7. The Future of Discourse Studies

If we measure the success of a discipline by its propagation in other disciplines, the study of discourse has been very successful indeed. There are only a few disciplines and areas in the humanities and social sciences that have not engaged in some form of discourse studies. Discourse studies has become a major crossdiscipline within and related to other major disciplines in the humanities and social sciences – and as one of the major disciplines accounting for the most human of all phenomena: language use. However, there exist speculations and wishes about the future developments of the study of discourse.

Firstly, there are ‘traditional’ areas that need (much) more attention, such as the study of the many dimensions of discourse semantics, and the further integration of micro- and macro-semantics. Secondly, we need a much more explicit integration of rhétoric into the study of discourse, instead of the separate, more traditional formulation of ‘figures of speech’.

Moreover, the number of discourse types hardly ever studied is probably much bigger than the discourse types that have been studied. That is why we will try to analyze the difference between scientific and science-related types of discourse.

Compared to formal grammar, most discourse studies are quite informal. This is as such no problem (also because informal studies are more accessible to more students and non-academic readers), but that does not mean that discourse analysis should be less explicit and systematic. The description of structures and strategies at all levels earlier mentioned should take place in terms of explicit theories, and analyses of specific discourse types should be systematic and relevant, and not merely a personally-subjective interpretation, paraphrase or comment on text or talk, as is still often the case in many studies that claim to do ‘discourse analysis’.

TOPIC 2. Approaches to Discourse Studies

1. Analysis of Spoken Discourse. Speech Act Theory and Pragmatics

2. Analysis of Written Discourse

3. Approaches to Cohesion and Rhetorical Structure Analysis

4. Forms of Cohesion

5. Approaches to Register and Genre Analysis

6. Speech and Discourse Communities

7. New Literacy Studies

1. Analysis of Spoken Discourse. Speech Act Theory and Pragmatics

Nowadays it seems obvious that to investigate language use we need to look at real examples of language in use. Much early work on the nature of spoken interaction was carried out by philosophers of language, based on introspection rather than empirical data. Nonetheless, this work has greatly influenced the way that other researchers examine spoken data, particularly by drawing attention to the need to distinguish between the surface linguistic features of an utterance, and the functions for which it might be used in practice.

Across the range of different approaches to spoken interaction, analysts share a concern to move beyond the classification of linguistic forms to identify what isgoing on in the interaction in terms of the purposes it serves for participants.

One influential approach emerging from the philosophy of language was speech act theory, which originated in the work of John Austin. The title of his book How to Do Things with Words (1962) signalled his move away from philosophy’s preoccupation with the truth value of sentences towards an engagement with the way utterances are used in context to perform a variety of functions.

Austin initially distinguished between what he called constative utterances, which he saw as statements of fact, and performative utterances such as ‘I pronounce you man and wife’, or ‘I apologise for the delay’, which cannot be evaluated as either true or false, but only in terms of whether or not they function successfully. He later collapsed this distinction, recognising that all utterances, in context, performed some kind of action such as requesting or promising or greeting, and arguing that their successful performance depended not necessarily on their truth value, but on a range of felicity conditions. For a felicitous request, for example, the speaker needs to ask for something which they believe the hearer can provide: you can’t ‘request’ a friend to make you invisible, except ironically. Austin distinguished between locutionary acts (the act of uttering words in sequence to make meaning); illocutionary acts (the act performed by the speaker in producing the utterance, e.g. making a promise); and perlocutionary acts (the effect of the utterance on the listener, e.g. being persuaded).

Another influential concept from the philosophy of language is the cooperative principle outlined by Paul Grice, based on the observation that ‘our talk exchanges do not normally consist of a succession of disconnected remarks, and would not be rational if they did. They are characteristically, to some degree at least, co-operative efforts’ (Grice 1975: 45). Grice suggests that, in order to have a conversation, participants normally cooperate with each other by observing four conversational maxims (See Seminar III):

• Quantity Make your contribution as informative as is required. Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.

• Quality Try to make your contribution one that is true. Do not say what you believe to be false. Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.

• Relation Be relevant.

• Manner Be perspicuous: (avoid obscurity of expression, avoid ambiguity); be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity); be orderly.

Conversational partners can use this cooperative principle to make sense of what the other is saying, even when the literal meaning is unclear. So, in the invented example below, B’s response flouts the maxim of relation, but its apparent irrelevance leads A to infer that B believes the Browns to be at home.

