Discourse

self-initiated and self-repaired

"oh no, what am I saying" > realising it

Issues in Discourse Markers research

- Inventory: definition -Pragmatic function: core meaning; polysemy - Socialinguistics: who uses which marker

Participation frameworks (2)

- Other-repair: Repair of a problematic item in another speaker's utterance. - Turn-transition place:Place often marked by syntactic closure, international boundary, and/or propositional completion where another may begin to talk.

Critical Discourse Analysis CDA

- analyze social reality on the basis of language and linguistic data - want to understand, expose, and ultimately resist social inequality example: Doctor-Patient interaction

Functions of interaction

- back channelling - showing that people already knows something - that they want to hear sth.

Functions of "well"

- frame: shift to a new topic - face threat mitigator: trying to mediate the face threat - qualifier: not the most intelligent answer after a difficult question - pause filler

Analytical categories of CDA (4)

- initiatives (asking for info, complaining, ...) - reactions (answering, interrupting) - problem solving strategies - discursive negotiation & formation of relationship

Data for discourse analysis (3)

- naturally occuring conversation as a feature of social life, and the use of tape-recordings and transcripts is a practical stragety for apprehending it - spoken interaction - recordings of spoken interaction - transcription of recordings

2 functions of discourse markes

- pragmatic: > textual: speaker structures utterances as a text > interpresonal: speaker expresses subjective attitudes, evaluations, acknowledges > maintains social exchange with hearer - referential/propositional > grammatical, content semantics; how is meaning constructed and conceived?

Repairs of misunderstandings (4)

- self-initiated and self-repaired - other-initiated and self-repaired - self-initiated and other-repaired - other-initated and other-repaired

main tenets of CDA

- social problems - power relations are visible - society and culture - discourse does ideological work - discourse is historical - text and society lesser linked - discourse is interpretative and explanatory - discourse is a form of social action (not just behaviour)

Organisation of Information: influenced by...

-Interactional roles → - Interactional roles → Who is speaking? Who is listening? -Stable social relationships among people → Role in family, socioecon. Status. -Implicit cultural models → What we should do, how we should act etc

3 Aspects of language (that is captured by a transcript)

-features of speech →intonation, volume, nonfluencies -aspects of interaction→such as overlaps between turns at talk -aspects of nonvocal behaviou→gaze, gesture

two kinds of readings in discourse analysis

-sequence: Who says what and when? What is the significance? How is it related to what came before? -distribution: Quality of language in discourse; What forms or ways of speaking occur where? Do some features occur together more than others? What could account for co-occurance?

Discourse structure / two different perspectives on discourse (2)

1: Macro perspective: Rules that specify "grammatical" patterns • Top down • What is the global structure of a discourse? 2: Micro perspective: •Bottom up • How do utterances fit together? • Turn organization • Adjacency pairs

other-initiated and self-repaired

A: "i met mr müller. what was his name again?" - B: "he's called X" • other: i realise that you made a mistake ◦either say it or ask a question/repeat..

Back channels

Brief utterances like mmhmm that speakers use to signal they are paying attention, but don't' want to talk just yet.

Discourse (Definition)

Discourse is the use of language above and beyond the sentence: how people use language in texts and contexts. Discourse analysts focus on peoples' actual utterances and try to figure out what processes make those utterances appear the way they do.

Components of Discourse

Participants: Addressor, addressee, audience Ends: Purpose of event, goals of participants Key: Mock vs. serious, perfunctory vs. painstaking etc. Form:Dialect, variety, register etc. Genre: Poem, proverb, lecture, advertisement etc. Norms:"No gap, no overlap" in conversation, "speak only when you're spoken to" for children.

Turn-transition place

Place often marked by syntactic closure, international boundary, and/or propositional completion where another may begin to talk.

Written discourse

Planned, edited, pre-modified phrases, definite descriptions, sentential, marked relationships between clauses.

Adjacency pair

Relationship between two utterances in discourse - A two-part sequence in which the first part sets up a strong expectation that a particular second part will be provided. - This expectation is so strong that the first part constrains the interpretation of the second part. - utterances are produced by different speakers - they are ordered as first part and second part examples: greeting-greeting, compliment-response, invitation-accept/reject, etc.

other-repair

Repair of a problematic item in another speaker's utterance.

Discourse Markers

Small words and phrases that indicate how what someone is about to say (often in the beginning of a spoken utterance) fits into what has already been said and into what they are about to say. (a) to signal a transition in the evolving progress of the conversation, and (b) to signal an interactive relationship between speaker, hearer, and message." ex: Hey,...; well; though, right?

Coherence

Speakers and writers construct language to fit the current context, while listeners and readers interpret talk and text based on the context.

Recipient design

The process whereby a speaker takes the listener into account when presenting information.

Spoken discourse

Unplanned→ Hence hesitations, pauses, fillers, disgression, dynamic topic development, generalized vocabulary, repetition of formulaic speech.

Interactional roles

Who is speaking? Who is listening?

Deictics

deictic expressions refer to the postition, place, time of the speaker face-to-face: here, over there, right now, yesterday or the hearer: on your left, just behind you written: to the left of the house

FLOOR concept

gaining the floor in conversation - how to keep the floor - cultural differences

Speech act

minimal unit of speech event ex: offer, opening, invocation; Requests, compliments, apologies etc

Communicative competence (Hymes)

our tacit cultural knowledge about - how to use language in different speech situations - how to interact with different people engaged together in different speech events - how to use language to perform different acts.

Speech situation

scene (cultural) and setting (physical) - A social occasion with more than one speech event. ex: market place, conversation, ceremony

Well: discourse marker

signpost signalling to the hearer that the context created by the previous utterance is not the most relevant one for the interpretation of the impending utterance.

Discourse Transcription

the process of creating a representation in writing of a speech event so as to make it accessible to discourse research

Speech event

within Speech situation, composed of Speech acts ex: transaction, story, prayer; Face-to-face greetings, telephone openings etc.

Oral Narratives (Labov)

• Abstract: What, in a nutshell, is this story about? • Orientation: Who, when, where, what? • Complicating actions: Then what happened? • Evaluation: So what, how is this interesting? • Result or resolution: What finally happened? • Coda: That is the end of the story, the speaker has finished and is 'bridging' back to the present speaker-addressee situation.

ways of initiate a repair

‣ ask a question ‣ repeat part of the utterance to be repaired ‣ abruptly stop speaking ‣ use paticles and expressions like uh, I mean, or that is