Discourse Analysis - Literature review Example

Discourse Analysis Student’s name Institutional Affiliation Discourse Analysis Discourse analysis is concerned with the use of language beyond the restrictions of the sentences, the link between the society and their language as well as the properties of the interactive dialog in daily conversations (Anna &Georgakopoulou, 2011). The interpretation of a narrative depends on the linguistic correlation between the two languages. Meaning the analysis of a text needs the right linguistic analysis. The interpreter needs to understand the relationships between the culture and context situations, how the texts are produced as a social practice, the thoughts, believes and happenings of the storytellers as well as the ideologies represented by the texts such as the struggle for power. Text analysis distinguishes texts from random sentences in the study of formal linguistic devices (Renkema 2004). During the study of the text-forming devices, discourse analysts reference the functions and purposes on which the discourse was produced as well as the context within which the discourse was produced. The main objective of disclosure analysis is showing the capability of communication between language users by using linguistic elements (Johnstone, 2002). Disclosure analysis is a very ambiguous term as it is used to study the organization of a language beyond the structure of a sentence or the clause and hence studies larger linguistic units like written texts or conversational exchanges. Discourse analysis also comprises the use of language in social contexts as well as in the interactions between two speakers who are in a dialogue (Blommaert 2005). The context entails the knowledge of the participants as well as their paralanguage perception, culture, text, the situation, the world and its role, intentions as well as the relationships that exist between the participants in the narrative. There are several steps which are used to approach DA (Anna &Georgakopoulou, 2011). Speech Act Theory by Austin is a logical-philosophic perspective that focuses on the interpretation of the conversation rather than discourse utterances in the production. Language is used to perform actions and that remains the basic belief. To achieve a particular purpose, the utterance of the intention of the speaker is analyzed. Austin and Searle were not concerned with the analysis of continuous discourse. Here, speech act or the illocutionary force is used as the unit of analysis. The principal actions that might crop up are the failure of the one-to-one matching up between the grammatical form of the context and the discourse function. SAT offers insight as the basic unit of analyzing a conversation. It mFust be motivated functionally but not defined formally (Cortazzi, 2014). Interactional Sociolinguistics by Gumperz & Goffman is also another approach in understanding DA. The authors were concerned with the significance of the context in the efforts of interpreting discourse. They used prosodic and grammatical features as their basic unit of analysis (Blommaert 2005).  They argued that the individuals interacting have differing socio-cultural backgrounds and may hear and comprehend discourse differently based on how they interpret the cues of contextualization in the discourse. These might take forms of alignment, intonation contours, gender as well as speaking on behalf of the other. Schiffrin (2015) focused on quantitative interactive sociolinguistic analysis, esp. discourse markers and used turn as the basic unit of analysis. His basic concern was to achieve conversational coherence in order to understand the significance of using different discourse markers in the conversation (Cortazzi, 2014). Ethnography of Communication by Dell Hymes was concerned with the unraveling of the social context in the linguistic interactions between two individuals. The speech event was the basic unit of analysis by Dell. There are rules governing the norms in a speech as well as the activities that take place parallel to the speech (Reiner, 2011). Ethnography of speaking takes into account the components of a speech where the aim of the ethnographer is to discover the appropriateness of the rules of the speech events. This framework by Dell provides a breakthrough in achieving communicative competence. However, Dell Hymes failed to account for the interactions that exist between the components of the speaking grid and genre as well as how they are expressed in the language used (Anna &Georgakopoulou, 2011). Pragmatics by Grice, Leech & Levinson formulated the conversational behavior on the basis of general principles rather than being dictated by rules. The authors in this approach used the cooperative principle by Griceans which seeks to account for the decision of the participants on what will be done next as well as how the interlocutors interpret the texts of the previous speaker. This principle is based on quantity where the speaker can say as much as she/he wants, quality where he/she tries to make a true contribution, relation where the speaker has to be relevant as well as the manner where the speaker has to be brief and unambiguous(Blommaert 2005). It provides significant means of characterizing diverse varieties of conversation such as deliberate provocations in an interaction. However, they failed to recognize that in real life, conversations encompass resistance and disagreement levels and power is constantly contested (Atkinson & Heritage 1999). Conversation Analysis (CA) by Harold Garfinkel is a branch of ethnomethodology and is concerned by social members derive sense from the events of everyday. Conversation is a turn taking activity as only one individual speaks at a time and the speakers change recurs. The speakers recognize the points of potential speaker change (turn constructional unit (TCU)) which is a critical unit of conversation. Conversation is an infinite generative turn-taking exercise where the people interacting try to avoid lapse or the possibility that nobody is speaking (Cortazzi, 2014).  