A Are the Browns home?

B The lights are on.

B’s response involves what Grice calls a ‘conversational implicature’, when a speaker, by saying one thing, implicates another, on the assumption that the hearer can work out what interpretation is necessary in order to make what was said consistent with the cooperative principle.

Although Grice’s insight into the cooperative nature of conversation has been illuminating, the maxims themselves can be difficult to distinguish in practice, and Sperber and Wilson (1995) suggest that they can be consolidated into one overriding principle of relevance, based on a trade-off between cognitive effort and inferential effect. Rather than give an explanation about his lack of firm knowledge, Speaker B gives a brief answer involving minimum effort, on the assumption that A will draw the necessary inferences in order to make the response relevant. This principle of relevance, they argue, makes the other maxims unnecessary.

Like Austin and Grice, John Searle was interested in how a speaker could say one thing and mean another. He saw the theory of language as part of a theory of action (Searle 1969: 17), but stressed its rule-governed behaviour. Taking up Austin’s idea of felicity conditions, Searle specified sets of conditions for different illocutionary acts (or speech acts) in order to explicate what would be necessary for a speaker to perform them successfully. Searle’s particular contribution was to show how such rules could help to explain indirect speech acts, where the speaker communicates to the hearer more than he actually says by way of relying on their mutually shared background information, both linguistic and nonlinguistic, together with the general powers of rationality and inference on the part of the hearer. In this later work, Searle draws on Grice’s ideas about the cooperative nature of conversation and, like Grice, analyses meaning in terms of the speaker’s intentions.

His ideas have influenced the more cognitively-focused approach of Sperber and Wilson, but have also contributed to developments in the functional analysis of dialogue.

Other influential work in pragmatics includes the politeness theory of Brown and Levinson (1978), which builds on Goffman’s idea of face, i.e. a person’s public self-image, which needs to be managed during an interaction. Politeness strategies can involve an orientation towards ‘positive face’ (a person’s need to be seen as a good person) or towards ‘negative face’ (a person’s need not to be imposed on). Positive politeness strategies include the expression of appreciation and approval and negative politeness strategies involve the avoidance of attack or intrusion, for instance through the use of indirect requests and euphemisms.

Participants in social interactions each seek to satisfy their own and others’ need for ‘face’. The way in which a request is expressed, for example, will be influenced by the social distance between speaker and hearer, the power relations involved, and the degree of imposition involved in the request; asking your brother to lend you a pen is likely to be expressed rather differently from asking your bank manager for a large loan. This theory can also account for differences between cultures in terms of the weight they attach to either positive or negative face. It relies though on the assumption that conversational participants are indeed concerned with saving each other’s face and, like Grice’s cooperative principle, sees politeness as a matter of consensus, rather than deriving from unequal power relationships in society.

Critical discourse analysts would paint a rather different picture. One of the key features of conversation analysis (CA) is its insistence on analysing the moment-by-moment interaction of conversation, rather than looking to the surrounding context to explain what is going on. This analytical stance derives from the ethnomethodological approach developed by the sociologist Harold Garfinkel, which focuses on the production of social order through interaction at the micro-level. Garfinkel pointed out that social life is not simply a matter of following norms, because in order to follow a norm you have to be able to recognise when it applies, and different people’s interpretations may vary. As a result, individuals have to coordinate their activities in any given situation not only by interpreting the situation themselves, but also by recognizing how other people are interpreting it. CA adopts this perspective by analyzing the processes through which participants accomplish talk in interaction, and by taking as evidence only what the participants themselves show they have recognised as relevant. This approach requires close attention to the sequential structure of conversation.

Unlike much of the early work in speech act theory, conversation analysts place particular importance on using detailed transcripts of naturally occurring recorded data.

They suggest that speakers intuitively recognise and predict transition relevance places where speaking turns are potentially complete (for instance, at the end of a clause or phrase, e.g. ‘Happy birthday girl’, or through intonation patterns, for instance high rising intonation), and where they can cut in smoothly to start talking. Another noticeable feature is the use of adjacency pairs (Schegloff and Sacks 1973), where the occurrence of a particular ‘first pair part’, such as a question, creates the expectation that a corresponding ‘second pair part’ will follow.

