Discourse Comprehension and Production

Discourse Comprehension
In fact, when we are communicating, we face not only a sentence but also even more than one
sentence. People carefully design each sentence in their utterance to fit into the discourse they are
taking in part. In their communication, people usually take part in stories, conversations,
descriptions, explanations and other natural talk. Again, the listeners task is to comprehend the
meaning conveyed through speakers utterance (in this case discourse).
Senses of Discourse
Discourse can be defined as the use of language which is a long and serious treatment or
discussion of a subject in speaking or writing. Discourse can also means an integration of sentences
as a language constructor.
Discourse is a complete integration of language. Therefore, in grammatical hierarchy, discourse is
the highest grammatical integration. As a complete integration of language, discourse contains of
intact concept, idea, thought and feeling which is understandable by the reader (in written discourse)
and the listener (in spoken discourse).
Discourse is formed from several sentences that fulfill some grammatical rules and the other
discourse rules. Discourse must consist of cohesion and coherence. Cohesion means there is a
harmony among elements of the discourse. Coherence means the whole content of the discourse
fits together well and truly.
Tools of Discourse
To be able to comprehend the discourse, there are some tools which can be used. The tools consist
of two kinds of tools. Those are based on grammatical tool and based on semantic tool.
Based on grammatical tool, we can see there are several kinds of it such as in the following
numbers.
Conjunctions (and, after, before, although, because, etc.): By the use of conjunctions, the
relationship between one sentence and the other will be more explicit and will be clearer rather than
without conjunctions.
Pronouns (I, they, her, its, us, etc.): By using pronouns as anaphoric reference, so that the same
part of sentence neednt to be repeated but it can be changed by the pronouns.
Elliptical construction (the omission of the same part of sentence that exists in another sentence): By
using elliptical construction, the discourse seems to be more effective.
And then, the several kinds of semantic tool are as follows.
Using contrast relationship among sentences
Using general-specific and specific-general relationship
Using equivalent relationship
Using cause-effect relationship
Using purpose relationship
Discourse Production
As stated above, the discourse usually involved in people communication are conversations,
descriptions, explanations and other natural talk. Each of them has harder structure than sentence.
Each of them requires careful planning-problem solving-on the part of speakers.
Basically, such those situations divide into two categories; dialogue (when two people or more
talking together) and monologue (when a person talking alone). Speakers ought to face the distinct
problem when they face those two categories. When taking part in dialogue, speakers talk has to
cooperate with the others talk. Different from the former, speakers have to plan the whole discourse
without intervention of others when they are taking part in monologue.
We can take an example of dialogue that is conversation. Actually, the planning of conversation is
not as simple as it seems. We usually just see that conversation is just begun with greeting, then talk
each other and ended by parting. However, the speakers of the conversation participants must have
their own goal. And they should solve the problem to coordinate their speech so that they could
achieve their goals.
Basically, the conversation has natural setting. This can be used to solve the participants goals. The
natural setting consists of opening conversation, turn taking and closing conversation. In opening
conversation, participants should open a conversation to begin. One person gets anothers signal
and attention, and the other show willingness to talk. In turn taking, each participant cooperate each
other to get a chance for talking and conveying their idea. And in the closing conversation, the
participants should make an agreement when they have to close conversation. They shouldnt
bother with an elaborate closing.
For example of monologue is a description. Description is one type of discourse in which the
speaker describes something. Usually, we get a description from a story which is included in written
discourse. The writers often face some problem when they try to describe something. The first
problem is level which shows at what level the writers should describe something. Then, content
provides us which part of the level of something the writers should include and omit. The third is
order that tells us what order the writers should put the content in. Finally, the relation gives us how
the writers should relate the parts to each other.
We can now conclude that discourse has structure which is complex and harder than sentence.
There are two kinds of discourse structure, those are hierarchical and local. In all structured
discourse, speakers have at least some problems to solve. At the very least they have to select the
sentence they will say, and that brings us to the next topic.