Approaches to Discourse

1. Approaches to Discourse pakwidhi_unnes@yahoo.com Universitas Negeri Semarang

2. Speech Act Theory (Austin 1955, Searle 1969) • A logico-philosophic perspective on conversational organization focusing on interpretation rather than the production of utterances in discourse. • From the basic belief that language is used to perform actions. • Every utterance can be analyzed as the realization of the speaker’s intent (illocutionary force) to achieve a particular purpose. • Neither Austin nor Searle were concerned with the analysis of continuous discourse.

3. Speech Act Theory • Unit of analysis: speech act (SA) or illocutionary force (IF). • Principal problems: the lack of a one-to-one match up between discourse function (IF) and the grammatical form. • Provides the insight that the basic unit of conversational analysis must be functionally motivated rather than formally defined one. • Systemic name : speech function (SF) – central issue in discourse structure.

4. Interactional Sociolinguistics (Gumperz 1982, Goffman 1959-1981) • Grows out of the work of anthropologists. • Centrally concerned with the importance of context in the production and interpretation of discourse. • Units of analysis: grammatical and prosodic features in interactions. • Gumperz demonstrated that interactants from different socio-cultural backgrounds may “hear” and understand discourse differently according to their interpretation contextualisation cues in discourse. E.g. intonation contours, ‘speaking for another’, alignment, gender.

5. Interactional Sociolinguistics • Schiffrin (1987): focused on quantitative interactive sociolinguistic analysis, esp. discourse markers (defined as ‘sequentially dependent elements which bracket units of talk). • Schiffrin’s unit of analysis: turn. • Basic concern: the accomplishment of conversational coherence. • She argues for the importance of both qualitative and quantitative / distributional analysis in order to determine the function of the different discourse markers in conversation.

6. Ethnography of Communication (Dell Hymes (1972b, 1974) • Concerned with understanding the social context of linguistic interactions: ‘who says what to whom, when, where. Why, and how’. • Prime unit of analysis: speech event. • Definition: ‘The speech event is to what analysis of verbal interaction what the sentence is to grammar … It represents an extension in the size of the basic analytical unit from the single utterance to stretches of utterances, as well as a shift in focus from … text to … interaction’.

7. Ethnography of Communication • Speech event refers to ‘activities … that are directly governed by rules or norms for the use of speech’ (Hymes 1972:56) • Speech event comprises components (Hymes SPEAKING grid). • Analysis of these components of a speech event is central to what became known as ethnography of communication or ethnography of speaking, with the ethnographer’s aim being to discover rules of appropriateness in speech events. • Genres often coincides with speech events

8. Ethnography of Communication • The ethnographic framework has led to broader notions of communicative competence. • Problem: Lack of explicitness in Hymes’ account on the relationship between genre and other components of the speaking grid and their expression in language and • Recognition of the close relationship between speech events and their social/cultural contexts.

9. Pragmatics (Grice 1975, Leech 1983, Levinson 1983) • Formulates conversational behaviour in terms of general “principles” rather than rules. • At the base of pragmatic approach is to conversation analysis is Gricean’s co-operative principle (CP). • This principle seeks to account for not only how participants decide what to DO next in conversation, but also how interlocutors go about interpreting what the previous speaker has just done. • This principle is the broken down into specific maxims: Quantity (say only as much as necessary), Quality (try to make your contribution one that is true), Relation (be relevant), and manner (be brief and avoid ambiguity).

10. Pragmatics • Provides useful means of characterizing different varieties of conversation, e.g. in interactions, one can deliberately try to be provocative or consensual. • Significant problem: it implies that conversations occur co-operatively, between equals where power is equally distributed etc. • In reality: conversations involve levels of disagreement and resistance; power is constantly under contestation.

11. Conversation Analysis (CA) (Harold Garfinkel 1960s-1970s) • Garfinkel (sociologist) concern: to understand how social members make sense of everyday life. • Sack, Schegloff, Jefferson (1973)tried to explain how conversation can happen at all. • CA is a branch of ethnomethodology. • Two grossly apparent facts: a) only one person speaks at a time, and b) speakers change recurs. Thus conversation is a ‘turn taking’ activity. • Speakers recognize points of potential speekar change – turn constructional unit (TCU).

12. Conversation Analysis (CA) • CA identified TCU as the critical units of conversation, it has not specified exactly how a TCU boundary can be recognized in any situation. • Models conversation as infinitely generative turn-taking machine, where interactants try to avoid lapse: the possibility that no one is speaking. • Contribution: the identification of ‘adjacency pairs’: conversational relatedness operating between adjacent utterances.

13. Conversation Analysis (CA) • Adjacency pair: first and second pair parts. • Major problems: a) lack of systematicity- thus quantitative analysis is impossible; 2) limited I its ability to deal comprehensively with complete, sustained interactions; 3) though offers a powerful interpretation of conversation as dynamic interactive achievement, it is unable to say just what kind of achievement it is.

14. Variation Analysis (Labov 1972a, Labov and Waletzky1967) • L & W argue that fundamental narrative structures are evident in spoken narratives of personal experience. • The overall structure of fully formed narrative of personal experience involves six stages: 1) Abstract, 2) Orientation, 3) Complication, 4) Evaluation, 5) Resolution, 6) Coda where 1) and 6) are optional. • Strength: its clarity and applicability.

15. Variation Analysis • Problems: data was obtained from interviews. • Variationists’ approach to discourse stems from quantitative of linguistic change and variation. • Although typically focused on social and linguistic constraints on semantically equivalent variants, the approach has also been extended to texts.

16. Structural-Functional Approaches to Conversation