According to Roman Jakobson, language performs 6 functions which are Addressor (emotive); Context (referential); (conative); Contact (phatic); Message (poetic); and Code (metalinguistic).The utterances of the individuals interacting pose multiple significance. DA is majorly concerned with turning them out into more general and broader analysis of how language functions (Atkinson & Heritage 1999). Variation Analysis by Labov 1972a, Labov and Waletzky1967 argued that the fundamental narrative structures are evident in spoken narratives of personal experience. William Labov proposed linguistic approaches to sequential perspectives of narratives on conversations. He and Joshua Waletzky in the article Narrative Analysis: Oral Versions of Personal Experience cleared demonstrated how language works when two people are conversing. Narratives have two functions according to Labov: Evaluative and referential. Evaluative functions describe the purpose of the storyteller when narrating and the referential functions to orientate and ground the story at hand in its contextual world by making references of the sequence of events as they occurred originally (Atkinson & Heritage 1999). Narrative according to Labov is divided into 5 or 6 sections. There is the first section which is the abstract giving the overview of the story. 2nd is the orientation that serves to orientate the listener with respect to the individual, time, place as well as behavioral backgrounds. Here, the contextual clues preceding the main story are outlined here. Thirdly is complication which is the unfolding of the main story as a story may comprise various complication sections. 4th is the Evaluation section where the narrator demonstrates self-awareness and explicitly or implicitly retells the story. Here the significance of the story being narrated is outlined. The fifth aspect is resolution which takes action sequentially preceding the evaluation. Here, the sense of story completion is felt. Finally we have the coda section where the narrator returns the listener to the current world of the storytelling event. It is not so essential in a narrative and even some of them lack it (Hepburn & Bolden 2013). These elements show that there is an inherent structure in the order of a narrative. Stories should be narrated in the same sequence they occurred or experienced as they are temporarily sequential (events don’t occur at random but have interconnections). The original semantic interpretation of a story depends on the original order in how events took place (Hepburn & Bolden, 2013). The story is broken down into basic parts in order to demonstrate the sequence in it. Everything else in a story is built around narrative clause. Temporal junctures differentiate the clauses in the story which separate narrative clauses and indicate time shift. The clauses cannot be rearranged without disrupting meaning and hence temporal junctures are intended to mark the temporal sequence in the story. The inductive method by Labov (Columbia University) and Waletzky (Harvard University) created a new system on which the text of a story could be understood. Free clauses can be inserted instantaneously in the story to facilitate interpretation and keep the attention of the audience. The exclamative and explanatory pauses serve this purpose (Anna &Georgakopoulou, 2011). Vernacular language can be defined as the language that an individual first acquired, learned it perfectly and it is only used by the individuals who speak the same vernacular. Eliciting personal experiences and narratives proves to be an effective solution to the paradox that occurs during face to face interviews by two native and non-native characters (Reiner, 2011). To gain a deeper understanding of language and social life, it is essential to interpret the data obtained from the reactions of the audience of the narrative but not from the observations of the speech generated by them (Hepburn & Bolden, 2013). There is a profound concentration of attention that is observed and demands immobility and uninterrupted silence to understand the context of the narrative. Labov suggested a formal framework to achieve this by choosing a specific linguistic technique when reporting events of the past. Narratives are privileged forms of discourse playing a critical role in a conversation. The narratives above are paradigmatic and have demonstrated the ability of transferring the experience of the narrator to the audience (Hepburn & Bolden 2013). The spontaneous conversational narrative is the basic prototype of an oral narrative. These two conversations entail face-to-face exchange and Labov &Waletzky (1967) described such oral narration as natural narrative. The stories have developed from sequences of narratives as the two speakers crack jokes spontaneously about the experiences of their previous lives. For a narrative to be effective, it must be newsworthy and reportable as well as have a point demonstrating something. All these features played a critical role to the definition of experientiality by Fludernik consisting of dialect of tellability and point. The conversational exchanges come from discourse units but not from the sentences. These are separated by pauses in the flow of the story as well as completion of frames. Natural narrative is intertwined with verbatim dialogue and repetitions from the participants. The