Discourse & Genre

1. Discourse & Genre

2. 商务英语从专业话语角度的研究 • 话语是对语言使用的分析(Brown & Yule 1983；Bhatia 1993，Jaworski & Coupland,1999）。商务英语作为在商务场合英语的使用，从话语角度来看，是一种专业话语(Bargiele-Chiapini & Nicherson,1999)。 • 在这种视角下，商务英语的研究类似于文本语言学或话语分析的研究。

3. 体裁分析既涉及文体分析,又涉及语篇分析,是多学科交叉研究的产物,其根本宗旨是研究交际目的和语言使用策略。体裁分析既涉及文体分析,又涉及语篇分析,是多学科交叉研究的产物,其根本宗旨是研究交际目的和语言使用策略。

4. 从20世纪60年代起，人们开始对科学、商业、教育、法律等专业话语展开了分析研究。Bhatia(2002)描述了专业话语分析的发展历程，归纳出三个逐渐发展的理论视角：从20世纪60年代起，人们开始对科学、商业、教育、法律等专业话语展开了分析研究。Bhatia(2002)描述了专业话语分析的发展历程，归纳出三个逐渐发展的理论视角： • 文本视角--textual perspective • 策略视角--tactical perspective • 社会-批评视角:socio-critical perspective

5. 文本视角是专业话语分析的起始角度，是对话语的语言学研究，注重回答交际活动中使用了什么样的语言形式的问题。文本视角是专业话语分析的起始角度，是对话语的语言学研究，注重回答交际活动中使用了什么样的语言形式的问题。 • 策略视角是对话语的社会-语用（socio-pragmatic）研究，回答专业话语社区成员从事日常工作所使用语言形式的理据问题。 • 社会视角是话语分析最新的视角，把话语作为社会行为，回答话语和社会、文化如何互动的问题。

6. 文本视角本身的四个阶段－Bhatia,1993, 2002 • 语域分析（register analysis） • 语法-修辞分析（grammatical-rhetorical analysis） • 互动分析（interactional analysis） • 话体裁型分析（genre analysis）Genres, it will be seen, are difficult to define, but at a general level ‘Genre comprises a class of communicative events, the members of which share some set of communicative purposes’ (Swales 1990).

7. (1) 利用功能学派的语域理论对语篇进行语域分析( register analysis)。这种分析模式为语篇分析提供了比较完整的理论框架,使语篇分析走出了印象式的非科学的分析方法,但它往往侧重于词汇和语法层面的描写,没有深入研究特定语篇的信息组织方式。 • 语域分析是60年代、70年代重要的话语分析框架(discourse analysis)，辨别各类话语的有显著统计意义的词汇、语法特征，以期找出一种语域区别于另一语域的语言特征，证实我们对语域所作的直觉判断。这也可以称作话语的文体研究（秦秀白 2002）。

8. Register analysis in its early state divorced linguistic features from their context and studied language only at the level of the sentence - the approach was unable to say why language occurred where and when it did. There was also an almost total concentration on written language.

9. (2) 语法修辞分析(grammatical rhetorical analysis)。这种分析模式主要用来考察书面科技英语中语法成分的选择及其修辞功能之间的关系. • 例如，科学论文中动词时态和冠词的选择不仅仅是出于句法和语义方面的考虑，而且涉及修辞层面的考虑 (Schramm 1996)。一般现在时态不光表示时间概念，还指示论题的可概括性。

10. 但语法-修辞分析研究话语过多地将注意力放在特殊现象的研究上,故仍局限于对语篇表层特征的描述,未能真正揭示特定语篇为什么会具有特定的语言特征。但语法-修辞分析研究话语过多地将注意力放在特殊现象的研究上,故仍局限于对语篇表层特征的描述,未能真正揭示特定语篇为什么会具有特定的语言特征。 • 语法-修辞分析研究的核心在于具体的语言特征对科学表达具有的特定价值。

11. Early research into discourse analysis arose from a discontent with the register analysis approach of sentence level analysis. In a key article in 1974, Allen & Widdowson criticised the register analysis approach, saying that courses taught in this way did ‘little more than provide exercises in the manipulation of linguistic forms’ (1974/1985:74).

