a problem with the existing road
network, the following could be said.
6. There are four possible ways in which this dilemma might be dealt
with: one is to build more roads and thereby destroy our
environment, two is to tax cars and petrol heavily, three is to give
out licences for those who really need a car, four is to take into
consideration the use of motorbikes instead of cars.
7. Conceivably, the first three solutions have been discussed in
pvernment circles, but they remain within the simplistic carlroad
mile computation which don't do the problem any justice. They leave
out of sight the proper use of each vehicle. This takes me to the
fourth solution, which is in fact the ideal one.
(Author's data 1989) 6 Written language
This activity led to a discussion among the participants. Everyone agreed
that 'these studies' (sentence 3) rendered the text incoherent, and alternative
superordinates such as 'these policies', 'these views', 'these ideas' were
offered to make the text lexically cohesive (see section 3.2). Some in the
group were not happy with conceivably (sentence 7) and with its front-
placing, since (sentence 3) had mentioned road expansion as an idea
already put into practice. Alternatives such as 'The first three solutions may
well have been discussed', and 'The first three solutions have probably . . .'
were proposed. There were also macro-level discussions on features such as
the use of first person and what some felt was a clash of register between the
'sarcasm' of sentence 1 and the neutral tone of the rest of the text, but, in
the main, the group members were concerned with intersentential links
affecting cohesion and word order.
The success of the jigsaw activity was undoubtedly due to the fact that
the participants were defending their own text, created by themselves,
rather than taking a model text to pieces. The decision-making processes
were brought to the surface and individuals had to explain and defend their
choices, a process more motivating for learners than having to explain the
choices of an invisible, unknown author. There has been a tendency in
teaching materials to see knowledge of cohesion as something to be tested
in relation to textual products, but process approaches can also tackle this
area, by getting learners to evaluate their own texts as they are creating
them (see Johns 1986 for further discussion of peer evaluations).
Reader activity 3 d
Look at these pieces of learner data purely from the point of view of
intersentential connexions, that is, ignoring errors which could be said to
be principally sentence-internal. Look for problems of cohesion in terms of
such things as reference and conjunction and decide what effect such
features have on overall comprehensibility and rezdability.
1. (From an essay on town planning by an Italian town planner doing
an English course.)
Unfortunately, not always the growth of cities go on with an
artention research. It's the cause of inany problems that people have
in living in big cities, and also the destruction of the environment.
2. (From an essay on differences between Italian and British and
American teenagers, by an Italian learner.)
The British, Italian and American teenagers are like, but I think that
for the Italian teenagers using to play football more than British and
American teenagers.
So as for the American teenagers using to play rugby more than
Italian and British teenagers. For use, British teenagers Like to look 6.5 Clause relations
videos and listen music. In fact Britain is the country of the best
musicians of the world.
3. (From a summary of a text on training astronauts; Italian learner.)
The passage speaks about the astronaut's life. There are a lot of
problems when one lives in space, and the most important is absence
of gravity. It is necessary a long period of training to learn the basic
operations which allow the life and the work within the Shuttle.
They are trained in simple jobs like as cooking or daily routines and
in different operations as emergency procedures, satellite repairs and
SO on.
(Author's data 1989)
6.5 Clause relations
In section 1.9 we looked at the clause-relational approach to written text,
where it was stressed that the units of written discourse, rather than always
being co-extensive with sentences (though they sometimes are), were best
seen as functional segments (of anything from phrasal to paragraph length)
which could be related to one another by a finite set of cognitive relations,
such as cause-consequence, instrument-achievement, temporal sequence,
and matching relations such as contrasting and equivalence. Individual
segments of texts combined to form the logical structure of the whole and
to form certain characteristic patterns (such as problem-solution). The
sequencing of segments and how the relations between them are signalled
were viewed as factors in textual coherence (see Winter 1977; Hoey 1983).
In fact, the. problems which could be subsumed under the notion of
cohesion by conjunction in the last reader activity can also be viewed from
a clause-relational standpoint, in that inappropriate use of coniunctions
creates difficulties for the reader in relating segments of the text to one
another coherently. But we also noted in Chapters 2 and 3 that the
borderline between how conjunctions signal clause relations and how
certain lexical items do the same is somewhat blurred, and that conjunc-
tions such as and, so and because have their lexical equivalents in nouns,
verbs and adjectives such as additional, cause (as noun or verb), con-
sequent(ce), instrumental, reason, and so on. Therefore, as well as activities
that focus on conjunction and other local cohesive choices, activities aimed
at the lexicon of clause-relational signals may also be useful. Segment-chain
activities can be used for this purpose. An opening segment (which could be
a sentence or more) and a closing segment of a text are given to a group of
four or five students, and each individual is given the start of a segment
containing a different lexical clause signal. Individuals complete their own segment with as much text as they feel necessary, and then compare their
segment with everyone else's in order to assemble the segments into a
coherent text. This involves not only being satisfied with the individual
segments but deciding on an appropriate sequence for the chain of clause
relations that will lead logically to the given closing segment, and making
any changes felt necessary to improve coherence. In the following example,
groups of advanced German learners were given an opening sentence:
'Young people nowadays are exposed to a lot of violence on television, in
films, and so on', and the conclusion: 'This would suggest that some sort of
control or censorship may be necessary to solve the problem.' Individual
segment-cards had starters such as:
The result is . . .
The reason is . . .
The fact is that . . .
This contrasts with . . .
Typical of the texts produced by the groups was:
(6.4) Young people nowadays are exposed to a lot of violence on
television, in films, and so on. The result is that floods of blood
suffocate the TV news and films all over Europe. This contrasts with
countries where there is a strict control of TV and films. The reason
is an uprooted, deculturalized young generation which has ceased to
stick to the strigent values of their elders. The fact is that the
situation has got worse and worse recently. This would suggest that
some sort of control or censorship is necessary.
(Author's data 1989)
This particular group were unhappy with the relationship between the
sentence beginning 'The reason is . . .' and the rest of the text, as they felt
that since nothing had been said about young people's behauiour, it was
pointless to give a reason for it, and a 'deculturalized generation' could
hardly be cited as the reason for violence on television. The opinion was
also voiced that the final text was a little unnatural with so many front-
placed phrases such as 'the reason is . . .', once again raising new decisions
on theme and rheme which had to be taken in relation to the text as a
whole. The group finally decided to move the words 'the result is that' from
sentence 2 to sentence 4 to replace 'the reason is', and then to reverse the
order of sentences 3 and 4.
The aim of the activity was to reproduce some of the processes of choice
that are involved in using the lexicon of clause-relational signals, once
again as an alternative to only examining textual products containing such
items. This does not mean that cohesive and clause-relational features
cannot also be usefully .tackled on readymade texts; alongside the process
approach to writing, there is a healthy tradition of problem-solving 6.6 Getting to grips with larger patterns
methods that include exercises in inserting missing linking and signal words
in texts. These force the learner to make vocabulary choices that take more
than the individual sentence into account (e.g. Coe, Rycroft and Ernest
1983).
Reader activity 4 rrft
Look at these pieces bf learner data, in which there seem to be problems of
how individual sentences relate to one another. Suggest ways in which,
either by using conjunctions or lelcicai signals, the relationships can be
made more clear.
1. My field of study concerns architecture. It's not a field of study, I
think, it's a huge world going from science to knowledge of
materials, to the history and composition of cultures, to knowledge
of psycho!ogical needs and wishes of men and women in the world.
2. The problems of modern cities are derived from the Industrial*,
Revolution, and also if the cities bf my country were not interessed
from this event it's true that there are relations between every cities.
(Author's data 1989)
6.6 Getting to grips with larger patterns
We have considered larger patterns of discourse organisation at various
points in this book. The problemsolution pattern was illustrated in
Chapter 1, and again in Chapter 3 in relation to vocabulary signals.
Chapter 3 also looked at examples of claim-counterclaim (or hypothetical-
real) patterns, and Chapters 2 and 5 referred to narrative patterns.
These are not the only patterns found in texts; another common one is
the 'question-answer' pattern, which has some features in common with
the problem-solution pattern, but whose primary motivation is the pursuit
of a satisfactory answer to a question explicitly posed (usually) at the
beginning of the text. For example: B+ 6 Writbra language
(6.3 London -
too expensive?
It's no surprise that London b
themostexpenshrecitytostay
In, In Britain: we've aU heard the
homr stories. But just haw
expensive is it? According to
international hote~l consuttantS
Hoawath & HorwPth's tecent re-
port.tfPereannaw~~
hotels charging over 690 a night
for a single room.
But even if your hotel choke b
a little more modest, you11 Jttll
be forking out nearly twice as
much for a night's stay In Lon-
don as elsewhere in Britain.
Average toom rates last year
worked out at around €1 9 h the
provinces compared to W5 in
London. a
(from Moneycare, October 1985, p. 4)
In this text, a situation is established which contains an unanswered
question. Answers are then offered, ahg with evidence or authoritative
support for them. As with 'possible responses' in the problemsolution
pattern, if the answer(s) offered do not answer the original question, then
other answers are sought.
Other typical textual patterns include various permutations of the
generalspecific pattern, where macro-structures such as the following are
found:
General stqtement General stqtement
4 4
Specific stafement 1 Specific statement
I
.L .L
Specific statement 2 Even more specific
3.
Specific statement 3
1
Even more specific
etc. . . .
4 etc. . . .
5.
I I
4 4
General statement C;leneral statement
Examples of these patterns can be found in text8 such as estate agents' sales
literature in Britain, where a general description of the property for sale is
followed by detailed descriptions of individual rooms/features, and then,
finally a return to a general statement about the whole property again (for
further discussion of different patterns, see Hoey 1983). 6.6 Getting to grips with larger patterns
One point to note about patterns is that they are of no fixed size in terms
of number of sentences or paragraphs contained in them. Another point is
that any given text may contain more than one of the common patterns,
either following one another or embedded within one another. Thus a
problem-solution pattern may contain generalspecific patterns within
individual segments, or a claim-counterclaim pattern when proposed solu-
tions are being evaluated, both of which features are present in this text:
THOUSANDS of aaes
of our counhyside are
buried for ever under
ribbons of concrete and
tarmac every year.
Every few months a
Government study or
statement from an auth-
oritative body daims that
our motorway network
is inadequate and must
be extended.
Week by week the
amount of car traffic on
our roads grows, 13 per
cent in the last year
alone.
Each day as I walk to
work, I see the ludicrous
spectacle of hundreds of
commuters sitting alone
in four or five-seater
cars and barely moving
as fast as I can walk.
Our haffic aisis now
presents us with the
classic conservation
dilemma - too many
people making too much
demand on inadequate
resources.