quotations from the thoughts of the participants in the events functionalize and dramatize the stories in a way that can be remembered. Schiffrin (2015) said that narrative and non-narrative discourse markers are also employed by conversational narratives. These entail particles which are placed in adjunct position of clauses. Their purpose is to offer macro-structural discourse significance like initiating a new topic, capturing the intention of the interlocutors, returning from the main remark side to the main topic or so. The shifting between the on-plot and the off-plot levels is achieved by the use of narrative discourse markers which also mark the key points of narrative episodes. According to Hutchby & Wooffitt, conversation analysis concerns the interactive and performative aspects when exchanging conversations but discourse analysis encompasses the systematic and rule-based features of a natural narrative (Reiner, 2011). Analysis of the case From these two cases, the speakers give the overview of their stories given the clear illustration of the varying tone of their speech. In linguistics, to ne refers to the variation in the pitch of the voice while speaking. The tone helps to differentiate words and grammatical categories. This means that the tone is used to distinguish between words which are identical in their sequence of vowels and consonants. For example, in the conversations between the native and non-native speaker, cases increased and reduced voice pitches are many (Blommaert 2005). When the non-native speaker talks of being hot in Melbourne, the tone used is higher than the previous tone used during the previous conversation (It is very hot in Melbourne today, right.↑). The use and analysis of tonal variation helps in getting the meaning of a conversation as seen in the communication between the native speaker and the non-native speaker in the case given. According to Labov, the orientation from the two speakers serves to orientate the listener with respect to the individual, time, place as well as behavioral backgrounds. Here, the contextual clues preceding the main story are outlined here (Hepburn & Bolden, 2013). The speech content may be excellent; however, it cannot match the needs of the audience unless it is delivered in in an interesting way. One voice or rather pitch of a voice is very boring and this means that the case given is very much interesting since there are various cases of tonal variation and actions. This helps in enhancing the flow and meaning of the conversation especially in a situation where the conversation is between a native and a non-native speaker. As put across by Labov, a formal framework should be evident in any conversation and this is achieved by choosing a specific linguistic technique when reporting events of the past. Narratives and conversations are privileged forms of discourse playing a critical role in a conversation. The narratives above are paradigmatic and have demonstrated the ability of transferring the experience of the narrator to the audience (Chafe &Wallace, 2006). Complication is also evident from the flow of the conversation between the native and non-native speakers which are the unfolding of the main story as a story may comprise various complication sections. Evaluation section is where the narrator demonstrates self-awareness and explicitly or implicitly retells the story. The two speakers in the two cases outline the significance of the stories they are narrating. Another aspect evident in the case of using a sentence structure that creates a flow from one sentence or paragraph to another (Cortazzi, 2014). The sequence created in the communication between the native and the non-native speaker helps in creating an inherent structure in the order of a narrative. As Labov asserts, stories and conversations should be narrated in the same sequence they occurred or experienced as they are temporarily sequential. The interpretation of a story or a conversation depends on much on the original order in how events took place. The case story given is broken down into basic parts in order to demonstrate the sequence in it. Everything else in a story is built around narrative clause. Temporal junctures differentiate the clauses in the story which separate narrative clauses and indicate time shift (Hepburn & Bolden 2013). The use of certain aspects in speech to indicate a certain feeling also creates meaning to the conversation. For instance the use of laughter to illustrate happiness increases the chances of the person listening to the conversation to understand that the person who laughs is indeed happy(Emanuel, 2007).The use of overlapping speech also creates sense and structure in a conversation. In the case of overlapping speech, a set of overlapping sets are created where one speaker interrupts the other speaker. There are two primary ways in which overlapping speech can occur. One way is that the first person finishes the main point and then the second person spots it and interrupts with the first person starting to slow (Blommaert 2005). The other form of overlapping speech is when the second person butts in earlier that what was expected by the first person. For instance, this can be through ignorance, enthusiasm among others. In the case of the conversation between the native speaker and the non-native speaker, both the two forms of overlapping speech are applied. This makes the conversation to be more interesting (Atkinson & Heritage 1999). The fifth aspect in Labov’s approach is the resolution which takes action sequentially preceding the evaluation. Here, the sense of story completion is felt. Other concepts of a conversation or a story include speakers continuously gazing at one another, short and long pauses in between the conversation, the speech slowing down at some points and even at other points the speakers are found increasing the speed of their speech, the use of hatched speech, elongated sounds, emphasis of certain points within the conversation among others. These aspects as evident in the case help to create logic in a story or conversation (Norrick, 2000). GENERAL CONTEXT Background: Summary of studies and career William Labov is an American Linguist and the founder of variationist sociolinguistics. He studied at Harvard in 1948, and majored in linguistics later. He took his PhD at Columbia University in 1964 and taught at the same University between 1964 and 1970(Blommaert 2005).  