12. Allen & Widdowson (1974/ 1985:74) went on to say that: • We take the view that the difficulties which the students encounter arise not so much from a defective knowledge of the system of English, but from an unfamiliarity of English use.

13. They then summarised their views as follows: •  One might usefully distinguish two kinds of ability which an English course at this level should aim at developing. • The first is the ability to recognise how sentences are used in the performance of acts of communication, the ability to understand the rhetorical functioning of language in use.

14. The second is the ability to recognise and manipulate the formal devices which are used to combine sentences to create continuous passages of prose. We might say that the first has to do with the rhetorical coherence of discourse, and the second with the grammatical cohesion of text. (Allen & Widdowson 1974/1988:74)

15. This was a useful distinction to make and the first pieces of research covered here in Business English were concerned with the second of these two factors - cohesion.

16. Cohesion • Cohesion was studied by Johns (1980), who conducted a small study into the use of cohesion in business letters, reports and academic textbooks of business and economics. She began by dividing Business English or English of Business and Economics (EBE) into two main classes: the English of applied business and the academic English of business and economics. • Her aim was to see if she could find constellations - or groups - of cohesive elements that would occur repeatedly in the discourse types selected (1980:36).

17. She used a corpus of twenty letters, twenty reports and ten textbooks. Her results showed that lexical cohesion is the most common type of cohesion in letters and reports - similar findings were also made for the textbooks. She was, however, unable to find the constellations she was looking for in the major classes of literature (applied or academic business literature) but she did find that there were constellations of features within the genres of letters, reports and textbooks respectively.

18. Dudley-Evans & St John (1996:6) point out that this might suggest it would be more worthwhile ‘establishing the distinctive linguistic features of key Genre of business communication than in trying to develop a detailed linguistic description of the variety of Business English’.

19. Work on cohesion also included analysis of conjuncts (Morrow 1989). His study on the use of conjuncts within written Business English used news stories from the Wall Street Journal and articles from Economic Enquiry to try and discover if conjunct use in the two discourse types differed. • He found higher conjunct use in the academic journal texts as opposed to the business news stories. He attributed the differences in conjunct use, for example, to the need for greater explicitness in the academic articles.

20. There is much to be lauded/praised in the approaches used in these two studies. Both relied on authentic material and both were addressing questions that are of potential difficulty to business students when using English. • Both finish their articles with implications for teaching and both realise the limitations of their studies and suggest that larger studies should be forthcoming that could benefit from a larger corpus of authentic material.

21. Thus any discussion on the limitations of these studies is built into them already and recognised by the authors themselves. A further limitation of these works (although it must not be seen purely as a criticism) is that, again, they are concerned only with written text.

22. A second band of discourse studies grew up along the lines of the first point made by Allen & Widdowson above (Lenz 1987, Micheau & Billmyer 1987, Maier 1992)-- looking at how language was used in communication and how different discourse strategies can be used in business situations. • This time, studies were also carried out into spoken language.

23. Bhatia (1993:8) termed grammatical-rhetorical analysis the writer’s discourse - in that analysis is carried out from the point of view of the writer - and it considers how certain language choices are made by them. • Interactional analysis, the next stage, he therefore terms the reader’s discourse (1993:8), where discourse is viewed as an interactive process between reader and writer.

24. Bhatia’s concern here was to summarise previous approaches to the study of discourse, criticise them and lead the way to his definition of Genre analysis. This became clear in his criticism of interactional analysis, saying that it fails to pay enough attention to ‘the socio-cultural, institutional and organizational constraints and expectations that shape the written Genre in particular settings, particularly in the case of highly specific academic and professional genre’

25. Dudley-Evans & St John are also critical of discourse analysis (1998:89), highlighting the fact that a failing of discourse analysis is that it still, like register analysis, isolates texts from the environment from which they come.

26. It also highlights another inherent problem with the whole movement -- its concentration on written text. The implication of the word discourse, though intended to include speech discourse, is largely used only in terms of writing and, indeed, largely scientific writing and the world of EST.