There are four pas-
sible solutions: One,
provide more remmes,
m this case W mare
roads and car parks;
two, restrict the avail-
ability of motorised
transport by daab
raising the price of
vehicles and fuel: thfee,
license onty those pVlth a
good reason for needing
rnotorised transport and
prohibit un-
necessary use; four
reduce the, average size
of motor vehicles,
especially those used for
commuting purposes.
The ideal vehicle for
transporting one person
to and from his or her
place of. work has been in
use for as long as the
motor car. There is.
room on our existing
roads for present and
future needs but not if
they are to be clogged up
with half-empty cars
when the motor cycle
would serve the same
purpose more than ade-
4uate'y..
Inentabty, objections
winber;lisedtothepm
motion of the motor
cyde as the saviour of
our environment.
It is dangerous: It can
be but three-fifths of all
serious motor cycling
accidents are caused by
cars. So, by transferring
some drivers from cars
to motor cycles, the risk
can immediately be
reduced.
Department of Trans-
port statistics have
shown that a car ever is
nine times more kely to
take someone else with
him in an accident .t+n a
motor cyclist, so mhg a
motor cyde is actually
making a contribution to
road safety.
Our climate is too cold
and wet: Have we Brit-
ish really become so soft
that we couldn't face a
ride on a chilly morning?
A good waterproof jac-
ket costs a lot less than a
new bypass.
But I must drive a
BMW or Jaguar or I11
have no cndbiky with
my clients, my boss, my
shareholders: That is
just a matter of fashion
which most of the busi-
ness community follow
as slavishly as sheep.
If the right person
were to set the lead and
exchange his tin box
traffic jammer for an
environmentally respon-
sible set of two wheels
the rest of the business
sheep would be fatling
over themselves to fol-
low suit and some of our
traffic problems would
be solved at a stroke.
All that is needed is
the wiUingness to sacri-
fice a littie bit of comfort,
take a little bit of a risk
and dare to be a little
different.
On the other hand,
what is a few thousand
acres of countryside
each year and a ten-mile
tailback?
(from Cambridge Weekly News, 22 September, p. 11)
Here we begin with a general statement and then, in terms of time, a series
of evermore specific ones, culminating in a general statement in paragraph
5 of the problem that is to form the central focus of the text. The next two
paragraphs then put forward possible solutions. The author's preferred
solution, the motorcycle, is then evaluated in the rest of the text in a series
of claims and counterclaims with justifications for the counterarguments.
Only the last sentence breaks the completeness of the patterns by raising a
counterargument that the author chooses to leave open, but which brings
us right back to the statement of the problem in the very first sentence of his
text. So the text is highly patterned, and its author has embedded patterns
within the overall structure of the text. 6 Written language
What patterns can you observe in the following extracts from the opening
lines of two magazine articles (you have already analysed the second one
for modals in section 3.8)? What text pattern would you predict is going to
be the dominant one in each of the texts as a whole?
1. Men can mend stereos, drive cars and budget their pay packets
efficiently; women are helpless when faced with anything mechanical
and are extravagant spenders. Chaps, of course, are cool and
rational, while women are swayed by their emotions and are slaves to
the lunar cycle. Men are polygamous, women monogamous.
RidicuIous stereotypes? Absolutely. So why do quite a lot of men and
rather a large number of women still half believe them?
(Options, October 1985: 201)
2- Can citrus
peel harm?
Did ym know that lemon and
OrangeJpeeliSooatedwithwax
and chedcalp?
Theskinofalmostalldtrus
hit sold in the UK is heated
with fungicides to stop it going
ddy. And tbe glossy
dacefs theresult of bathing
the fruit in wax.
Could the iungicides used
ondtruspaalbeharmful-
perticularly h them's soans
evkl~from~torytests
that, in sufficient quantities,
theymay~-cgnoers~
rImwbnsinsnimnln?
Tbe (henmmt domm't feel
thareisanynwdbwosry
becausetheledsdfm@cide
permitted am vgt law. Ths
levelsarebasedanthe
Ma~18 d UK and
international advisqbadiss
forthe~m0untttmtcenbe
cansumsd daily without any
tsigdi~~~lt e&cL
(from Which?, January 1984, p. 4) 6.7 Patterns and the learner
Finding patterns in texts is a matter of interpretation by the reader, making
use of clues and signals provided by the author; it is not a question of
finding one single right answer, and it will often be possible to analyse a
given text in more than one way. But certain patterns do tend to occur
frequently in particular settings: the problemsolution pattern is frequent
in advertising texts (one way to sell a product is to convince people they
have a problem they may not be aware of) and in texts reporting technolo-
gical advances (which are often seen as solving problems or removing
obstacles). Claim-counterclaim texts are frequent in political journalism,
as well as in the letters-to-the-editor pages of newspapers and magazines
(but see Ghadessy 1983, for a problemsolution orientation to such letters).
General-specific patterns can be found in encyclopaedias and other refer-
ence texts.
6.7 Patterns and the learner
If we look at learners' attempts to create textual patterns of the kinds we
have described above, we find that there are sometimes problems. Just as
we noted that learners whose overall competence was poor often got
trapped in the difficulties of local encoding at the expense of larger
discourse management in spoken discourse, so too can we observe such
difficulties affecting learners' written work. If we look again at a text from
which we took an extract earlier, this time reproducing the whole text, we
can see an attempt at a general-specific pattern which seems to just end in
midstream, lacking the typical return to a general statement after the
specific examples that is expected in a well-formed text. On the other hand,
one could equally say that the text sets out to create a number of descriptive
contrasts, but gets 'lost' in a digression about Britain's ascendancy in the
world of music:
(6.7) (general statement) The British, Italian and American teenagers are
like, (specific: modification of general statement) but I think that for
the Italian teenagers using to play football more than British and
American teenagers.
(specific: parallel modification) So as for the American teenagers
using to play rugby more than Italian and British teenagers. (new
specific) For use, British teenagers like to look videos and listen
music. (digression?) In fact Britain is the country of the best
musicians of the world. (end of text)
(Author's data 1989)
It is extremely doubtful whether the writer (a highly educated, mature
person) would write such an unstructured text in his own native language.
It is quite clear that the stresses of creating the text (and the frequent crossings-out in the manuscript support this) at the level of local choice of
grammar and vocabulary has proved too much, and all sense of overall
planning has been abandoned.
At lower levels, clause- and sentence-chaining activities can take the
strain off macro-level planning but still produce a learner-generated text for
scrutiny in class. As with the clause-relational chaining activity, each
learner creates a textual segment relevant n, a given topic, but with the
segment-starters containing signal words of the (in this case) problem-
solution structure. For an all-Italian group of architects and environmental
planners on an intensive English course, the topic sentence was: 'Nowa-
days, more and more people want to use the countryside for leisure
purposes.' The starters were:
But the problem is . . .
Planners have an important role to play: . . .
One possible solution to the problem is . . .
These were designed to generate the problem, a response from planners and
a possible solution. Thus the next stage of the activity, marshalling the
individual segments into a coherent text, is guided by to-p-down constraints
of typical problem-solution sequences. The discussion on sequencing of
segments and necessary changes to the text was carried on in the learners'
L1 on this occasion. The author of extract (6.7) was a member of the group
whose final text is reproduced here:
(6.8) Nowadays, more and more people want to use the countryside for
leisure purposes. But the problem is that the urbanism take over and
dominates it. Planners have an important role to play: they have to
ensure the community the right distinction between spaces for
working time and for leisure purposes, and moreover to locate this
last activiaes in the best convenient situation for most of people. One
possible solution to the problem is that people have to know the
advantages to live far from traffic and noise, because a calm place
where everybody can have a relationship with itself, it is necessary
for our soul.
(Author's &a 1989)
The author of text (6.7) composed the sentence beginning 'but the problem
is . . .', which reflects his luico-grammatical weaknesses compared with
the others in the group, but in terms of the final text, which was used for
remedial vocabulary and grammar work, his contribution was as useful as
the rest. 6.7 Patterns and the learner
Reader activity 6 d
An advanced group of German learners of English produced the following
sentences based on the topic card (seen by all members of the group) and
segment-starters given (in italics). What, in your opinion, would be the best
order for the sentences to make a satisfactory text? How many possible
acceptable orders are there? What changes would you like to make to the
wording of individual sentences?
Topic: 1. Football hooliganism is a common phenomenon in a lot of
European countries.
2. One possible solution to reduce the worst effects might be, first
of all, to stop violent fans from entering the stadium.
3. . The reason for the fans aggressive behaviour is their social
background.
4. The problem is how to interfere without cancelling all football
matches and without frustrating the real non-violent fans.
5. The situation can be described as follows: thousands of people
are injured every weekend and a lot of damage is done to the
stadiums.
(Author's data 1989)
Another interesting aspect of learners' success or otherwise in macro-level
communication in their writing is how they use the kind of discourse-
signalling vocabulary discussed in sections 3.5-6. What is sometimes observ-
able in learner data is that, although the overall patterning is present, misuse
of signalling words can disorient the reader somewhat. This extract is from
a summary of a text on the problems of training astronauts to live in space:
(6-9) As soon as a man of our century realizes we're going to reach the
complete control of communicating and travelling in space, he has to
consider the huge number of difficulties that overcome with the
developing of space travels.
Science and technique may develop to hinder a lot of problems,
like for example loss of oxygen, intense cold, severe radiation bursts
and so on.
(Author's data 1989)
The first infelicity in discourse-signalling vocabulary occurs with 'difficul-
ties that overcome', but here it is not entirely clear whether the problem is
lexical; it may be (interference from a cognate form in Italian which hides a
false friend) or it could be syntactic, insomuch as many languages use a
'that' construction where English would have an infinitive ('difficulties to 6 Written language
overcome'), but the vocabulary-choice tends to be dominated by the quite
plausible syntax here, and most readers presented with the text suffer
disorientation. The second error, 'to hinder a lot of problems' is more
obviously lexical, and underlines the point made in Chapter 3 about the
importance of grouping words together along discourse-functional lines,
and suggests a role for the teaching of collocating pairs in the case of such
words. A similar collocational problem seems to have occurred in the
football hooliganism text in Reader activity 6: one does not normally
interfere to solve a problem (interference usually suggests making things
worse); in English, one intewenes to solve problems. Such local errors
disorient the reader in the sense that helshe is continuously making pre-
dictions about the text as a whole and its likely sequencing and patterning.
6.8 Culture and rhetoric
Our data examples so far show one thing: European learners of English in
general are perfectly capable of transferring discourse patterns such as
problem-solution patterns from their L1 to an L2 (as witnessed in the
chaining activities). Where problems arise, they seem to be relatable to lack
of linguistic competence at the lexico-grammatical level and the natural
difficulties of coping with global planning when one is under great stress
encoding at the sentence level. But what of the writing of learners from
cultures quite different from Western ones? Are there established norms of
writing in other literate cultures that are different and might therefore be
expected to interfere with the macro-level decision-making of the learner
writing in English?
