Lecture 4. Communication theory. Discourse analysis

“Anyone who thinks we are close to

final answers, or that we know how to

find them, must surely be mistaken.”

Wallace Chafe, Discourse,

Consciousness and Time.

To define and describe the scope of study of Text Linguistics and Discourse Analysis and to establish the differences between them both is not an easy task. Suffice it to say that the terms text and discourse are used in a variety of ways by different linguists and researchers: there is a considerable number of theoretical approaches to both Text Linguistics and Discourse Analysis and many of them belong to very different research traditions, even when they share similar basic tenets.

In everyday popular use it might be said that the term text is restricted to written language, while discourse is restricted to spoken language. However, modern Linguistics has introduced a concept of text that includes every type of utterance; therefore a text may be a magazine article, a television interview, a conversation or a cooking recipe, just to give a few examples.

Crystal (1997) defines Text Linguistics as “the formal account of the linguistic principles governing the structure of texts”. De Beaugrande and Dressler (1981) present a broader view; they define text as a communicative event that must satisfy the following seven criteria:

1) Cohesion, which has to do with the relationship between text and syntax. Phenomena such as conjunction, ellipsis, anaphora, cataphora or recurrence are basic for cohesion.

2) Coherence, which has to do with the meaning of the text. Here we may refer to elements of knowledge or to cognitive structures that do not have a linguistic realization but are implied by the language used, and thus influence the reception of the message by the interlocutor.

3) Intentionality, which relates to the attitude and purpose of the speaker or writer.

4) Acceptability, which concerns the preparation of the hearer or reader to assess the relevance or usefulness of a given text.

5) Informativity, which refers to the quantity and quality of new or expected information.

6) Situationality, which points to the fact that the situation in which the text is produced plays a crucial role in the production and reception of the message.

7) Intertextuality, which refers to two main facts: a) a text is always related to some preceding or simultaneous discourse; b) texts are always linked and grouped in particular text varieties or genres (e.g.: narrative, argumentative, descriptive, etc.) by

formal criteria.

In spite of the considerable overlap between Text Linguistics and Discourse Analysis (both of them are concerned with the notion of cohesion, for instance) the above criteria may help us make a distinction between them.

Some authors, such as Halliday, believe that text is everything that is meaningful in a particular situation: “By text, then, we understand a continuous process of semantic choice” (1978:137). In the “purely” textlinguistic approaches, such as the cognitive theories of text, texts are viewed as “more or less explicit epi-phenomena of cognitive processes” (Tischer et al., 2000: 29), and the context plays a subordinate role.

It could be said that the text-internal elements constitute the text, while the text-external ones constitute the context. Schiffrin points out that all approaches within Discourse Analysis view text and context as the two kinds of information that contribute to the communicative content of an utterance, and she defines these terms as follows:

I will use the term “text” to differentiate linguistic material (e.g. what is said, assuming a verbal channel) from the environment in which “sayings” (or other linguistic productions) occur (context). In terms of utterances, then, “text” is the linguistic content: the stable semantic meanings of words, expressions, and sentences, but not the inferences available to hearers depending upon the contexts in which words, expressions, and sentences are used. […] Context is thus a world filled with people producing utterances: people who have social, cultural, and personal identities, knowledge, beliefs, goals and wants, and who interact with one another in various socially and culturally defined situations. (1994: 363).

Thus, according to Schiffrin, Discourse Analysis involves the study of both text and context. One might conclude, then, that Text Linguistics only studies the text, while Discourse Analysis is more complete because it studies both text and context. However, as has been shown, there are definitions of text (like de Beaugrande’s) that are very broad and include both elements, and that is why it would be very risky to talk about clear cut differences between the two disciplines. De Beaugrande’s (2002)

definition of Text Linguistics (herinafter TL) as “the study of real language in use” does not differ from many of the definitions of Discourse Analysis (hereinafter DA) presented by Schiffrin within its functional approach, some of which are the following:

The study of discourse is the study of any aspect of language use (Fasold,

1990: 65).

The analysis of discourse is, necessarily, the analysis of language in use.

As such, it cannot be restricted to the description of linguistic forms independent of the purposes or functions which these forms are designed to serve in human affairs (Brown & Yule, 1983: 1).

Discourse… refers to language in use, as a process which is socially

situated (Candlin, 1997: ix).

Thus, we see that the terms text and discourse are sometimes used to mean the same and therefore one might conclude that TL and DA are the same, too. It can be said, nevertheless, that the tendency in TL has been to present a more formal and experimental approach, while DA tends more towards a functional approach. Formalists are apt to see language as a mental phenomenon, while functionalists see it as a predominantly social one. As has been shown, authors like Schiffrin integrate both the formal and the functional approaches within DA, and consequently, DA is viewed as an all-embracing term which would include TL studies as one approach

among others.

Another important characteristic of discourse studies is that they are essentially multidisciplinary, and therefore it can be said that they cross the Linguistics border into different and varied domains, as van Dijk notes in the following passage:

…discourse analysis for me is essentially multidisciplinary, and involves linguistics, poetics, semiotics, psychology, sociology, anthropology, history, and communication research. What I find crucial though is that precisely because of its multi-faceted nature, this multidisciplinary research should be integrated. We should devise theories that are complex and account both for the textual, the cognitive, the social, the political and the historical dimension of discourse. (2002: 10)

Thus, when analyzing discourse, researchers are not only concerned with “purely” linguistic facts; they pay equal or more attention to language use in relation to social, political and cultural aspects. For this reason, discourse is not only within the interests of linguists; it is a field that is also studied by communication scientists, literary critics, philosophers, sociologists, anthropologists, social psychologists, political scientists, and many others.