27. A further serious problem with discourse analysis approaches has been that of defining the moves and steps that the said discourse is comprised of. • The naming and analysis of steps and moves have been done on an intuitive level by the researcher and there is also the further problem of the sequencing of these steps.

28. Two further key problems need to be highlighted here: the limited size of data gathered in the studies; and the lack of transfer of results to the classroom. • A brief survey of some of the work reviewed reveals the emphasis of work done in this field with some examples of the corpus size used in the investigation.

29. It can be seen from Table III below that discourse (and indeed genre) approaches tend to fail in these two respects: the corpora used are not large enough and transferral of results into the classroom, at least in Business English, has been very limited.

30. TABLE: Examples of Discourse/Genre Studies In Relation To the Size of the Data Gathered and the Transfer of Results to the Classroom • + = Good X/? = Satisfactory X = Not satisfactory

31. Sample size • It was already noted in Section 3.6.1.1, that the two studies into cohesion in written texts, Johns (1980) and Morrow (1989) both suffered the same limitations - that of taking data from a small and therefore not potentially representative corpus. Johns used twenty letters, twenty reports and ten textbooks, whilst Morrow used a corpus from the Wall Street Journal of 23,095 words and from the journal Economic Inquiry of 33,925 running words. Thus, these studies can be seen as interesting and useful but limited in their potential application.

32. The authors, as was noted earlier, do in fact mention these limitations and also do stress the importance of transferral of these results to the classroom. Similar criticisms of corpus size can also be levelled at all the other researchers mentioned with the exception of Yli-Jokipii, Neu, Garcez and Charles.

33. However, in fairness it should also be noted that the corpus size for the works presented was probably sufficient for the stated aims. Indeed, in some cases, small amounts of data have been deliberately chosen, for example, Mauranen chose texts from a single discipline from a much larger bank of data in order to ‘focus on differences between national rather than disciplinary cultures’. (1993:7)

34. Strategies •  Turn-taking strategies were very much at the heart of 1980s analysis of discourse in the field of Business English. This trend is exemplified by work done by Lenz (1987) and Micheau & Billmyer (1987). Lenz (1987) carried out a discourse analysis on a corpus of six technical meetings. He was interested in the turn-taking rules operating in these kinds of meetings. He utilised the conversational system of Sacks et al. (1978) and later on Sinclair & Coulthard’s (1975) model of classroom interaction. Lenz believed that

35. As long as discourse analysis neglects the turn-taking rules in operation, it cannot show consistent results as the discourse structures evolving at different phases of the speech event are dependent on the turn-taking rules employed by the participants. (Lenz 1987:162)

36. Lenz found both similarities and also significant differences in the turn-taking patterns of the participants, as compared to the models of both Sacks et al. and Sinclair & Coulthard. There was little silence in the technical meetings, meaning that the discontinuous talk (silence) idea of Sacks et al. was not to be found as ‘The chairman seems to feel responsible and takes over before a discontinuity could arise. All we find in our data are short gaps between two turns’ (Lenz 1987:163). Also found were significant differences in turn size, with multi-unit turns being common.

37. Retrospectively, we can say that the participants in Technical Meetings rely on the same selection mechanisms as in conversation, but they use additional techniques to introduce and terminate extended turns. (Lenz 1987:167)

38. Lenz summarised by saying that turn-taking strategies have a great effect on the pragmatics of a meeting. This finding was re-iterated in the often-quoted study of Micheau & Billmyer (1987), who studied the differences in discourse strategies between native and non-native speakers in a case study simulation exercise. They had two main objectives in doing this.