The area of cross-cultural rhetoric studies has spawned a vast literature
of its own, and a somewhat confusing one. On the one hand, linguists claim
to have evidence of textual patterns in other languages not found in English
writing; on the other hand, there is disagreement over whether these
patterns are transferred and cause interference when the learner writes in
English. A paper by Kaplan (1966), in which he posited a typology for
textual progression with different types associated with different cultures,
was very influential, but has since been undermined by other studies.
Kaplan suggested that English text was characteristically linear and hier-
archical, while Semitic (Hebrew and Arabic) text was characterised by
parallelism; Oriental text had 'indirection' as a characteristic, and Russian
and Romance texts had a preference for digressions. Some evidence seems
to support differences in textual structure, such as the acceptability in
Japanese texts of what seems to the English eye to be the abrupt insertion of
irrelevant matter (see Hinds 1983), or certain features of word order and use
of conjunctions that are redolent of Indian languages being carried over
into writing in Indian English (Kachru 1987). Similarly, differences in 6.8 Culture and rhetoric
preference of particular theme-rheme sequences (see section 2.3) have been
claimed. Even within the same language family differences have been
suggested: German academic texts seem to allow a greater amount of
parenthetical information and freedom to digress than English writing of
the same kind, and there is some evidence that English writers tend to use
topic sentences at the beginning of paragraphs where German writers might
prefer a bridging sentence between paragraphs.
But by no means everyone agrees that such tendencies are significant, nor
that they cause problems for language learners. Typical of the confusion is
the case of Arabic and Chinese: Kaplan had spoken of parallelism for
Arabic and indirection for Oriental texts, but Bar-Lev (1986) finds more of
a tendency to 'fluidity' in Arabic text (i.e. non-hierarchical progression with
a preference for connexion with and, but, and so), and claims that paral-
lelism is a property of Chinese and Vietnamese. Aziz (1988), however, finds
that Arabic text has a preference for the theme-repetition pattern (the first
of the three theme and rheme patterns discussed in section 2.3), making it
different from English and indeed suggesting a sort of parallelism. Then
again, as regards Chinese, Mohan and Lo (1985) found no marked differ-
ences between Chinese texts and English ones. This sort of conflicting
evidence does not provide the answers to the sorts of questions language
teachers are concerned with. Nor is the picture any clearer with regard to
whether there is cross-cultural interference for learners. Language teachers
are therefore left with intuition, experience and their own data as the most
reliable resources for deciding whether interference is a problem.
What we find frequently in examining Middle Eastern, Oriental and
other learner data in English are the same problems noted in European
data: that bad discourse organisation often accompanies poor lexico-
grammatical competence. Just as we observed an Italian learner failing to
produce a satisfactory and complete general-specific pattern in comparing
British and Italian teenagers (extract 6.7), so we find similar difficulties with
a Japanese low-level learner doing the same task:
(6.10) British teenagers watching television. Boys and girls many people.
My country teenagers very more people watching television, because
my country television more select. My country TV have channel1
no.l,3,4,6,8,10,12.
British teenagers playing football very famous. But my country
teenagers playing baseball very famous.
(Author's data 1989)
Reader activity 7 d
Consider this essay on differences between English and Japanese teenagers
by a higher-level Japanese learner of English. Does it display better 6 Written language
discourse patterning than extract (6.10), and if so, in what way(s)?
I'd like to compare the habits of teenagers with those of teenagers in
my country.
In Britain both boys and girls spent time for watching TV,
listening to records and going to disco. That is the same teenagers in
my country. Of course there are some leisure for girls and for boys.
British girls spent most time for going to the cinema and time with
boyfriend. That is a little bit different from teenagers in my country,
my sister who is 15 years old, she spent most time for shopping and
studying. I think Japan and Britain are different from education
system that's why Japanese teenagers spent most time for
studying.
British boys spent most time for football because, in this country,
football is the most popular sports that's why they spent most time
for football. In Japan baseball is the most popular sports so Japanese
boys (teenagers) spent most time for baseball.
If the culture is similar Japan and Britain it would be a same result
but in fact Japan and Britain are completely different from the
culture. For example, food, religion, popular sports and so on. So the
result is a bit different.
(Author's data 1989)
The arguments we have been making about the link between lexico-
grammatical competence and discourse competence do not mean that
particular features in the realisation of discourse patterning cannot be
improved or directly taught; the main point is that macro-patterns them-
selves do not seem to be lacking once reasonable general competence has
been achieved, and that, where the macro-patterns are absent, there seem to
be basic clause- and sentence-level problems that demand higher priority in
teaching. Nonetheless, we have argued that while lower-order skills are
being taught, the higher-order features can be practised through pair and
group activities such as chaining and text-jigsaw activities, where the
macro-level decisions can be hscussed in the learners' L1, or if in L2, then
at least divorced from the immediate stresses of encoding the individual
clauses and sentences.
The sorts of discourse features that do lend themselves to direct interven-
tion are likely to be discourse-signalling vocabulary, appropriate use of
conjunctions and other linking words, and perhaps a closer look at refer-
ence and ellipsis/substitution. There does seem to be some evidence that
learners do not handle anaphoric reference at the text level as efficiently as
they might, but again it is not always clear whether this is because some
languages tolerate more repetition of the noun head rather than pronomi-
nalisation, or that they use ellipsis for subsequent occurrences of the same 6.8 Culture and rhetoric
entity after first mention (as seems to operate in Japanese), or indeed
whether local encoding stresses are once more to blame rather than cross-
linguistic interference. If we examine two of the sentences from the Japan-
ese learner's text in Reader activity 7, we see an unnatural amount of
noun-head repetition:
(6.11) British boys spent most time for football because, in this country,
football is the most popular sports that's why they spent most time
for football. In Japan baseball is the most popular sports so Japanese
boys (teenagers) spent most time for baseball.
Something like this might sound more natural:
(6.12) British boys spend most of their time playing football, because in this
country it is the most popular sport, and that is why they spend most
of their time playing it.
We might even wish to look at the possibilities for substitution and reduce
the last part of the text to 'and that is why this is so'. Such changes to the
text do not hide the more obvious lexico-grammatical errors, but they
certainly improve the overall feeling of naturalness once the lexico-
grammatical errors have also been dealt with. But it is not always easy to
separate discourse-level weaknesses from the local lexico-grammatical
ones, especially when the latter are thick on the ground in a piece of learner
writing.
Reader activity8 d
In what way(s) could this'paragraph from a Korean learner's essay be
improved in terms of discourse features such as conjunction, anaphoric
reference, ellipsis/substitution? You may find it helpful to correct the more
obvious mistakes in grammar and vocabulary first, and then to reread the
text.
Korea has developed radically in economy over the past 25 years. All
industries have developed and especially mechanical industries have
advanced, for example, electric, steel and car industries. As a result
development of industries, Korea has become rich country and
almost houses have had televisions, videos and cars.
(Author's data 1989)
Paying attention to the grammar-and-discourse features described in
Chapter 2 is a partial means of attending to the writer's responsibility
towards the reader, in terms of assisting orientation to the writer's argument 6. Written language
and giving signals to the reader as to how the segments of the text relate tp
one another. Process approaches to the teaching of writing tend to include
such features anyway, and some materials for the teaching of writing do
also take into account the macro-planning of text with regard to patterns
such as problemsolution and others we have looked at (e.g. Hamp-Lyons
and Heasley 1987).
6.9 Dlscounre and the reader
We cannot leave this chapter, and indeed, the whole discussion of discourse
analysis and language teaching, without considering the influence of dis-
course analysis on the teaching of reading. What we shall conclude about
discourse and reading in fact follows consistently from what we have said
in this chapter and in earlier ones: we cannot explain discourse patterning
at the macro-level without paying due attention to the role of gammar and
lexis; by the same token, we cannot foster good reading without consider-
ing global and local reading skills simultaneously.
In recent years, questions of reading pedagogy have centred on whether
bottom-up (i.e. decoding of the text step-by-step from small textual
elements such as words and phrases) or top-down (using macro-level clues
to decode the text) strategies are more important. The debate seems to have
settled, quite sensibly, on a compromise between local and global decoding,
and there is'general agreement that efficient readers use topdown and
bottom-up processing simultaneously (e.g. Eskey 1988). This fits with our
general view of discourse as being manifested in macro-level patterns to
which a constellation of local lexico-grammatical choices contribute. The
best reading materials will encourage an engagement with larger textual
forms (for example through problem-solving exercises at the whole-text
level) but not neglect the role of individual words, phrases and grammatical
devices in guiding the reader around the text (e.g. Greenall and Swan 1986,
who achieve a balance of both ingredients).
But at both the micro- and macro-level, caution in how to introduce the
discourse dimension is called for. In the case of cohesion, for example, the
precise relationship between cohesion and coherence is unclear, and focus-
ing on cohesive devices for reading purposes may not guarantee any better
route towards a coherent interpretation of the text (see Steffensen 1988). At
the macro-level, much has been made in recent years of schema theory, that
is, the role of background knowledge in the reader's ability to make sense
of the text. The theory is that new knowledge can only be processed
coherently in relation to existing knowledge frameworks, and that the
efficient reader activates the necessary frameworks to assist in decoding the
text being read. The frameworks are not only knowledge about the world
(e.g. about natural phenomena, about typical sequences of real-life events 6.9 Discourse and the reader
and behaviour), but also about texts, how texts are typically structured and
organised, thus enabling us to talk about two kinds of schemata: content and
formal, respectively. The theory in itself seems plausible enough; the more
we are locked into the world of the text, the easier it is to absorb new infor-
mation. It is often held that the teacher's job is to help the reader to activate
the appropriate schemata. While we have already tested the value of pre-
dicting what textual pattern(s) a given text may be going to realise in Reader
activity 5 as an awareness activity for constructing patterns in writing, it is
not at all certain whether activating the right formal schema for reading can
help much if the right content schema is lacking. If the teacher's job then
becomes one of supplying the appropriate content schemata for a possibly
vast number of textual encounters, then we are out of the world of discourse
as such and firmly in the realm of the teaching of culture, and we are not
necessarily teaching the learner any skill that will be subsequently productive.
What we have already said, and what may be repeated now, is that
listening and reading have in common a positive and active role for the
receiver, and, if any insight is to be taken seriously on board from discourse
analysis, it is that good listeners and readers are constantly attending to the
segmentation of the discourse, whether by intonational features in speech,
or by orthographical features in writing, or by lexico-grammatical signals
in both. What is also clear is that good listeners and readers are always
predicting what is to come, both in terms of the next few words and in
terms of larger patterns such as problem-solution, narrative, and so on.