Generally speaking, Discourse Analysis is a field of study that examines the way in which a text communicates an intended message between a sender (speaker/writer) and receiver (hearer/reader). It analyzes how language is used, not at the word or sentence level, but at the level of discourse, which can be various sizes. It understands language and discourse as human acts to communicate messages within a specific communicative context. DA attempts to analyze how such messages are communicated, both in the sending and the receiving. The way in which this is done may vary, as we will see below, but it is ultimately a study of linguistics. Because of

this, DA is often referred to a Text Linguistics or Discourse Linguistics.

In many ways, Discourse Analysis is hard to define, since it is relatively new and is still a developing discipline. However, the following definitions are illustrative of its central focus.

Jeffery Reed defines it as a “framework with which the analyst approaches a text and explicates what it says and how it has been said, in addition to what has been understood and how it has been understood.” Gillian Brown and George Yule define it as a study of how “humans use language to communicate and, in particular, how addressers construct linguistic messages for addressees and how addressees work on linguistic message in order to interpret them.” Such communication could be either spoken or written. Note the focus in both of these definitions on both aspects of the communicative process: the speaker/writer and the hearer/reader. The analyst is not solely concerned with the way the writer has chosen his words and expressed his meaning, but the way in which the reader receives and decodes the message. This approach puts the speaker and the hearer at the center of the communication process. It is people who communicate and have purpose and message; they are the ones encode and decode—Discourse Analysis evaluates linguistics and discourse, but not apart from people. Analysis of discourse, then, is an “analysis of discourse in use,” which cannot be separated from the purposes and functions of use in human interaction.

The human element in language instills in the communicative act meaning that might move beyond a simple analysis of the words in use. In this, DA recognizes that communication is a personal event. That is to say, the human element puts meaning into the communicative act— meaning that may be implied by the nature of the act as much as by the words used. For example, the observation that “my glass is almost empty,” may be intended to do more than simply state an observed fact; it may, in certain context, be an implied request for some more to drink. Discourse Analysis would seek to understand how such language is used in human communication to produce a meaning the speaker intends and the listener would understand given their knowledge of the social and situational context of the speech-act. DA further recognizes that the intended meaning is not always the one that is received by the listener, and is interested in the why of multiple interpretations.

Language has a couple of functions in human interaction: transactional or interactional. In transactional language, the primary purpose of the speaker is the “efficient transference of information.” For example, the preceding sentence served a transactional purpose (as does this one). Interactional language is used to maintain social interactions, negotiate role-relationships, for peer-solidarity, or the saving of face. It can even include the taking of turns in speaking. This can be illustrated by use of Austin’s speech-act theory: in the locutionary act of the above sentences, there was the illocutionary act of supplying information (interactional language) that served the perlocutionary purpose of providing you, the reader, with information (transactional). Though here we see a mix of the two functions, such is not always the case. A greeting, apology, argument, farewell, and the like would not serve a transactional purpose, only interactional. While this is only a basic examination, it should serve as sufficient illustration of the focus DA places on the human nature as it pertains to the structure of the communicative act.

Essentially, the focus of DA on the human element of communication is an attempt to identify “how a language is used to create cohesive and coherent communication.” This focuses on the context in which words and phrases are used, because the manner and method of communication can change based on the environment in and purpose for which it is uttered.

We might say that communication consists of transmitting information from one person to another. In fact, many scholars of communication take this as a working definition, and use Lasswell's maxim, "who says what to whom in what channel with what effect," as a means of circumscribing the field of communication theory.

A simple communication model consists of a sender transferring a message containing information to a receiver. By a communication system Claude E. Shannon in his “A Mathematical Theory of Communication” means a system which consists of essentially five parts:

1. An information source which produces a message or sequence of messages to be communicated to the receiving terminal. The message may be of various types: (a) A sequence of letters as in a telegraph of teletype system; (b) A single function of time f (t) as in radio or telephony; (c) A function of time and other variables as in black and white television — here the message may be thought of as a function f (x;y; t) of two space coordinates and time, the light intensity at point (x;y) and time t on a pickup tube plate; (d) Two or more functions of time, say f (t), g(t), h(t)—this is the case in “three dimensional” sound transmission or if the system is intended to service several individual channels in multiplex; (e) Several functions of several variables—in color television the message consists of three functions f (x;y; t), g(x;y; t), h(x;y; t) defined in a three-dimensional continuum—we may also think of these three functions as components of a vector field defined in the region — similarly, several black and white television sources would produce “messages” consisting of a number of functions of three variables; (f) Various combinations also occur, for example in television with an associated audio channel.

2. A transmitter which operates on the message in some way to produce a signal suitable for transmission over the channel. In telephony this operation consists merely of changing sound pressure into a proportional electrical current. In telegraphy we have an encoding operation which produces a sequence of dots, dashes and spaces on the channel corresponding to the message. In a multiplex PCM system the different speech functions must be sampled, compressed, quantized and encoded, and finally interleaved properly to construct the signal. Vocoder systems, television and frequency modulation are other examples of complex operations applied to the message to obtain the signal.

3. The channel is merely the medium used to transmit the signal from transmitter to receiver. It may be a pair of wires, a coaxial cable, a band of radio frequencies, a beam of light, etc.

4. The receiver ordinarily performs the inverse operation of that done by the transmitter, reconstructing the message from the signal.

5. The destination is the person (or thing) for whom the message is intended.