This sort of reasoning is characteristic of a conversation analytic approach to discourse. Avoiding any prior theoretical assumptions, the analyst attends to what the participants themselves demonstrate to be relevant to them at each point in the interaction. Contextual features are not therefore considered, unless they are demonstrably recognised by the participants. With its restricted view of context, CA is at the ‘textual’ end of the discourse analysis spectrum, as opposed to more socially-oriented approaches such as critical discourse analysis (CDA). In a critique of CDA from a CA perspective, Schegloff stresses the need for critical discourse analysts to address ‘discursive events in their import for their participants’, sparking counterarguments from both Wetherell (1998) and Billig (1999).

CA methodology can be criticised on the one hand for inconsistency, since by the very act of selecting what data to record the analyst is introducing some prior theoretical categories, and on the other hand for limiting its attention only to what participants demonstrate as relevant at one particular point in time, rather than in other events that may have a bearing on the current interaction. Finally, although close analysis of the detail of conversation is one of its strengths, it brings with it the danger of missing the wood for the trees, and failing to recognize the significance of larger social structures.

Ethnographic approaches come out of a rather different tradition, which has its origins in anthropology, where research methods emphasise the need for analysts to immerse themselves in a culture in order to understand what is going on. Both ethnography and conversation analysis require the analyst to begin without preconceived notions of what is or is not significant for the participants, but in other respects their approaches differ. Conversation analysts tend to examine in fine detail a small amount of conversational data, whereas ethnographers aim for a ‘thick description’ of the participants’ language practices that involves collecting large amounts of information from various sources, including interviews as well as recordings of daily interactions. And, while in CA the text is central, with features of the context used only when the text itself provides evidence of their relevance, ethnographers would not regard a text as something that can be separated from its context.

Hymes pioneered the ‘ethnography of communication’, with its views on the crucial role of context. Hymes also set the goals for this research tradition, which aims to uncover how members of a speech community develop the communicative competence that enables them to participate appropriately in a range of speech events – an approach that has been particularly influential when applied to the pedagogy of language learning.

One of the criticisms of early ethnographies was that they adopted an ‘essentialist’ view of culture, in which each community was portrayed as separate, distinct and homogenous. Interactional sociolinguistics, discussed below, developed in part as a reaction to this view of culture. It builds on John Gumperz’ study of language and interaction, drawing also on Hymes’ work on the functions of language in social life (discussed above) and Goffman’s sociological analysis of everyday encounters. It tends to be associated with qualitative research approaches. Focusing on naturally occurring speech and its function and meaning in specific contexts, interactional sociolinguists are interested in how language is used to manage relationships between speakers, particularly in the negotiation of unequal relationships and in the context of intercultural communication. They have focused on a range of interactional features, for instance the use and effects of codeswitching between languages or language varieties, different patterns of turn-taking and the use of silence. Interactional sociolinguistic studies are often combined with an ethnographic approach.

Goffman observed that the way we interact with each other depends on our assumptions about ‘what it is that is going on’, whether, for example, we are taking part in a job interview, or a seminar or a family reunion. This provides the frame for the interaction, affecting what we feel is appropriate to say or do. We learn these principles of social conduct through a process of socialisation, but since each individual’s background and development is unique, our interpretations and expectations do not necessarily coincide. These differences in socialisation and understanding of particular frames can lead to negative consequences. Scollon and Scollon (1983) suggest, for example, that because of differences in the way native Alaskans interpreted the pre-sentencing stage of the judicial system, their behaviour made an unfavourable impression on the individuals who wrote their pre-sentence reports, leading to longer jail terms. According to Gumperz, participants’ interpretations of what is going on in any particular situation depends on cues that signal the speaker’s assumptions about the frame in which they are operating. These contextualisation cues include not only lexical and syntactic choices, but also aspects of conversational structure such as turn-taking, and paralinguistic features such as intonation, gaze and gesture.

While the different frames define the nature of the activity, there are also differences in what Goffman calls footing, that is, the way that participants align in relation to one another. Frame deals with the nature of the activity, and footing with the nature of the interaction.

Interactional sociolinguistics focuses in particular on linguistic and cultural diversity, and is often concerned with the asymmetries between participants who do not share the same interpretive backgrounds. Where contextualisation cues are interpreted differently, barriers to communication can emerge, which may help to maintain social inequalities. In examining the role of culture in shaping interaction, interactional sociolinguistics thus approaches issues tied up with the ideology of language. It does so, however, without the overt call to social action which is associated with critical discourse analysis.