This act of prediction may be in the form of precise prediction of content or
a more diffuse prediction of a set of questions that the author is likely to
answer. For this reason, interpreting the author's signals at the level of
grammar and vocabulary as to what questions helshe is going to address is
as useful as predicting, for example, the content of the rest of a given
sentence or paragraph. This will rnean paying attention to structures such
as cleft sentences (see section 2.3), rhetorical questions, front-placing of
adverbials and other markers, and any other discourse-level features. The
reading text will be seen simultaneously as an artifact arising from a
context and a particular set of assumptions of world knowledge, and as an
unfolding message in which the writer has encoded a lot more than just
content, with signposts at various stages to guide the reader around.
Reader activity 9 d
Try and predict as much as you can about this news text from the first two
paragraphs which are given on the following page. What do you think
caused the problem of the telephone boxes being out of order? Will the text
give us. an answer? What other things is it likely to tell us? Will this be a
typical problem-solution text? 6 Written language
Public telephones ring
again in Newmarket
A NEW era is about to dawn for
Newmarket redents who for the
past few weeks bave been unable to
use the public telephone boxes in the
town.
Following complaints made over
several weeks British Telecom set
aside two days last week and several
engineers worked to put the faults
right.
(from Cambridge/Newmarket Town Crier, 1 August 1987, p. 32)
At this point, we have come to the conclusion not only of this chapter, but
of this book. There will no doubt be many other things that will need to be
said about discourse analysis and language teaching, for discourse analysis
is a fast-moving discipline, and our knowledge of how language occurs in
its natural contexts is growing all the time. There is, perhaps, little need to
reiterate the conclusions that have constantly reared their heads in the
course of this book, but this may be the right moment to restate one
fundamental principle: just because linguists can describe a phenomenon
convincingly does not mean that it has to become an element of the
language-teaching syllabus. The practical pressures of language teaching
mean that teachers will always, rightly, want to evaluate carefully any
descriptive insights before taking them wholly to heart as teaching points.
Discourse analysis is not a method for teaching languages, nor does it claim
to be that. But it is my own personal view that discourse analysis has
presented us with a fundamentally different way of looking at language
compared with sentencedominated models, one in which the traditional
elements of grammar, lexis and phonology still have a fundamental part to
play, but one which is bigger and more immediately relevant. What is more,
we now know more about what people actually do with language when
they speak and write, and no longer have to rely on what textbooks largely
based on intuition and sometimes, sadly, on Classical-based notions of
what 'good' usage is, claim to be the way people speak and write. We
know more about the delicate relationship between language forms and 6.1 0 Conclusion
particular contexts and users; such knowledge can only be immensely
valuable. Teachers will make up their own minds as to whether their
methods and techniques need rethinking in the light of what discourse
analysts say, but, as with all new trends in linguistic theory and description,
it is important that discourse analysis be subjected not only to the scrutiny
of applied linguists but also to the testing grounds of practical materials
and classroom activities. I hope that this book has done a little of both, and
will inspire a good deal more, especially of the latter.
Further reading
On differences between speech and writing, see Chafe (1982), Redeker (1984),
Tottie and Backlund (1986), Biber (1988) and Halliday (1989).
For more on implicitness/explicitness in speech and writing, see Mazzie (1987).
A very practically oriented approach to speech and writing is found in ~ieeborn et
a/. (1986).
Good general papers on recent views of writing are to be found in Couture (1986).
Discussion of different approaches to the teaching of writing can be found in Zamel
(1983 and 1987), Shih (1986) and Michaels (1987).
On the links between the density of cohesive ties and overall coherence, see Tierney
and Mosenthal (1983).
On the status of the paragraph, see Longacte (1979).
For a discourse-segment approach to paragraphs see Stark (1988) and Hofmann
(1989).
The arguments for and against cross-cultural differences and interference at the
discourse level may be pursued further in Clyne (1981 and 1987a and b), Connor
and McCagg (1983), Scarcella (1984), House (1985), Wierzbicka (1985) and
Stalker and Stalker (1989).
Rhetoric studies contrasting English with other, specific languages (including
Hindi, German, Korean, Mandarin and Japanese) may be found in Kaplan
(1983).
Problems associated with top-down and bottom-up strategies in reading are
explored in Carrell (1988).
Schema theory is discussed in Rumelhart (1975) and in Carrell and Eisterhold
(1983), or the updated version of this paper in Carrell et al. (1988), and in
Steffensen (1986); whether content or formal schemata affect reading com-
prehension more is taken up in Carrell (1987).
Hoey and Winter (1986) give further details on the questionanswer pattern.
On inference and the language learner, see Carton (1971).
The reciprocal relationship between writer and reader is explored in Nystrand
(1986) and in Smith (1986). Ouidance for Reader actdtm
I
Chapter 1
Activity 1, paw 9
Possible contexts:
la) A: You caused a bit of a stir.
B: Did I make a fool of myself?
A: No . . . it wasn't that, it's just that you shocked some people.
Ib) A: Oh dear! Did I make a fool of myself last night!
B: Why? What did you do?
A: I was invited to Tom's for dinner and before the meal I said I hated
curried prawns, and that's what they served for dinner! -
2a) A: There's a very good reason why I don't want to marry you.
B: You don't love me?
A: Okay . . . if you want a straight answer . . .- yes . . . I'm sorry.
2b) A: You don't love me, my children don't love me, nobody loves me!
B: Oh grow up! Don't be silly!
A: Well, it's true, you said so.
3a) A: What does one normally do with this outside skin?
B: You eat it . . . or some people just throw it away.
A: Mm . . . how interesting.
3b) A: I don't like this porridge.
B: You eat it, and shut up!
4a) A: Switch the light on.
B: (switches it on)
A: Thanks.
4b) A: I wonder how we could see if anything was written on the back
. . . through the paper.
B: Switch the light on?
C: Yes, we could do . . . where's the switch? Chapter 2
Actlvity 2, page 11
It would be strange to begin a discourse with 'I mean' in this way; 'I mean'
usually occurs as a marker of the speaker making a paraphrase or re-
statement of something helshe has already said. 'This new emblem'
assumes, in the use of this, that the listener knows which emblem is being
referred to. We shall look more closely at this sort of assumption made by
speakers in section 2.2. It is not clear to us who him is, either, though it is
quite clear to the speakers. Finally this extract ends with a question;
questions normally expect answers.
Activity 3, page 14
1. Other situations: doctor-patient interviews ('okay, let's have a look at
you'), church services ('let us pray'), meetings ('right, let's make a start
shall we'), checking in at a hotel ('okay, the boy will show you to your
room'), hiring a car ('right . . . if you just follow that gentleman, he'll
show you where the car is'). There are, of course, many more.
2. In English, probably the most frequent are: right, right then, okay, so,
well, well now, well then, good. Note that this is quite a restricted set.
Are the sets in other languages equally restricted?
3. My pupils have frequently pointed out to me that my own personal
favourite is '0-kee-doe!'
Actlvlty 4, page 17
1 Original order of the transcript:
1) A: Can I help you?
2) B: Um have you by any chance got anything on Bath?
3) A: I'm awfully sorry, we haven't . . . urn I don't know where you
can try for Bath actually.
4) B: You haven't no, no.
5) A: Urn I don't really know . . . you could try perhaps Pickfords in
Littlewoods, they might be able to help you.
6) B: No . . . in Littlewoods is it?
7) A: Yeah they're inside there now.
8) B: Okay thanks.
Moves (1) and (2) are easy to place: they contain formulaic openings for
transactions at shops and service counters ('can I help you?' 'have you by
any chance . . . '). The response (3) is equally formulaic in service encoun-
ters. (4) is slightly more problematic in that 'no, no' seems a little out of Gadace for Reader ahities
place, but in fact yes and no are frequently used just as 'fillers' in conver-
sations, without their full meaning of positive and negative polarity. (5)
repeaB part of (4) ('I don't know'), and (6) has repetition from (5)
('Littlewoods') and the backward referring pronounit. (7) also uses prono-
minal reference but this time a plural, they; it and they are often used
interchangeably by speakers to refer to companies. (8) is then a formulaic
closing of a service encounter. Thus the moves easiest to place are the
formulaic openings and closings, which all language users recognise
instantly.
Examples from other languages: in Hungarian, in a formal situation, a
fourth pan (equivalent to 'you're welcome'l'not at all') is essential:
A: Elnkht, megmondani az idot? (Excuse me, d'you
have the time?)
B: Igen . . . fkl ot. (Yes . . . half past
four.)
A: Koszonom. (Thanks.)
B: Kirem. (You're welcome.)
Informally, the same exchange might have only three parts:
A: Ne haragudj, megmondanid az idot?
B: FCl ot.
A: Kosz (onom}.
Here is a suggested analysis:
[ ] = kaming moves at the boundaries of transactions;
// = exchange boundary; / = move boundary
Suggested labels for acts are in italics.
marker elicitation
L: well], // that should blow a hole in five pounds, shouldn't
it? /
~.PY
S1: It's qulte cheap actually. I
comment
L: (laughs) 11
elicitation
S1: What's the urn lecturers' club like, senior, r senior, you
know. I
L: [Ah it's very
reply
cosy and sedate and, er, you know, nice little armchairs
and curtains . . . there are some interesting characters Chapter 1
who get there. //
elicitation
S2: Is that the one where they have the toilets marked with er
gentlemen, no, 'ladies and members'? / reply
I Oh, oh comment
1 Yeah it was
one of the other lecturers who pointed it out, he r thought it
was quite amusing. /
L:
comment
[Yeah, I
hadn't noticed that, ~eah, might well be, yeah. //
directive
B: Four sixty-seven please. /
aside
L: Is that all, God, I thought it would cost more than that / -
react elicit
(pays) . . . thank you . . . I/ I thought it would cost more
than that. /
with that one. 1
marker elicit
L: [Now] //how are we going to carry all these over? 1
The problems here arise from the fact that the lecturer and his pupils have
stepped out of role for an informal gathering. Therefore, for one thing, we
do not get typical teacher (evaluative) follow-up moves, though speakers
still make comments on other speakers' utterances. It is difficult to label the
lecturer's 'Oh, oh', since it does not seem to be answering the student's
question about the toilets in the lecturers' club. Nonetheless, the questioner
comments as though she has had an answer, or perhaps simply to expand
her question, and the lecturer just seems to add another comment.
Another difficulty is the lecturer's initial reaction to the price of the
drinks; he makes a remark that does not seem to be addressed to anyone in
particular, but is rather an 'aside'. After paying, he redirects the same
remark to the students, who then reply, three of them speaking at once. The
whole transaction, marked off by the two framing moves, functions as a
'socialising' phase while the drinks are being served; the group has to talk
about something, since such a long period of silence would not be tolerated.
Actlvlty 6, page 26
Sentence 2: More continental is a comparative tie which can only be
understood in relation to traditional in sentence 1. You in the second clause Guidance for Reader activities
refers to 'Which? readers' in the first. Electric shaver is repeated.
Sentence 3: Shaving is repeated from sentence 1.