He later became a professor of Linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania in 1971 and then later became the director of Linguistics Laboratory at the same university in 1977. Current position and location William Labov is retired linguistic professional His interests Labov’s interest includes variational sociolinguistics and dialectology. Publications 1996: The first publication was ‘the social stratification of English in New York City’ published in Washington, DC: Center for Applied Lingusitics 1972: He published ‘The Language in the Inner City: Studies in Black English Vernacular’ published at the University of Pennsylvania. 1972: ‘Sociolinguistic Patterns’ published at the University of Pennsylvania Press. 1994, 2001: ‘Principles of Linguistics’ published at Basil Blackwell in Oxford. Topic he publishes Linguistics Industrial chemistry Philosophy Socio-linguistics (Hepburn & Bolden, 2013). SPECIFIC CONTEXT This paper is considered of high significance to the theorist William Labov. In his work, Labov talked about the structure of narratives whereby he stated that narratives have two functions according: Evaluative and referential. The conversation used in this paper between the native and non-native speaker applies the theory or Labov. Most of the parts of the paper follow the criteria of Labov (Blommaert 2005). . Labov became interested in this topic back in 1972 when he proposed linguistic approaches to sequential perspectives of narratives on conversations and this is what is exactly seen in the conversation between the native and native speaker (Hepburn & Bolden, 2013). His main thing was linguistics before he retired and this means that he was all through interest in topic discussed in this paper until his last day at work. . Reference List Anna De Fina, Alexandra Georgakopoulou (2011). Analyzing Narrative: Discourse and Sociolinguistic Perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press - Language Arts & Disciplines. Atkinson, J. M., & Heritage, J. (1999). Transcript notation-Structures of social action: studies in conversation analysis.Aphasiology, 13(4-5), 243-249. Atkinson, John Maxwell & John Heritage, eds. (1984). Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Blommaert, Jan (2005). Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Chafe, Wallace, ed. (2006). Pear Stories. Cognitive, Cultural, and Linguistic Aspects of Narrative Production. Norwood: Ablex. De Fina, Anna, and Alexandra Georgakopoulou (2011). Analyzing narrative: Discourse and sociolinguistic perspectives. Cambridge University Press, 2011. p. 35. Deborah Tannen, Heidi E. Hamilton, Deborah Schiffrin (2015). The Handbook of Discourse Analysis. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons - Language Arts & Disciplines - 992 pages. DoritRavid, Hava Bat-ZeevShyldkrot (2006). Perspectives on Language and Language Development: Essays in honor of Ruth A. Berman. Berlin: Springer Science & Business Media - Language Arts & Disciplines - 482 pages. Hepburn, A. & Bolden, G.B. (2013). The conversation analytic approach to transcription. pp. 57-76. In J. Sidnell& T. Stivers (eds), The handbook of conversation analysis, pp. 57-76. Wiley Blackwell. Herman, David (1997). “Scripts, Sequences, and Stories. Elements of a Postclassical Narratology.” PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 112, 1046–59. J. Renkema (2004). Introduction to Discourse Studies. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing - Language Arts & Disciplines - 363 pages. Johnstone, Barbara ([2002] 2008). Discourse Analysis. Oxford: Blackwell. Keller, Reiner (2011).The Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse (SKAD), in: Human Studies 34 (1), 43-65. Labov, William (1972). Language in the Inner City: Studies in the Black English Vernacular. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P. Marianne W Jørgensen, Louise J Phillips (2002). Discourse Analysis as Theory and Method. Thousand Oaks: SAGE - Language Arts & Disciplines - 229 pages. Martin Cortazzi (2014). Narrative Analysis. London: Routledge, 23 Apr 2014 - Education - 172 pages. Montserrat González (2004). Pragmatic Markers in Oral Narrative: The Case of English and Catalan. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing - Language Arts & Disciplines - 409 pages. Norrick, Neal R. (2000). Conversational Narrative. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Ochs, Elinor & Lisa Capps (2001). Living Narrative: Creating Lives in Everyday Storytelling. Cambridge: Harvard UP. Perks, Robert & Alistair Thomson, eds. (2006). The Oral History Reader. London: Routledge. Rebecca Rogers (2011). An Introduction to Critical Discourse Analysis in Education. London: Routledge - Education - 336 pages. Renkema, Jan (2004). Introduction to Discourse Studies. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Schegloff, Emanuel A. (2007). Sequence Organization in Interaction: A Primer in Conversation Analysis. Vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Read More

