Damascus University

Department of
English
MAL 2010

Discourse Topic and the

Representation of Discourse Content

Presented by Muhammad Al-Moqdad

Supervised by: Dr. M. Mouzahem
 Introduction
• Uses of the term topic:
– Sentential topic
– Discourse topic
• Characteristics of topic:
– Topic information
– Presupposition pools
– Sentential topic and the presupposition pool
• Relevance and speaking topically

11/18/2019 2
 Discourse fragments and the
notion ‘topic’
• The data studied in discourse analysis is a
fragment of discourse, and the discourse analyst
has always to decide where the fragment begins
and ends => in order to decide what constitutes a
satisfactory unit for analysis

11/18/2019 3
 Ways for identifying the boundaries
• Explicit ways: • Implicit ways:
– Formulaic expressions – The analyst is forced to
Once upon an time . . . And depend on intuitive
the lived happily ever after. notions about where
one part of conversation
• These markers help the ends and another begins.
analyst decide where
• Speaker-change: it does
the beginning of a
not necessarily
coherent fragment of
terminate a coherent
discourse occurs.
fragment of
conversation

11/18/2019 4
 Intuitive notion of topic
• By appealing to the intuitive notion of topic
the analyst can decide which point of speaker-
change among the many could be treated as
the end of one chunk of the conversation.
• The chunk of conversation in discourse then
can be treated as a unit of some kind because
it is on a particular topic.

11/18/2019 5
 Intuitive notion of topic
• The notion of topic is intuitively a satisfactory
way of describing the unifying principle which
makes one stretch of discourse ‘about’ sth & the
next stretch ‘about’ sth else.

• Yet, what is the basis for the identification of topic?

– Topic is the most frequently used, unexplained, term in the

analysis of discourse

11/18/2019 6
Uses of the term topic: Sentential
topic
• Grammarians’ topic
• Hockett: distinction between topic and comment:
sentential topic may coincide with the grammatical
subject
Ex. John / ran away
• Dahl & Sgall et al: transformational generative
grammar: topicalisation
• Givon: in the development of a language, sentential
subjects are derived from grammatical topics.

11/18/2019 7
 We are concerned with what is
being talked about!
• This type of topic is unlikely to identifiable as
one part of a sentence.
• Morgan: it is not sentences that have topics,
but speakers

11/18/2019 8
Uses of the term topic: discourse topic
• Keenan & Schieffelin
• It is not expressible in a simple NP.
• Discourse topic is a proposition about which
some claim is made or elicited => represents
in any fragment of conversational discourse
the topic of the whole fragment
• Their experiments treated topic as equivalent
to title

11/18/2019 9
 Topic as Title
• For any text, there is a single correct expression
which is the ‘topic’.
• But it should not be too difficult to imagine
several different titles for a passage, each of which
could equally facilitate comprehension.
• So, in any text there is a number of different way
of expressing the topic => represent different
judgement of what is being written or talked
about in a text.
11/18/2019 10
 It is not as simple as this!
• The difficulty of determining a single phrase or
sentence as the topic of a piece of printed text
There is no such thing as the one correct is
increased when fragments of conversational
expression of the topic for any fragment of
discourse are considered.
discourse.
In anywillconversation,
• There what
be always a set is being expressions
of possible talked aboutof
will be judged differently at different points and
the topic.
the participants themselves may not have
Tyler: the topic can only be one possible paraphrase
identical views of what each is talking about.
of a sequence of utterances

11/18/2019 11
 Reasons why Discourse analysts
study this notion ‘Topic’
• It is the central organising principle for a lot of
discourse
• It enables the analyst to explain why several
sentences or utterances should be considered
together as a set of some kind, separate from
another set.
• It provides a means of distinguishing fragments
of discourse which are felt to be good,
coherent.

11/18/2019 12
 Characterisation of the topic:
Topic framework
• The analyst can determine what aspect of the
context are explicitly reflected in the text as
the formal record of the utterance
• Activated features of context: aspects which
are directly reflected in the text which need
to be called upon to interpret the text
• They constitute the contextual framework
within which the topic is constituted

11/18/2019 13
 Topic framework
• Aspects of the speakers assumptions about his
hearer’s knowledge must be considered in
relation to the elements which the speaker does
make explicit in his contribution.

• Any consideration of topic involves asking why

the speaker what he said in a particular discourse
situation. Coulthard, Sacks: there is a constant
analysis in conversation of what is said in terms of
why that now and to me.

11/18/2019 14
 Topic framework
• Certain elements which constrain the topic
can be determined before the discourse
begins; they are part of the context of a
speech event.

• In relation to contextual features to a

particular speech event, however, we are
particularly interested in only those activated
features of context pertaining to the fragment
of discourse being studied.
11/18/2019 15
 Topic framework
• The topic framework consists of elements
derivable from the physical context and from the
discourse domain of any discourse fragment.

• These elements are a means of making explicit

some of the assumptions a speaker can make
about his hearer’s knowledge – we are talking
about the total knowledge which the speaker
believes he shares with his/her hearer.

11/18/2019 16
 Presupposition pools
• Venneman proposes: for a discourse, there is a
presupposition pool which contains information
constituted from general knowledge, from the
situative context of the discourse, and from the
completed part of the discourse itself.
• Within the presupposition pool for any discourse,
there is a set of discourse subjects and each
discourse is, in a sense, about its discourse
subjects.

11/18/2019 17
 Presupposition pools

• The number of the discourse subjects in a

presupposition pool shared by participants in a
discourse, particularly participants who know
each other well, is potentially large.
• Selecting the discourse subjects must have to do
with their relevance to the particular discourse
fragment under consideration.
• This relevance must be those to which reference
is made in the text of the discourse.
11/18/2019 18
Sentential topic & the presupposition
pool
• Presupposition pool shared by participants
restricts the analyst investigation to describing
the relationship between pairs of sentences.

11/18/2019 19
 Relevance and speaking topically
• Topic framework represents the area of overlap
in the knowledge which has been activated
and is shared by the participants at a particular
point in a discourse.
• Once these have been identified, the analyst
has some basis for making judgements of the
relevance with regard to conversational
contributions.

11/18/2019 20
 Relevance and speaking topically
• This technical term is derived from the
conversational maxim proposed by Grice
1975:
• They have to do with: relevance of
conversational contributions.
• But they are relevant to what?!
– Make your contribution relevant in terms of the
existing topic framework.

11/18/2019 21
 Relevance and speaking topically
• We can capture this by the expression
‘speaking topically’
• It is an obvious feature of casual conversation
in which each participant contributes equally
and there is no fixed direction for the
conversation to go.
• Speaking on a topic: the participants are
concentrating their talk on one particular
entity, individual or issue.

11/18/2019 22
 Relevance and speaking topically
• In practice any conversational fragment will
exhibit patterns of talk in which both speaking
topically and speaking on topic are present.
• Both forms are based on the existing topic
framework, but the distinction derives from
what each individual speaker treats as the
salient element in the existing topic
framework.

11/18/2019 23
 Conclusion:
• We have tried to list the connexions existing
across contributions in this discourse fragment to
emphasise the ways in which speakers make what
they’re talking about fit into the framework which
represents what we (as discourse participants)
are talking about in conversational discourse.
• For the analyst, these connexions can signal the
coherence relations which make each
contribution relevant to the discourse as a
whole.

11/18/2019 24
 Thanks for
11/18/2019 25