Sentence 4: Women and Which? readers are repetitions from sentences 2
and 3. Remove body hair is repeated, and so is shaver.
Text 1: The second sentence is the reason for the first.
Text 2: A cause-consequence relation exists between the first two segments;
with subordination ('which made . . . ') as supporting evidence. The first
two segments taken together then become a single, larger segment which
stands in a matching relation of contrast with the rest of the extract. Note
the signal provided by the syntactic parallelism ('In Britain'l'on the Con-
tinent').
Text 1: Situation and problem are simultaneously identified in the headline.
Problem is expanded up to 'hazard to health'. Aesponse and positive
evaluation are interwoven in the rest of the text.
General signals:
problem: cause damage/ruin/repugnant/hazard
response: cure/develop
waluation: guarantee/ensure/for goodhried and tested
Text 2: Situation and problem are in sentence 1. Problem is expanded in
sentences 2 and 3. Response starts at 'The rudimentary cure', but this
response is only partial and not evaluated very positively. The true response
comes in the next paragraph ('But we believe . . . ') and the one after that.
The last paragraph then gives the positive evaluation.
General signals:
problem: badly/suffer/tiring
partial response: rudimentary cure
response: prevention/wa ys/reducing/explore/techniques
evaluation: rudimentary/result/smoothleffortless
The concocted text was a simplified affair, for the sake of illustration. Real
texts are usually more subtly interwoven, like these two. But even here, we
can see the elements of our pattern and its signals. Chapter 2
Chapter 2
Text 1: It refers to the situation described in the first sentence.
Text 2: It refers to the automatic dog barking unit, and could be substituted
by any one of three noun phrases: '(the) automatic dog barking unit',
'Guard Dog: or 'the Boston Bulldog'.
There is no 'right answer' to this one, but you may find that some examples
with that will be difficult to fit into the rules we have suggested. Ideally, a
massive, computer-based study is needed to clarify this sort of usage.
The Northem lreland Secretary: this is rather like the Queen, the Pope, etc.,
a reference to a unique figure in an assumed shared world. Similarly, the
jury, the judge and the Crown, make references to the English legal system
which the writer assumes the readers will be familiar with.
Activlty 4, page 42
Cataphoric item: it (sentence I), referring to the 61st annual feast of the San
Gennaro (sentence 3).
Ellipses:
Text 1: 'Trips (are) taken home'; 'social life (is) lived'.
Text 2: 'Yes, don't you (like watching children)?'; '(she) only looked at the
swings'; 'But you wouldn't (join in)!'; 'Why don't you (join in)?'; 'Why
don't I (join in)!'. t
The writer here obviously wishes to say that helshe will send further
information. Do so could only be used if send or a similar verb had
occurred in the previous clause. In fact the previous clause only contains
require, which makes do so inappropriate as a substitute. Guih for Reader activities
However (line 8): adversative
And (line 11): additive
And (line 18): additive
What's more (line 22): additive
So (line 27): causal
The extract begins with and, which signals the start of a new story in a
string of stories that are being told. Sjxaker A uses hut, in the same turn, to
return the discourse to the main narrative afcer the 'aside' ('I forget where
the village was'). The next and is just a linker between the narrative and the
reporting of direct speech, a typical function of and. So is causal (he turned
left because he was told to).
In A's next turn, she uses but to reiterate an earlier statement ('but they
all followed behind'). As with Firth's (1988) data, B uses see to introduce his
justification of events. A then uses kt again to return the discourse to the
next episode of the narrative. Finally, B reiterates his justification with and
you see.
These examples are typical of how speakers use such small, everyday
words to relate chunks of the discourse to one another.
Activity 9, pages 524
Examples of variations might be:
1. It's the children Bob takes out every Saturday. (cf. (2.39))
Every Saturday, Bob takes the children out. (cf. (2.38))
He takes the children out every Saturday, Bob. (cf. (2.41))
2. What the gardener wants to do this spring is cut down those bushes.
(cf. (2.40))
Thsse bushes, the gardener wants to cut them down this spring. (cf.
(2.37))
The gardener, he wants ta cut down those bushes this spring. (cf.
(2.42)
Text 1: bill in the rheme of sentence 1 is taken up as theme (cost) in sentence
2. Study in the rheme of (2) t>ecornes the theme of (3). The rheme of (3)
contains a mention of the collective author of the study, The Fellowship of
Engiwering, which is taken up in the theme of (4) as the author. The rheme
of (4) names the individual author, Philip Comer, and he becomes the Chapter 3
theme (he) or (5). We therefore have an overall tendency towards theme-
rheme option (a).
Text 2: The brain, the theme of sentence 1, is also the theme of sentences 2
and 3. We then have a fronted adjectival phrase ('as soft as a ripe avocado'),
but the brain is still subject, and therefore part of the theme. Sentence 5
continues with an adult brain as theme, as does sentence 6 (it). Sentence 7
has the brain as theme again, and then the pattern is somewhat broken by
the fronted verbal group ('Coming out of. . . '), as the theme shifts to the
brain stem, which takes over as theme in the last part of the extract. The
overall dominant pattern is, therefore, theme-rheme option (b).
Actlvity 11, page 60
We would have to explain to the student that, conventionally, the clause,
'In this essay I try to discuss . . . ' would occur in the preface or intro-
duction to the essay, and that present perfect ('I have tried') would be used
at the end of the essay to look back over the whole essay up to that point.
However, 'are suggested in the last section' is acceptable, since 'last' and the
'conclusion' can be seen as part of the same 'present' segment of the essay.
Chapter 3
Activlty 1, page 68
Dozing is reiterated as its superordinate slept in sentence 3, and then
resurfaces as dozing again in sentence 6. Sentence 7 then has a colloquial
near-synonym, kipping.
Guards is taken up as a synonym, sentries in sentence 3 (two occur-
rences); then as a general superordinate, soldiers in (4); then as a hyponym,
airmen in (6), which is repeated in (8).
There is therefore a considerable amount of lexical variation, even just
for these two words. Note, in addition, how campaigners (1) becomes
protesters (2), and resurfaces as campaigner in (4); walk in (2) is repre-
sented by a hyponym, tip-toed in (3); cruise launchers (2) becomes cruise
convoy (3), launchers in (6), the superordinate vehicles in (7), and convoy
in (8).
Actlvlty 2, pages 7&1
(T = turn)
TI: knitting . . . knitting; TS: knitting . . . knitting; all repetitions. Knitting
does not occur after TS.
TI: garment; T12: garments; TlS: clothes . . . summer dresses . . . shifts Guidance for Reader activities
(vim over fifteen turns, becoming more specific in TlS).
T3: lovely; T4: nice (a short-lived chain)
The most persistent topic is 'clothes'; the sub-topic of 'knitting' gives way
to its co-hyponym 'sewing' in T9, while 'cheapness' emerges as another
sub-topic (T13 and T17).
Financial here seems to mean 'strictly concerning profit and loss in money
terms'; economic seems to concern the broader planning of the economy,
and the role of the railway in the overall budget for transport, services, etc.,
i.e. it is an asset (last sentence).
Text 1: These questions refers back to all of sentences 2,3, and 4.
Text 2: The issues refers forward to 'accountability, relationships with
voluntary bodies, what their role is'.
On page 76 you will find 'this account (of the work of certain words. . . )',
which refers back to the whole of section 3.5 up to that point. In the next
paragraph 'this particular lexical area' can be read as a reference back to
'the work of certain words in organising discourse'. In the same paragraph,
answers can be seen to refer forward to the descriptions of the contributions
of Winter, Francis and Jordan.
The paragraph beginning 'Winter's work, and its extension . . . '
@age 78) contains the phrase 'some interesting questions', which refers
forward to the whole of the rest of that paragraph. The next paragraph
then begins with a backward reference (these questions) to the same
segment of text.
It is almost impossible to write academic/argumentativk text of this kind
without using such otganising words to refer back and 'forth to different
segments of the text.
Text 1: Words strongly associated with problem-solution patterns:
crisis coping with demands problem scarcity provides
developed answer solutions ways tackling issues solution
Claim-counterclaim pattern: adopt the view argue against
The predominant pattern is problem-solution. Chapter 4
Text 2: Words associated with claim-counterclaim:
believe strongly in think ( x 2) hold on the other hand places more
faith in considers dismisses believes
The predominant pattern is claim-counterclaim. Note the lexical variation
in verbs meaning 'to thinklbelieve something',.
Adlvity 7, page 86
Modal words: Can (headline); Could; there's some evidence. . . that, may,
can.
Chapter 4
Activlty 1, page 89
Possible realisations in rapid, informal, Standard Britlsh English are as
follows:
1. [tena levm mans agau]
2. [ar aest rm WD? went on]
3. [no? h3: n~3 mearr]
4. [kans~dr~m mar erd3 ar raem marlz]
Note particularly how final In/ sounds anticipate following /m/ sounds and
assimilate to them. Elisions here include dropping the 181 sounds of months
and the loss of /a/ between Id/ and /r/ in considering. Note also the glottal
stops (?); some speakers consider these to be bad, 'sloppy' speech, but they
are extremely common in the informal, conversational speech of people af
a wide range of social backgrounds.
Activity 2, page 91
Possible readings:
/ - 1- - I -
1 What's the matter with Mary?
-1 - - / --
/
2. 1 knew she would come in the end.
I- - 1 -- 1-
3. Put salt on those chips if you want to.
- I --I I --
4. He works on a farm, doesn't he?
-I/-/
There are other possible readings (e.g. I knew she would come). Guidance for Reader.actiuities
1. Which hat shall Jo wear to the drinks party?
F F RFF RRF FR
LLLSLLLSSLL LS
2. I met Bill Smith in town at lunchtime.
FF F FRF RF F
LLLU LSL SL S
3. A bottle of mineral water.
RFRR F R FR
S LSS L S LA
There are problems here. In (2), in many situations the word I would be a
reduced sound, almost a schwa, but not quite. Example 3 raises the
question of vowels that are elided in rapid speech but which may be present
in careful speech (the middle vowel of lminarall. Bolinger's theory does
seem to idealise pronunciation and not take context into account.
Actlvity 4, pago 96
2 1
1. disused
1 2
2. canplicated
2 1
3. -listion
12
4. dinosaur
Actlvity 5, paw 87
Possible renditions:
1. DOES the SOW contain MEAT?
2. Sorry to ring you so LATE,
3. WIU you accept a CHEQUE?
Activity 6, page 88
Some apparent misplacings of prominence can be traced to incorrect
notions of which syllables are normally stressed in compound words (e.g.