Interactional Sociolinguistics by Gumperz & Goffman is also another approach in understanding DA. The authors were concerned with the significance of the context in the efforts of interpreting discourse. They used prosodic and grammatical features as their basic unit of analysis (Blommaert 2005).  They argued that the individuals interacting have differing socio-cultural backgrounds and may hear and comprehend discourse differently based on how they interpret the cues of contextualization in the discourse.

These might take forms of alignment, intonation contours, gender as well as speaking on behalf of the other. Schiffrin (2015) focused on quantitative interactive sociolinguistic analysis, esp. discourse markers and used turn as the basic unit of analysis. His basic concern was to achieve conversational coherence in order to understand the significance of using different discourse markers in the conversation (Cortazzi, 2014). Ethnography of Communication by Dell Hymes was concerned with the unraveling of the social context in the linguistic interactions between two individuals.

The speech event was the basic unit of analysis by Dell. There are rules governing the norms in a speech as well as the activities that take place parallel to the speech (Reiner, 2011). Ethnography of speaking takes into account the components of a speech where the aim of the ethnographer is to discover the appropriateness of the rules of the speech events. This framework by Dell provides a breakthrough in achieving communicative competence. However, Dell Hymes failed to account for the interactions that exist between the components of the speaking grid and genre as well as how they are expressed in the language used (Anna &Georgakopoulou, 2011).

Pragmatics by Grice, Leech & Levinson formulated the conversational behavior on the basis of general principles rather than being dictated by rules. The authors in this approach used the cooperative principle by Griceans which seeks to account for the decision of the participants on what will be done next as well as how the interlocutors interpret the texts of the previous speaker. This principle is based on quantity where the speaker can say as much as she/he wants, quality where he/she tries to make a true contribution, relation where the speaker has to be relevant as well as the manner where the speaker has to be brief and unambiguous(Blommaert 2005).

It provides significant means of characterizing diverse varieties of conversation such as deliberate provocations in an interaction. However, they failed to recognize that in real life, conversations encompass resistance and disagreement levels and power is constantly contested (Atkinson & Heritage 1999). Conversation Analysis (CA) by Harold Garfinkel is a branch of ethnomethodology and is concerned by social members derive sense from the events of everyday. Conversation is a turn taking activity as only one individual speaks at a time and the speakers change recurs.

The speakers recognize the points of potential speaker change (turn constructional unit (TCU)) which is a critical unit of conversation. Conversation is an infinite generative turn-taking exercise where the people interacting try to avoid lapse or the possibility that nobody is speaking (Cortazzi, 2014).  According to Roman Jakobson, language performs 6 functions which are Addressor (emotive); Context (referential); (conative); Contact (phatic); Message (poetic); and Code (metalinguistic).The utterances of the individuals interacting pose multiple significance.

DA is majorly concerned with turning them out into more general and broader analysis of how language functions (Atkinson & Heritage 1999). Variation Analysis by Labov 1972a, Labov and Waletzky1967 argued that the fundamental narrative structures are evident in spoken narratives of personal experience. William Labov proposed linguistic approaches to sequential perspectives of narratives on conversations. He and Joshua Waletzky in the article Narrative Analysis: Oral Versions of Personal Experience cleared demonstrated how language works when two people are conversing.

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