39. Firstly, to gather empirical evidence about native speaker speaking and patterns of interaction, in an attempt to identify patterns of how they did what they did. • Secondly, to gather those discourse strategies used by non-native speakers and to identify those that did not conform with the native speaker patterns. Once these had been identified they could then be used as a base for teaching them how to fit in better with native speakers. The results showed that non-native speakers (NNS), had serious problems with both frequency and quality of participation. The findings are summarised below:

40. Problems related to NNS discourse patterns • 1. Violations of turn-taking • - inability to predict end of turn • - insertion of attention-getting devices e.g. 'excuse me' • 2. Problems with turn allocation strategies • - reluctance to bid • - pauses after nomination • 3. Problems with turns • - significant intra-sentential pausing • 4. Use of 'high-considerateness' frames - over politeness did not help get a turn

41. Native speakers, it was found, used such devices as latched utterances - phrases used to ensure smooth transition from one speaker to the next - and showed an ability to build up a strategic argument over a period of time. It was also noted that native speakers placed high value on the quality of the interaction, and not the quantity of it.

42. Other studies on discourse strategies comparing native and non-native speakers have found similar mis-matches of native speaker and non-native speaker behaviour. • Maier (1992), in her study into the differences in politeness strategies used by native and non-native speakers of English, used Brown & Levinson’s (1987) model of politeness strategies, gathering data from eighteen writers, eight native speakers and ten non-native.

43. As with Micheau & Billmyer, she found significant differences in the strategies used where ‘Several of the non-native speaker letters gave the impression of being somehow too casual, too desperate, too personal or too detached’ (Maier 1992:194). • She also found that ‘The native speakers used more negative politeness strategies to preserve the addressee’s face: they mitigated their apologies more, they expressed thanks more often, they were more pessimistic and less direct’ (Maier 1992:202).

44. These last two studies both compared strategies used by native speakers of English to non-native speakers. This leads to the next section, where the influence of culture on the language of business is discussed.

45. A body research has already been carried out into how inter-cultural factors can affect language and discourse or, more specifically, how the language use of one culture is interpreted by the other in business meetings and negotiations. • This next section therefore reviews some of the numerous examples of these studies, starting with intercultural studies of written discourse, followed by a look at research into spoken discourse.

46. (3) 交往/互动分析模式(interactional analysis)是一种动态的分析模式,强调作者和读者之间围绕语篇进行的交往活动及其对语篇解读所产生的影响和作用（作者/说者与读者/听者之间的互动)。 • 例如课堂教学中的师生互动、诊所中医生和患者的互动、服务工作场所工作人员和顾客的互动等。

47. 互动分析描写了话语的宏观结构，揭示了作者/说者与读者/听者之间的互动对话语的产出和理解的影响。互动分析描写了话语的宏观结构，揭示了作者/说者与读者/听者之间的互动对话语的产出和理解的影响。 • 这种分析模式不满足对语篇的静态描写,而是力求探明语篇产生的深层原因。 • 然而,运用这种模式分析语篇往往忽略社会文化对语篇形成的规约性和语篇结构的常规性。

48. (4) 体裁分析(genre analysis)。 • 话语分析文本视角的第四阶段是话体裁型分析 • 秦秀白（2002）称做体裁分析,方琰（1998）称做体裁分析。 • The aim of genre studies into Business English is to present a rounded view of Business English and what is really known about it.

49. 这是Bhatia(1993, 2002) 所称的对话语的深度描写（thick description）。关注点从话语转向话语产生的情境，解释话语是如何在情境中构建、使用、理解甚至被操纵的。 • 换句话说，就是对影响这些话体裁型的社会文化、机构和组织因素进行研究，寻找交际事件的组织常规和话体裁型的潜在原因，揭示步骤知识、惯例做法以及使话语产生并与社会-修辞情境相合的规范(Bhatia 2002:48)。

50. Genre常被理解为“体裁”，且多在文学和修辞学领域使用。随着篇章语言学、文体学和话语分析等研究领域的不断扩大，genre已进入语篇(含“话语”和“篇章”)分析领域。Genre常被理解为“体裁”，且多在文学和修辞学领域使用。随着篇章语言学、文体学和话语分析等研究领域的不断扩大，genre已进入语篇(含“话语”和“篇章”)分析领域。 • 在分析诸如“商店购物”、“医院看病”之类的言语事件时,国外学者常使用genre这一术语 • 在分析诸如“科技文章”、“学术论文”、“商业广告”以及各种“法律文件”的篇章结构时,也大量使用这一术语。