'car PARK' instead of 'CAR park'). Speakers of some languages have a
tendency to stress the ha1 word in an utterance, again producing odd
perceptions of prominence on occasions where the final word would not be
prominent in English (e.g. 'IS mr JONES here? i have a MEssage for HIM'). Chapter 4
Activity 7, page 100
Possible tone groups:
1. / i've LOST my CAR keys /
2. / Suddenly / a CAT jumped out /
3, / it's MONdays / i hate MOST /
4. / DAvid / i know QUITE WELL / his SISter / i don't know at ALL /
Activity 8, page 104
The Hallidayan system does have the advantage that utterances are divided
up into small, manageable chunks, and that individual parts of it can be
examined separately (e.g. just tone groups or tonics), but it is complicated
and forbidding-looking when all the features are indicated simultaneously.
Brown's system may be quite good for anyone with a basic knowledge of
music (cf. the stave), and Iong stretches of talk can be visualised at a glance.
However, the eye has constantly to jump back and forth between two
centres of attention&he text and the notation), which is not so marked with
Halliday's system.
Some American phonologists indicate intonation by letting the writing
move up and down as the voice would, e.g.:
Every portant infor
body This is im ma
listen! tion.
In the end, different systems will suit different purposes in the classroom,
but anything with a strong visual appeal will probably help learners.
Actlvity 9, pages 1074
1. I he's a STUpid F~L! / (e.g. expressing anger/exasperation)
L \
/ he's as TAU as ME! / (e.g. an adult of a child who has grown a lot,
expressing surprise) \
2. if you Opened your it! / (exasperation)
;n
1 i'm deLIGHTed it! / (delight/pleasure)
\
3. 1 irk? I i DON? beh~ it! / (incredulity)
/ & Guidance for Reader actiuities
9 \
/ fO I he BOUGHT a NEW one I (narrating, emotionally neutral?
Possibly ironic?) L
It does seem relatively easy to put almost any emotional interpretation on
to these tone contours, which suggests that they alone are not connected
with specific attitudes.
Adivny 10, page 110
1. / IF you seew /CAN you ask him to $6 me? I
(Both fall and fall-rise are possible on 'ring me'; fall-rise will be heard
as more 'polite' because it is less closed and final, suggesting less that it
is an instruction.)
\ f
2. A: I i met JOsie CQLEman I in Tm /
A: IY~I
B's answer with fall-rise indicates that helshe does not consider the
information 'closed'; A hears this as a request for confirmation.
3. A: / IS it five o'+cfc? /
\
B: / FIVE /
\ \=
b! 1 A: / AH! / GQOD! / JUST in T
L L L
A's question is an 'open' meaning (A does not know the time). B's
response is definite, closed. A's follow-up is a final, closed statement
that requires no further comment from B.
Adlvity 11, pagel 112
Likely high- and low-key realisations:
1. A: / i'll ASK hos Y I k$ brazilian /
ART^^? he's ~han DIDn't you %o%?
B: / 1 / /
B's high key expresses something contrasting with expectations.
2. A: / & I T+ / you've been
L \
VEry -full
&o? ME? j&!
B: / Sr I / I NOT at lLL! / it's my l~ /
L Chapter 5
A's 'you've been very helpful' is presented as equivalent to 'thanks'; B
politely deflects A's gratitude using high key to express a contrast with
what A has said.
The same comments could be made here as were made in Activity 7; a
longer stretch of talk like this one could as well be transcribed using
Brown's notation. However, if such a transcription were accompanied by a
tape-recording in the classroom, its complexities might be lessened some-
what, and, anyway, such a complex transcription would only be suitable
once learners had become thoroughly familiar with individual levels of the
system beforehand.
Chapter 5
Activity 1, page 120
In British culture, short service encounters (and encounters such as passing
security barriers) normally end with server and customer both saying
'thank you', and without either party using phrases such as 'not at all', or
'that's okay'. These are reserved for occasions when genuine favours are
done or inconveniences borne (e.g. A:--'Thanks ever so much for looking
after Tommy' B: 'Oh, not at all, he was no trouble'). In American English,
the follow-up 'you're welcome' is common in service encounters on the part
of the server, and is often accompanied by the formulaic salutation 'Have a
nice day!' to the customer.
In general, the adjacency pairs and the exchange structure are realised
naturally. What oddities there are seem rather to be lexical and/or gram-
matical, for example the use of past tense instead of present perfect in
'What happened in this country. . . ?', and the use of 'turned out' by B. A's
follow-up ('Oh, I see, that's interesting') is exactly what one would expect,
as is his 'doesn't matter' later on. 'Awfully sorry' is perhaps a little
unnatural as a second pair-part when apologising for being unable to full
a request for information; 'Sorry', or 'I'm sorry' would be more normal in
British English (as occurs in B's final nun).
Activity 3, paw 125-8
Taking follow-up moves first, A's 'It's quite interesting' is the only genuine
follow-up move of the type common in reciprocal talk; the rest of the time Gujdunce for Reader activities
she fallows B's replies with new initiations. If we take initiations, A is the
one who initiates all the time; she clearly perceives her role as that of
interviewer; the only questions B addresses are checks that he has under-
stood A's questions. He dm, however, make a long informing move at the
beginning when he tells the story behind his name (in the original tran-
script, A does not ask him to tell the story; he volunteers it spontaneously).
In general, then, we might conclude that these two learners perceive their
role as interviewer and interviewee, rather than as equal participants in a
conversation.
This is what a 'cleaned up' version might look like:
A: Sit down . . . you're all right then?
B: Yes, okay, Jack. I did a daft thing though, I planned the route out,
you know, I had it all written out, and, unlike most people, you see a
signpost 'Repley', so 1 took it and I came over Mistham by the
reservoirs, nice it was.
A: Oh, by Mistham, over the top, nice run.
B: Colours are pleasant, aren't they?
C: Yeah.
A: Nice run that.
B: Yeah, we enjoyed it . . . wasn't the way we intended, but as usual it
was nice.
A: No, we were just talking about that.
B: Oh, yes, it was all right.
'Cleaning up' the dialogue and making it look like the sort of dialogue one
finds in many language textbooks creates problems. Back-channels can be
either omitted (as we have done with C's 'Yeah's' while B is telling his
story, or else they could be included as separate turns. Another alternative
is to include the hack-channel in a subsequent turn (as we have done with
A's 'No, we wax jw talking about that'), but then the 'No' seems to be
responding to 'It was trice' (which is odd), rather than to 'It wasn't the way
we intended', and this rrmtght confuse the learners.
Punctuation is also a problem. There are usually several possible punctu-
ations for the same stretch of talk, and decisions will be subjective.
However, punctuation does help to clarify the text for the learner,
especially in a case such as 'You see a signpost "Repley", so I took it',
where the quotation marks tell the learner it is a citation of something.
The text remains reasonably natural. Note the natural grammatical
features such as ellipses ('[The] colours an pleasant', '[A] nice run') and
note the marked word-order features ('Nice it was', 'Nice run, that'). The exercise does suggest that, with careful editing, natural data can be used for
dialogues for classroom use.
The talk begns with exchanges about the weather at Christmm in Britain.
C repeats an earlier remark ('Yes, it was very sunny Christmas Day'), which
acts as a summary of the sub-topic; there is then a pause, filled by a series of
'Mm' noises. When B starts the new sub-topic ('When are you heading off
again, Bob?'), we might expect a jump to high key. A answers B's question,
and then pauses after 'this time' before introducing the new sub-topic of his
suitcase. That sub-topic ends, once again, with a couple of 'Mm's from A.
B is an active listener in that she makes back-channel responses ('Mm',
'Yeah'), she provides an evaluative follow-up ('Oh, lovely'), she uses
checking tags ('Is he!', 'Oh, haven't they?'), and she overlaps with an
utterance completion in A's last turn, predicting how he will finish.
Grammatical 'mistakes' occur in the following:
1. 'More than another' (should be 'more than others').
2. 'I was not able play' (should be 'able to play').
3. 'More too much technical' (shduld be 'too technical').
4. 'Too much exercises' (should be 'too many exercises').
5. 'The guitar is more easy' (should be 'easier').
6. 'Prove again with the piano?' (should be 'to prove [try] again with the
piano').
Of these mistakes, (I), (4), and (6) (the omission of 'to') would probably go
unnoticed in spontaneous English native-speaker talk, and even (5) might
not do more than raise an eyebrow. This is not to say that native English
speakers would not reject these as 'bad grammar' on careful reflection. Guidance for Reader activities
Chapter 6
Activity 1, page 148
My own personal response would be:
Read
Instruction leaflet
Letter tolfrom friend
Public notice
Product la be1
Newspaper obituary
Poem
News report
Academic article
Small ads
Postcard tolfrom friend
Business letter
Thus, even though I read a lot of these types of written text, I never write
most of them.
Advlty 2, page 151
Group B's text is not a letter as such, but a list of instructions. It is full of
imperative verb forms, while Group A's text has softened the first directive
to the caretaker by using 'Would you be kind enough to . . . ', and later uses
'please'. Group A have also framed the text as a letter or note, personally
addressed, and they end their text with a friendly 'interactional' sentence to
relieve the overwhelmingly 'transactional' nature of the rest of the text. In
the discussion afterwards, some of the participants argued that it was not
necessary to send a friendly letter to the caretaker, since it was his job to
provide such services. Others argued that a friendly tone was necessary to
establish a cooperative relationship; certainly in a British context the latter
would be a wiser course of action.
Essay 1: The use of It in sentence 2 is an example of the confusion of it, this
and that as reference items discussed in section 2.2.1. Ideally, the sentence Chapter 6
should read: 'This has been the cause of many problems . . . .' However,
comprehensibility and readability are not seriously affected.
Essay 2: 'So as for' at the beginning of sentence 2 is odd. Amore acceptable
version would be: 'Similarly, American teenagers play rugby . . . '.
Essay 3: 'They are trained . . . ' in sentence 4 is odd because 'the astronauts'
have ceased to be a current focus (see section 2.2.1), other topics having
taken over ('problems', 'absence of gravity', 'period of training', etc.). It
would be more appropriate, therefore, to re-enter the noun phrase, and say:
'Astronauts are trained in simple jobs . . . ', thus restoring the astronauts to
topical focus.
Essay 1: Sentence 2 seems to contradict sentence 1 as it stands. A more
coherent version might be: 'My field of study concerns architecture. In
actual fact, it is not merely a field of study, but rather a huge world, going
from . . . ', where lexical signals of modification of the previous statement
help . the reader with the text.
Essay 2: 'And also' causes problems here. An alternative form of linkage
could be: 'The problems of modem cities are derived from the Industrial
Revolution, and even though the cities of my country were not invoIved in
this event, it is nonetheless true that there are . . . '.
Adlvlty 5, page 160
Text I: The first sentences seem to set up a classic claim and counterclaim
pattern, with rival opinions being expounded. Signals include of course,
stereotypes and absolutely. The final sentence is, however, an explicit
question, so we might expect the text to go on to evaluate different answers
to the question and to adopt at least one of them, thus creat1k.a larger
questionanswer pattern for the whole text.
