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UNIT 29: DISCOURSE ANALYSIS & COHERENCE. ANAPHORA & CATAPHORA.…

- - - - Goal of all linguists/linguistics philosophers/sociolinguistics etc = to understand language
  - - - EG - syntax: 4 major types of sentences (declaratives, interrogatives, exclamatives, imperatives). BUT often don’t correlate eg teacher - Do you know what time it is?! = not a Q
        
        SO when we say eg an interrogative sentence can be used as assertion (or eg exclamative gosh it’s chilly here! = Q can you put the heating on?) = going beyond syntax/semantics & looking at pragmatics
        
        ∴ DA = the study of the lang in use & AND it implies the study of the elements which make it possible for a text to be understood.
- - - - Eg - Inside the house they found a cat in the bathroom. It was cold and scared.
        
        The the indicates the house has already been mentioned. They (also mentioned) found a cat (new info). It (already mentioned) was cold and scared (new).
        
        BUT also pos. clauses opening with new info eg A rectangular table and 4 chairs stood beneath the window. ‘A’ in subject position expresses new info.
    - - Choice of theme imp & is influenced by context/prior knowledge between speakers etc : eg ‘I can’t stand the noise’ vs ‘it’s the noise I can’t stand’ (2nd implies contrast with something else).
        
        Marked theme – when any other element of structure but the expected one is in the initial position: eg: you’ll never meet a nicer girl’ (normal) vs ‘a nicer girl you’ll never meet’ (rheme 1st)
- - - - An element introduced in 1 point can be taken as a reference point for something that follows (Kirsty works at the hotel. She’s a receptionist)
        
        Can be exophoric (interpretation lies outside the text, in the context) or endophoric (when reference is present within the text AND anaphoric (looking back) or cataphoric (looking forward).
        
        Exophoric: ‘wow look at that, 6 bedrooms!’ (that refers to something the speakers are discussing together). Also: Nike – ‘Just do it’ (reader is free to interpret it as they like).
        
        Endophoric – anaphoric: Look at the sun, it’s going down
        
        Endophoric – cataphoric – It’s going down quickly tonight, the sun.
      - Halliday & Hassan – 1997 – identified 3 types of reference:
        
        1) Personal reference – personal & possessive pronouns & determiners (though can also refer to inanimate objects eg they are nice – the chairs).
        
        2) Demonstrative reference – this, these, that, those & adverbs here, there, now, then (+ the also included in this group) (eg I was born in Vigo and have lived here all my life)
        
        3) Comparative reference – same, identical or different (eg Harry can’t play today, we’ll have to find someone else).
    - - Ellipsis – we presuppose something by means of what has been left out (Can I borrow some colouring pencils? I don’t have any)
      - Substitution – (I’ve lost my pen. Get a new one) - refers to a different pen, INSTEAD of eg Here it is
    - - Signal a relation between segments of discourse, connect clauses & help us interpret the relations between them.
        
        Conjunctions: and, but, so because, although etc,
        
        Adverbs: yet, nevertheless, still, therefore etc,
        
        Adjuncts of various types: to conclude, to summarise…
        
        BUT: connection of text not reliant on connectives – can use other features eg London is the capital of Eng. It is one of the biggest cities in Europe’. V cohesive but no connectives! Quirk: this = asyndetic connection
    - - Neighbouring sentences share grammatical features to give strong impression of being connected. Used a lot in political speeches and adverts to emphasise a point / product.
    - - eg use of adjectives/adverbs of temporal order (before, after that, suddenly, meanwhile etc) – he handed in a good essay, his previous essays were poor.
  - - - (most direct form) – eg she met a bear. The bear was furious.
    - - eg. noise/sound, cavalry/horses. 24 blackbirds baked in a pie, when the pie. was opened, the birds began to sing… (pie - repetition, blackbirds/birds = synonymy).
      - Can have hyponymy (specific-general – eg tree: oak, birch) meronymy (part-whole – eg tree: branch, leaf) and metonymy: when a hypernym is used to refer to a hyponym eg dyson for hoover or kleenex for tissue.
        
        Antonyms can also create cohesion - he fell asleep. What awoke him was…
    - - – eg he loves smoking on the terrace. He sat with a drink and his pipe. Doesn’t work if they can’t be separated eg sheer nonsense, fully awake etc.
- - - - Coherence (unlike cohesion) involves interaction between text & reader/listener.
        
        Inference v important. Eg in narratives, not everything is described. Reader infers certain things will happen (eg characters sleeping at night) freeing up the writer to describe the action.
        
        Reader fills in the gaps – called schemata. Sociocultural dependent – therefore some readers may fill in the gaps more than others.
        
        Eg - Find the ball. Win a car. Pg 4. Can use schemata to deduce there is a competition
    - - Comes from Cooperative Principals (Grice) – 4 maxims – claims speakers have to be informative (QUANTITY), truthful (QUALITY) relevant (RELEVANCE) & clear (MANNER). The information we expect others to understand when we flout the maxims is the implicature. (Different to violating the maxims, - when we break them without expecting others to understand why).
        
        A: That's the telephone! B ‘I’m in the bath!, B ‘ok’. Relevance maxim flouted as what A says doesn’t appear relevant until we consider the context.
- - - - Person deixis – grammatical persons involved in the utterance – did you know?
      - Place deixis – specific location in relation to speaker/hearer at moment of utterance – eg They live downstairs. It’s relative to where the speaker is.
      - Time deixis – Can be positional – I’ll see you on Monday or non-positional – Come here now, I’ll see you tomorrow – the time adverbs are relative to the time when the utterance is made.
      - Social deixis – social identities of people by (eg) referring to their role eg the PM
      - Discourse deixis – lexical or gram. elements which refer to some aspect of the discourse eg ‘in the next paragraph’ ‘as we saw above’ etc.
      - Anaphora, cataphora & deixis = all under same context of reference, although they are all different
        
        Anaphora refers to something mentioned already in the text
        
        Deixis - meaning varies with context in which it is uttered.
        
        Lyons: certain expressions can be anaphoric and deictic – eg ‘I live in the West End’ ‘Oh I like it there’ – there - anaphoric as points back to WEnd and deictic as indicates current location of speaker.
- - - - Quirk - new info normally more elaborated/fully described than the given, so also principle of ‘end-weight’ - longer & heavy structures placed at end.
        
        EG She visited a friend yesterday sounds fine
        
        But She visited an elderly and much beloved friend yesterday sounds bit clumsy - best: yesterday, she visited…. so the weight of the direct object can be at end.