Discourse

speech act

DISCOURSE "Doing something" with words. Most require their purpose/illocutionary force to be inferred. The conditions that determine the appropriacy and interpretation of these are the concerns of pragmatics. Can be 1 of 5 types: -representatives: describe states or events in the world. -directives: aimed at getting people to do things. -commissives: commit the speaker to a course of action. -expressives: express feelings and attitudes. -declaratives: by uttering these, speaker changes the situation. This theory originated in philosophy with JL Austin and John Searle.

conjunctions

DISCOURSE "linkers"; linking expressions that work on the sentence level

disfluencies

DISCOURSE "stops and starts of spoken language"

vague language

DISCOURSE A common feature of spoken language. It performs an important interpersonal function in that it allows speakers to avoid either committing themselves to a proposal or sounding too assertive. Can also be placeholder words used to substitute for more specific terms that the speaker either has forgotten or doesn't want to mention. Also a useful communication strategy that compensates for gaps in lexical knowledge.

text

DISCOURSE A continuous piece of spoken or written language. Normally consists of a number of linked sentences, and has a distinctive internal structure and an identifiable communicative function. Classified into genres. These are not as rule-bound as sentences, there is the expectation that they will be coherent. It is useful to teach language through ___s, rather than apart from them.

conversation routines

DISCOURSE A predictable structure for a type of conversation: e.g. service encounter (sale initiation, sale request, sale compliance, sale, purchase, purchase closure)

end-weight

DISCOURSE A principle in which new information is placed at the end of a sentence rather than at the beginning, which is normally reserved for given information.

paragraph

DISCOURSE A way of organizing written texts into a sequence of topic-related sentences. The division of a text into these is an indication of its macro-structure. These contribute to the overall coherence of a text.

pause filler

DISCOURSE A word or sound used to avoid frequent, long or silent pauses. Used to maintain fluency.

discourse marker

DISCOURSE Also called pragmatic markers. Words or expressions that normally come at the beginning of an utterance, and function to orient the listener to what will follow. Can indicate some kind of cane of direction in the talk or appeal to the listener in some way.

politeness

DISCOURSE An area of pragmatics that focuses on expressing in a manner that is correct for the social situation.

discourse analysis

DISCOURSE Any connected piece of speech or writing. The study of how such stretches of language achieve both cohesion and coherence.

conversation analysis

DISCOURSE Concerned with describing the structure of conversational interaction, including the sequential organization of talk and the ways that speakers repair communication problems. The basic unit of talk is the turn. Managed by turn taking, includes adjacency pairs, conversational openings and closings, backchanneling and repair strategies. Limited in that it divorces conversation from its context.

coherence

DISCOURSE How the sentences in a text relate to each other.

opening/closing

DISCOURSE In conversation: starting and bringing to a close. E.g. "How's it going?", "Well, I'll let you go then."

phatic language

DISCOURSE Language whose purpose is to smooth the conduct of social relations. Unlike transactional language, this language has an interpersonal function. Typically formulaic, as in the case of greetings, and is a characteristic of what is called small talk. Plays a very important role in the formation and maintenance of social groupings.

ellipsis

DISCOURSE Leaving elements out of a sentence because they are either unnecessary or because their sense can be worked out from the immediate context. Very common in spoken language and is also a common feature of certain text types where brevity is a priority (i.e. postcards).

pro forms

DISCOURSE Listening: seeking to anticipate potential difficulties in comprehension, by for example: rehearsing; activating appropriate schemas (Field)

paralinguistic features

DISCOURSE Non-linguistic means of vocal communication, including voice quality, loudness, intonation, and tempo. Also used to describe non-vocal features of communication (such as body language).

literature

DISCOURSE Refers to texts that have a mainly expressive function and which are highly valued in a particular culture. These texts do not feature much in ELT material because they are considered difficult.

face threatening acts

DISCOURSE Requests and invitations are these because they expose both the speaker and the addressee to the risk of a refusal. Often prefaced by a question which gives the addressee a let-out.

negative politeness

DISCOURSE Social behavior which avoids imposing on others. Achieved by saying please or acknowledging imposition and then apologizing.

positive politeness

DISCOURSE Social behavior which expresses positive attitudes to other people. Can take the form of thanking, paying compliments, showing agreement, using terms of address that increase the hearer's sense of importance, using terms of familiarity that imply a close friendship, even if there isn't one.

topic initiation and shift

DISCOURSE Starting a new topic within a conversation and signalling a change to a different one: "Anyway", "By the way", "Have you heard ..."

conversational implicature

DISCOURSE The ability to infer from what has been said what has not been said.

face

DISCOURSE The desire to be appreciated (called positive __) or the desire not to be imposed upon (negative ___).

co-operative principle

DISCOURSE The principle that speakers try to co-operate with one another. When people take part in a conversation they do so on the assumption that the other speakers will observe certain unstated rules. First articulated by H.P. Grice, included 4 maxims: maxim of quantity: make your contribution as informative as required maxim of quality: make your contribution one that is true maxim of relation: make your contribution relevant maxim of manner: avoid obscurity and ambiguity. be brief and orderly. Has been criticized as being culturally biased.