Text 2: This is more obviously a question-answer pattern, with an explicit
question posed. in the headline. Paragraphs 1 and 2 set the situation,
paragraph 3 rbts the question of the headline and suggest that the
answer may be 'yes', while paragraph 4 looks at the government's 'no'
response to the question. We might expect the text to go on to evaluate the
'yes' and 'no' responses, and, if we are familiar with this particular
consumer magazine, we might predict that it is the 'yes' answer which the
author will espouse. Grsidance for Reader activities
One possible order is: 1, 5, 3, 4, 2. Also possible: 1, 3, 5, 4, 2. Most
informants fcel that 4 and 2 should always be at the end. Some changes that
informants have suggested are:
5. 'The typical situation is that thousands of people . . . '
'Week afier week, thousands of people . . . '
4. 'The problem is how to intewene without cancelling . . . '
The essay certainly seems to have more overt discourse organisation. It
begins with a preview statement setting out what the text will do, then goes
into detailed contrasts, and then ends with a paragraph which gcneralises
on the issue of differences betvieen the two cultures. Extract (6.10) on the
other hand, remains on the same level of detail throughout, except.forithe
(somewhat irrelevant) listing of Japanese television channels. The writer of
the longer essay also uses overt signalling in phrases such as 'that is the
same teenagers in my country' and 'that is a little bit different from
teenagers in my country'. The only obvious signals of contrast in (6.10) are
'more people' sentence 3, and 'But my country' sentence 6.
If we correct obvious grammar and vocabulary mistakes, we might come,up
with a version something like the following:
Korea has developed radically in its economy over the past 25 years.
All industries have developed and especially mechanical industries
have advanced, for example, the electrical, steel and car industries.
As a result of the development of industry, Korea has become a rich
country and almost all homes have television, video and a car.
The text is actually now perfectly acceptable, but fine tuning could be
applied with regard to reference and ellipsis. The following changes are
possible:
Korea has developed radically in its economy over the past 25 years.
All industries have advanced, especially mechanical industries, for
example, electrical, stcel and cars. As a result of this development,
Korea has become a rich country and almost all homes have
television, video and a car.
There is no reason why learners' own texts should not be used as the raw
data for presenting and practising features such as reference, ellipsis and
substitution. Chapter 6
From real world experience a British person might predict that the phone
boxes had been vandalised. If you are lucky enough to live in a country
where phone box vandalism is rare, you might predict neglect of technical
faults, or perhaps storm damage, or teething troubles with new technology.
When we predict, we are constantly trying to relate the new to what we
already know and have experienced. We would certainly expect this text to
tell us the reason why there was a problem with the phones. We might also
expect in a news article like this a statement from a spokesperson for the
telephone company, and perhaps some details of the inconveniences caused
by the phones being out of order (e.g. an interview with someone affected).
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act, 22,25,33
adjacency pairs, 24,11%22,131,145
- advcrbkls, 34,51,54,169
agreement partcms, 71,121
Allerton, D. J., 63
Amerian norms, 129,152
anaphoric nouns, 76
anaphoric reference, see rcfmna
ad, 48,49,155,165
, Anderson, A., 146
anecdotes, 137-42,145
antonymy, 69,71
apologies, 121
Arabic, 92, 164,165
Ashby, M., 22
aspect, 5%2,63
imperfective, 62
perfective, 62
present progressive, 61,63
assimilation, 89
Aston, G., 16,137
Austin, J. L, 5,9
Australian intonation, 117
auxiliary contrasting, 43-4
back-channel, 127,139,141,145
Bicklund, 1., 171
Bailey, R. W., 73
Bar-Lev, Z., 16.5
Barns, B. K., 63
Beattie, G. W., 146
becawe, 49-50,lSS
Belton, A., 137
Bmson, J. D., 87
Bibcr, D., 171
Blum-Kulka, S., 145
Bodman, J. W., 145
Bolingcr, D., 92-3
Bonone de Manrique, A. M., 92
Boyce, S., 101
Boyle, J., 108
Bradford, B., 99,111, I12
Brady, K. D., 146
Brazij, D, C., 16,33,94,95,109,111,112,
114,117
Brown, E. K., 143
Brown, G., 33,41,87,89,909 1014,113,
117,146
Brown, P., 145
Brunak, I., 44,120
Burten, D., 33
Bumrworth, B., 146
Bygate, M., 146
Cameron, D., 145
Carfell, P. L., 171
Carter, R. A., 33,87
Camn, A. S., 171
cataphoric reference, fl see rtfinnct
Chafe, W., 171
Chiwe, 165
citation fonn, 89,95
cimtions, 60,63
clah-counterclaim, see pamrns in
text
classroom discourse, 12-19,21,24,111,
122-3,128, lsl, 145
clause, 34,99,100,117,152
clause-relational approach, 29-31,33,
155-7
clcft sarucnrtcs, 58,169
pseudo-, 58
clod sgstcms, 74,M
Clyne, M., 171
coda, 138,139
c4& N. R., 19
cognaa words, 36,163
cohmna, 26,35,70,98,171 cohesion, 2S-6,153-4,156,168,171
grammatical, 35-51
lexical, 63,65-8,87,132
Collie, J., 136
Collitts COBU1Z.D English Language
Dictionary, 84,95,148
collocation, 65,87,164
comment, 55
communicative dynamism, 52
competence, 50
complement, 51,52
complicating actions/mts, 61,138
conjunction, 25,29,34,35,46-51,155, 166
additive, 48
adversative, 48
causative, 48,63
of elaboration, 47
of enhancement, 47
of extension, 47
Connor, U., 171
context, 10,43,64, 149 .
conversation, 19-25,145
analysis, 6,33, 146
conversational maxims, 2,s
conversational norms, 6
Cook, C., 33
Cook, V. J., 117
coordination, grammar bf, 45
co-rderena, 46,65
Corsdn, D., 84
co-text, 64
Coulmas, F., 145
Coulthard, R. M., 6,12-19,22,24,33, 117,
122,128
Coupcr-Kuhlen, E., 91
Couture, B., 171
Craig, R. T., 145
Crcider, C. A., 59
crosssultural &dies, 1644,171
Crow, B. K., 145
Cruse, D. A., 87
Crumnden, A., 94,101,106, -109,
117
Crystal, D., 69,145
cultural concurt, 40
cuhure and rhetoric ,164-8
Currie, K. L., 97, 113
Cutler, A., 117
Dal Martello, M. F., 146
Dan&, F., 63
Danish, 109
Dauer, R. M., 92
Davy, D., 69
De Beaugrande, R., 6,27,28,33
ddinite article, 35,40,42
deictic words, 149,150
demonstratives, 35,42,74
directions, giving someone, 142-3, 146
disagreement patterns, 71,121
discourse analysis
American, 6,33
Birmingham model of, 6, 12-19,22,33,
122
British, 6,33
historical overview of, 5-7
scope of, 12 1
discouficorganising words, 74487
dominant speaker, 24,111,128
Donaldson, S. K., 146
Dressier, W., 27,28,33
Duncan, S., 146
Duranti, A,, 59
Dutch, 63,114
echoing, 43-4
Edmondson, W., 145
Edwards, D., 139
Ehrich, V., 63
Eiler, M. A, 63
Eiscnstein, M., 145
Eisterhold, J. C., 171
elicitation, 20,23
elision, 89
ellipsis, 25,35,43-6,62,63, 143,166
Ellis, J., 73, 87
Ellis, R., 68,71
Ernest, P., 157
Eskey, D. E., 168
Esling, J. H., 117
ethnomethodology, 6,24,70,127,145
evaluation, 61,138,140
exchange, 15-18,21,22,25,46,122-6
exophoric reference, see reference
Fbr, D., 92,93
face, preservation of, 6,24 feedback, 15
feet, 91, 117
field of discourse, 87, 152
Finnish, 129
Firbas, J., 52
first pair-part, 120, 122
Firth, A., 49
focus of attention, 38-9,54
foregrounding, 54,59,100
see also topic, foregrounding of
foreign accent, 89
form and function, 7-10,18,21,106,120
formulaic utterances, 122,145
Fox, A., 114
Fox, B., 66
framing mechanism, 20
framing words, 1314
Francis, G., 33,63,76,78
Freeborn, D., 171
French, 6.3,78,92,109,152
Fries, C. C., 106
Fries, P. H., 63,87
fronting devices, 51,53
front-placing, 47,52,54,63,169
Fuller, J. W., 63
function(s), 9-11, 18,33
Cairns, R., 64
Gardner, R., 145,146
Gcluykens, R., 117
generakptcific, see patterns in text
genre, conventions of, 62
German, 36,114,145,150,156,165,171
Ghadessy, M., 161
Gibbs, R. W., 145,150
given and new, 63,-101
Givhn, T., 63
Coffman, E., 6,70
grammar and discourse, 6,25,34-63
Greaves, W. S., 87
Greek, 92
Greenall, S., 77, 168
Greenwood, J., 92
Grellet, F., 63
Gricc, H. P., 2,s
Gumpen, J. J., 694
Gundcl, J. K., 63
Guy, C., 117
Halliday, M. A. K., 6,25,32,33,35,36,
47-8,52,58,63,65,66,67,69,85,87,
99,100,104,152,171
Hamp-Lyons, E., 168
Hams, Z., 5
Hasan, R., 6,2.5,33,36,63,65,66,67,69,
73,87
Heaslcy, B., 168
Hebrew, 164
Hermerkn, L., 85
Hewings, M., 33,117
Hcyrnan, R. D., 145
Hilsdon, J,, 49
Hindi, 171
Hinds, J., 43,59,71,87, 146, 152,
164
Hine, R. R., 146
Hoey, M. P., 29,30,33,78,87,155,158,
171
Hofrnann, T. R., 171
Holmes, J., 85
Honikman, B., 90
Hopper, P. J., 63
House, J., 171
Houtkoop, H., 146
Hunston, S., 33
Hymes, D., 5,6
hyponymy, 65,68,71,87
hypothetical-real, see patterns in text
ideational meaning, 58