Sociolinguists have been interested in the role of narrative, or story, in interaction (e.g. Tannen, Norrick, Toolan). Narratives, in this sense, refer not just to more formal storytelling performances but also to routine accounts of incidents and events that occur in everyday conversation.

The leading figures in the development of conversation analysis and interactional sociolinguistics tended to be American, at least in the early stages. In Britain, meanwhile, a different line of enquiry was developing, with the functional theories of the so-called ‘London School’ of Firth and Halliday moving upcountry to re-emerge as the ‘Birmingham school’. Here, John Sinclair and Malcolm Coulthard embarked upon a study of classroom discourse in which they set detailed criteria for analysis, aiming to account for the whole of their classroom data with a finite set of categories that were defined so as to allow precise identification of examples. As with conversation analysis, they focused on the evidence available in the textual data, and sought to identify general patterns, rather than simply describe the particular features of individual lessons. Sinclair and Coulthard’s model (1975) involves a hierarchy of five levels – lesson, transaction, exchange, move and act – in which a typical exchange consists of initiating (I), responding (R) and follow-up (F) (or evaluating) moves, and each move is realised by acts such as eliciting, informing, prompting, acknowledging, accepting and commenting. The three-part IRF structure has indeed been very influential for educational researchers such as Wells (1993) and Mercer (1995). The problem is that an analysis designed for this very specific situation may not be suitable for other types of interaction in different contexts.

Much of the work in genre analysis is motivated by a concern to improve the teaching of genre, thereby helping people to gain access to discourses such as those of higher education or the professions. Interactional sociolinguistics, too, might be regarded as taking an optimistic view of linguistic and cultural diversity, with the aim of increasing cross-cultural understanding. Critical discourse analysis (CDA), however, challenges such approaches, seeing discourse as a site of struggle and calling for a change in the social structure itself. A key aspect of this approach is that ‘discourse is socially constitutive as well as socially shaped’(Fairclough and Wodak); that, in other words, while discourse is determined by social conditions, it also reproduces and perpetuates those conditions. Critical discourse analysts may explicitly declare the political motivation for their work, for instance Norman Fairclough, a leading proponent of CDA, refers to himself as a Marxist. Fairclough is concerned with hegemonic power, which is maintained through the consent of those who are dominated. To explicate the way that discourse may contribute to the marginalisation of certain groups, CDA investigates the links between three levels of discourse:

• discourse-as-text: the analysis of what is said and written;

• discourse-as-discursive practice: the processes by which texts are produced, distributed, consumed and interpreted;

• discourse-as-social-practice: the social structures and practices through which discourse achieves its ideological effects.

Consider the following example in which a police officer interviews a witness to a robbery:

1 P Did you get a look at the one in the car?

2 W I saw his face, yeah

3 P What sort of age was he?

4 W About 45. He was wearing a . . .

5 P And how tall?

6 W Six foot one.

7 P Six foot one. Hair?

8 W Dark and curly. Is this going to take long? I’ve got to collect the kids from school?

9 P Not much longer, no. What about his clothes?

10 W He was a bit scruffy-looking, blue trousers, black . . .

11 P Jeans?

12 W Yeah.

Fairclough points out that the unequal relationship between the participants is reflected in features such as the police officer’s control over the witness’s contributions, the reduced form of his questions and the lack of mitigation (e.g. ‘And how tall?’ rather than ‘Could you perhaps give me an idea of his height?’), and the lack of acknowledgement of the witness’s problem with her children. The discourse reflects the nature of the relationship between the police and members of the community, and is itself part of the process by which that relationship is sustained. CDA stresses the need for close linguistic analysis of discourse-as-text in order to explicate the way discourse can contribute to exploitation and marginalization of certain groups. CDA has been criticised, however, for using linguistic analysis only in ‘a supporting role’ to illustrate what is essentially interpretation rather than analysis (Widdowson 1995). Similarly, Schegloff (1997) argues that critical discourse analysts tend to project their own biases into the analysis. Discussing these criticisms, Blommaert and Bulcaen (2000) suggest that a new critical paradigm is emerging, which relates microlevel analysis of text to macro-level social structures and processes, with a focus on issues such as ideology, inequality and power.