topicalization

DISCOURSE The process of moving an element to the front of a sentence so that it functions as the topic.

reference

DISCOURSE The relation between language forms and things in the real world. Also has a narrower sense, and describes the relation between language forms and their referents in discourse. Anaphoric: back reference cataphroic: forward reference exophoric: direct reference to the non-linguistic context These all aid in cohesion. Deicitic terms typically have exophoric reference.

substitution

DISCOURSE The replacing of a noun phrase or a whole clause by a single word. This is done in order to avoid repetition, or to make a text more cohesive.

pragmatics

DISCOURSE The study of how language is used and interpreted by its users in real-world situations.

cohesion

DISCOURSE The use of grammatical and lexical means to achieve connected text. LEXICAL: repetition, synonyms, general words, same thematic field, substitution, ellipsis; GRAMMATICAL: references, substitution, ellipsis, linkers, parallelism

theme

DISCOURSE The way messages are constructed. This is the 'point of departure' of the message. It typically expresses known (or given) information, often information that is carried over from a previous sentence. The rest of the sentence is called the rheme, and constitutes the new information.

repair

DISCOURSE To correct or modify what you have just said, so as to make it more accurate or more intelligible. Can be self-initiated or other-initiated.

topic

DISCOURSE What the sentence is about. ___ and comment often correspond to what, in grammatical terms, are called subject and predicate. They also correspond to theme and rheme. Not always the subject. Also a term used in discourse and conversation analysi to refer to what people are talking about.

linkers

DISCOURSE Words that join what has already been said or written to what follows. Show the sense relationship between the two linked elements and include: additives (and, firstly), summatives (in sum), appositives (namely, in other words), contrastives (but, instead), concessives (however), resultatives (so, therefore), temporals (then, next). Discursive texts often have a high frequency of linkers to achieve cohesion.

illocutionary act

DISCOURSE a speech act considered for its communicative function rather than its semantic meaning

utterance

DISCOURSE a stretch of speech about which no assumptions have been made as to its boundaries or limits (compare with a sentence)

expression

DISCOURSE a string of elements that can be treated as unitary for the purposes of analysis. Fixed: non-generative ("so be it"). Semi-fixed: marginally generative (allows some substitution) ("make a monkey out of ...").

collocation

DISCOURSE a word that frequently occurs in usage alongside another word, such that the two form a natural pairing. Can be weak or strong.

collocate

DISCOURSE a word which commonly collocates (golden with opportunity; lucky with break; slim with chance; mixed with blessing)

macro-level cohesion

DISCOURSE cohesion at a whole-text level

paralinguistic communication

DISCOURSE communication effected through non-verbal means, e.g. gestures

inherently thematic

DISCOURSE elements that always appear in the theme position: continuatives (yes, no, well, oh, now) and conjunctions.

formulaic speech

DISCOURSE expressions which are learnt as unanalysable wholes and employed on particular occasions (Lyons, 1968)

register

DISCOURSE field-tenor-mode (what-who-how)

parataxis

DISCOURSE in spoken and written texts, the juxtaposition of clauses beside each other through simple co-ordination

false starts

DISCOURSE in spoken discourse, a sentence start that leads nowhere and is changed

adjacency pairs

DISCOURSE in spoken language, structures that are paired (e.g. questions and answers)

repetition

DISCOURSE in spoken texts, a means of ensuring coherence by binding utterances together

hedge/hedging

DISCOURSE noncommittal or evasive language (vague language)

binomial pairs

DISCOURSE pairs of words that co-occur and in so doing express an idiomatic meaning (e.g. hot and cold, back and forth, to and fro)

anaphoric reference

DISCOURSE reference back to something previously mentioned

cataphoric reference

DISCOURSE reference forward to something yet to be mentioned

exophoric reference

DISCOURSE reference to outside of the text

private speech

DISCOURSE speech directed at the self-employed by learners during the silent period

discourse markers

DISCOURSE spoken attention signals that indicate intention in speech

speech in action

DISCOURSE talk that focuses on the immediate environment of the speakers

transactional talk

DISCOURSE talk whose purpose is to achieve the exchange of goods or information

intertextuality

DISCOURSE the capacity of a literary text to incorporate and reference other literary texts

cohesion

DISCOURSE the presence of explicit linking devices in a text

prospection

DISCOURSE the setting up of anticipations about what is to come in a text

style

DISCOURSE the situationally distinct use of language. Variation in speech or writing, usually in a range from casual to formal, depending on the situation, the person addressed etc.

script

DISCOURSE the typical, expected patterning of discourse according to received conventions (general to particular, nearer to further, whole to part)

filled pause

DISCOURSE um, errr

back-channelling

DISCOURSE verbal signals given by the listener to indicate attention, surprise, interest