idioms, 83
illocutionary acts, 29
Indian English, 90,164
information structure, 47,99
instantial rchaons, 72-3,87
interactional talk, 136-7,145
interpersonal meaning, 58,85
interruptions, 129
interviews, 1244, 128, 136
intonation, 88, 89
and attitude, 107-9
and grammar, 106,117
and interactive approaches, 109-H, 114
invitations, 120-1
isolate pronunciation, 94
it as refrrenct item, 26,35-9.46
Italian, 59,92,162,163,165 Japanese, 36,43,59,71,123,129,145,146,
152,164,165,167,171
Jdferwn, C., 6,134,145
Jenltins, S., 152
jigsaw activity, 1534
Johns A. M., 154
JohwLewis, C., 114,117
jokes, 13742,145
Jones, L, 10
Jones, L B., 58
Jones, L K., 58
Jordan, M. P., 63,65, 77,78,80
Kachru, Y., 164
K;rplan, R. B., 164,165,171
Karwonhy, J., 113
key, 111-13,115
high, 112,113,131
hw, 112,131
mid, 112
Kies, D., 63
kg, P., 87
Knowle, G., 98
Korean, 171
Koster, C., 63
Kozloff, M., 142
LPbov, W., 6,5461, 137-9
Lndd, D. R., 117
'language in action', 149
Leech, G., 6
I&-displacement, 54,59
lemn (as discourse typc), 152,161
Levinson, S., 6,24,33,145
lexical bar, M -
lexical relatioar, 65-8+ 71, ?&, 87
lexicalisatibn, 7477 '
lcxix in talk, 68-71
Linde, C, 38,39,54,63
Lindebcrg, A-C, 87
Lindstrom, O., 117
listarer(s), 35, 13941
listening, 36,146
activities, 135,142
Lo, W. A., 165
Locasao, V., 145
LMgauc, R., 171
LSP (Languages for Spscific Purposes), 137
Lynch, T., 146
Mandarin, 171
markers, 2&7,49,54,130,135,145,169
Maynard, D. W., 134,145
Mazeland, H., 146
Mazzie, C., 171
McCagg, P., 171
McCarthy, M. J., 33,87
McGngor, G., 145
Melrose, R., 145
MeIrost, S. F., 145
Mmn, L., 101
mental lexicon, 72
Michaels, S., 171
Middleton, I)., 139
modal verbs, 84-5
modality, W,87
epistcmic, 85
ht, 85
mode of discourse!, 152
Mohan, B., 165
Monaghan, J., 63
Montgomery, M., 33
Monville-Burston, M., 63
Moon, R., 83
Mosenthal, J. H., 171
moves, 15; 22,25
answering, 16
follow-up, 16-17,20,22,33,122-3,125
framing, 13-14,22
initiating, 1-6,U), 22, 122, 126
opening, 16
responding, 16,20,122,126
~ueller, R. A., 145
Murphy, G. I.., 87
narrauve, 5,6,61,137-42,146,157,169
natural conversarim, 125
naaual data, 49,59,127,144
natural discoune, 21,54,67,94,118,127
aad archngc pmm, 126
natural speech, 46
natural talk, 143,145
Ncubawr, F., 26,33
Nicdercht, C., 146
Noguchi, R. R., 129 Nystrand, M., 171
object (of clause), 51
Ochs, E., 59
Odlin, T., 145
Olesky, W., 145
open-ended sets,, 74
Oriental tcxt, rhetoric of, 164, 165
orientation (of audience), 56,61,138, 167
paragraph, 58,66,171
see also rherne, theme
paratone, 102,112
Parker, R., 145
patterns in text, 28,30-2,78-83,15744
claim?rounrerclaim, 75,7942, 157, 159,
161
general-specific, 158-9,165
hypothetical-real, 80,157
problun-solution, 3&2,74-6,78-82,
157,15944,168,169
quescion-answcr, 1574,171
Peatson, E., 71,121
Pearson, M., 117
Pennington, M. C., 90
performance, 50
phonemes, 88-90
phonology and discourse, 88-117
Pike, K. L., 117
pitch, 20,129
concord, 113
level, 8,101,102,105,111-12,113,127
range, 101,102,109,133
Polanyi, L., 145
Polish, 145
polite(neat), 6, 15,2O, 24, 145
Pomerana, A., 71
Power, R. J., 146
pragmatics, 2,5-6
Prague School, 6,S2
prediction, ?7,127,142,169
problab.solution see patterns in text
ptocedural approach, see written discourse
process approach to writing, 156,168
prodaiming function, 109
prominence, W-9,101,117
nuclear, 99
pronominalisation, 25,63,166
pronouns, 34,35,36,42,65,74,87
pronunciation, 88-90
prosodic kturcs, 90
Psathas, G., 142,145,146
question-answer, see pattvns in text
questions, 7-8, 15, 18,21,1M, 125
Quirk, R., 37,43
reader, 35,36,42
discoutse ad the, 168-9
reading, 26-7,58,77,171
reciprocity, 136,145, 171 -
Rcddick, R. J., 33
Redcker, G., 171
Redman, S., 64,68,713
reentering of noun phrases, 66,87
Rccs, A. B., 114
reference, 34,35-42,46,166
anaphoric, 34,35,42,43, 166,167
cataphoric, 36,41-2,43
exophoric, 35,39-41,43,149-50
register, 32,56, 82-4,85,87, 154
Reichrnan-Adar, R., 63
reiteration, 654.69
relexicalisation, 6P-71
repetition, 26,65-8,71,166,167
mo1ution (of story), 61, 138
theme, 34,47,51-9,63,100,165
of paragraph, 58
rhetoric, 56,1644,171
rhythm, 904,117
rhythmicality, 89,91-3
Ricento, T., 63
Richards, J., 87,90, 146
Riddle, E., 63
Riley, R., 33
Rivero, M-L., 63
Rob-, J., 108
Robinson, P., 78
role play, 121,128
Romance texts, rhaoric of, 164
Rumelha% D. E., 171
Russian, 63,164
Ryaoft, R., 157
Sacks, H., 6,120,127,145,146
Sda, R., 44,121,171 Sc&, D., 101,104
Sdugloff, E. A., 6,120,146
schema theory, 168-9,171
schemata, content and formal, 169,171
Schenkein, J., 33, 145
Schiffrin, D., 61,63, 145
Schmidt, R. W., 87
Schopf, A,, 63
Schubiger, M., 117
scientific text, 60
Scollon, R., 94
Scuffil, M., 114
Searle, J. R., 5,9
second pair-part, 120, 122
segmental features, 90
segments, 28-9,36,38,46,60,66,74,75,
83,112,155,162,171
semiotics, 5
Semitic, 164
sentence, 152
shared knowledge, 3941,149
Shih, M., 171
signals, W,31,46,49-50,75,824,87, 157,
1634; 166,169
Signorini, A., 92
silences, 129,134
simplification, 67
Sindair, J. McH., 6, 12-19,22,24,33, 122,
128
SIater, S., 136
Slavic, 62, 63
Smith, E. L, 171
Spanish, 36,63,68,78,92,123
spatial orientation, 54
speech act(s)
and discourse, 9-11,12,18,tt, 29
theory, 5
SPA
and grammar, 143-4, I45
and writing, 14%52,171
spoken discourse, models of analysis of,
12-25
Stalker, J. C., 171
Stalker, J. W., 171
Stark, H., 171
Starkey, D., 146
starter, 20
St&, E. L, 134,145
Stdfensen, M., 168,171
Stenstriim, A-B., 117
stories, 136,13742, 145
strcss, 108,117
primary, 95
secondary, 95
word, 94-6,97,94
stress-timing, 91-2,117
Stubbs, M., 33,68, 87
style, 56
subject, 51,52
substitution, 35,45-6,63, 166
sub-topic, 49,54,69-70, 101,115,133, 134
superordinate, 66,67,87
Swan, M., 60,95,138,168
Swedish, 78, 123
syllable-timing, 92
synonymy, 65-8,69,71,87
Tagalog, 59
tags, 106
Tannen, D., 33,149
task-bad learning, 131,150
Taylor, D. S., 94
Taylor, T. J., 145
telephone calls, 146
tempo, 94
tenor of discourse, 85, 152
tense, 5942,63,153
historic present, 61
past simple, 59-62
present perfect, 5940,62
termination, 113
text grammar, 6
turt types, 147-9
textual meaning, 58
textuality, 35,46,65,87
Thai, 92
thanking, 15,16,18,1U), 145
that, 11,35-9,63,74,142
Thavenius, C., 37
them, 34,47,51-9,63,87,100,165
of paragraph, 58
his, 11,35-9,74, 142
Thomas, A. L., 43
Thompson, I., 108
Tierney, R. J., 171 Index
ton&)
approaches to, 10611
contour, 8,105, 107,109
fall-rise, 105,110-11,114
fill(ing), 13,105-11,114
group, 99-101, 109, 117
level, 105, 108-9
rise-fall, 105, 107, 111
risc(ing), 105-6, 1 Oel 1
types of, 105-6
unit, 99
tonic, 99-101, 1W
Toolan, M. J., 146
topic, 24,38,6%70,87, 131-6, 145
foregrounding of, 66
framework, 545
key and, 112-13
natural development of, 70
paratone and, 102
pitch and, 101, 113,115
sentences, 58,63
'topping-and-tailing' activities, 131
Tottie, G., 171
Tracy, K., 145
transaction, 13-14,22,24,130-1
transactional talk, 136-7, 145
transcription, 102,104,115
Trosborg, A,, 121
turn, 69,70,113
rum-taking, 6,24,101,104,117,127-9,
146
Van Dijk, T. A., 6,33
'vocabulary 3', 76
vocabulary
and discourse, 6+87
Graeco-Latin, 82,M
materials, 68
and the organising of text, 7444,1634,
166
procedural, 78
schematic, 78
voice-setting features, 90,117
vowels
full, 92
reduced, 92,93
Walter, C., 60,95
Wardaugh, R., 70
Waugh, L R., 63
well, 11
wb- clauses, 143-4
wh- questions, 106,111
Widdowson, H. C., 33,78
Wienbidta, A,, 171
Willems, N., 114
Winter, E. O., W,33,47,76, 155,
171
Wisniewski, E. J., 87
Wong, R., 117
word(s)
content, 74
empty, 74
full, 74
€unction, 74,9
general, 66
grammar, 74,97
lexical, 74,85,97
word order, 52,63
writing, 26,87
written discourse, 25-32
procedural approach, 27,33
units in, 152-4
Yngve, V. H., 127
Yule, G., 33,41, 87,97, 101, 117
Zambian English, 49
Zmel, V., 171
Zydatiss, W., 59-60 Discc,.me Analysis for Language Teacbrs
Diwmrse And3sjs jor hngunge Te~r'hi?r$ is a practjc~l
introdurtion to discourse analysis and ifa reWdrrce for
I anguage teaching,
The book begins with fhe qtion: What is discourw
analysis.: Diflment plackls of analysis are outlind and
waluated in terms of their ~lvefulness to language teachers.
ThiY is folhwed by chapters ddng with new wqs of
hkiing at grammar, mateulary and phmal~gy in the light
td &swum? malyds. The fmal sation of tk hk
Concentrates on spoken d written language wih exampla
from native-speaker and learner data, It aI%o consi&rs some .
teaching approaches based on tbe insights ofdiscoars#
analysis.
Wxorlrs;e Aiml#ris for Ltltgua$t Tmrh~n contains
I r~a&r activities with guidame on appropdate rspcqses
TL -,. m further I reading wggmtions for each chapter
CAMBRIDGI
UNIVERSITY PRES:
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