Discourse

Analysis
The Role of Context in
Interpretation

Chapter 2
Discourse Analysis
 Pragmatic and Reference, Presupposition,
Discourse Context Implicature, Inference

The Context of •Features of

Situation Context: Co-text

The Expanding Context

The Principles of ‘Local

Interpretation’ and
‘Analogy’
 I. Pragmatic and Discourse Context

 Discourse analyst necessarily takes a pragmatic

approach to the study of language in use.

 The discourse analyst is investigating the use of

language in the relationship between the
speaker and the utterance, on the particular
occasion of use.
 (1) Reference

is treated as an action on the part of the

speaker/ writer.

Example :
A : My uncle’s coming home from Canada on Sunday +
he’s due in +
B : How long has he been away for or has he just been
away?
A : Oh no they lived in Canada. He was married to my
mother’s sister ++ well she’s been dead for a number of
years now +
 (2) Presupposition

is terms of assumptions the speaker

makes about what the hearer is likely to
accept without challenge.

A : My uncle’s coming homefrom

Canada on Sunday + he’s due in +
B : How long has he been away for or has he just
been away?

Presupposition : I have an uncle

 (3) Implicature

is the term that is used to account what

the speaker literally says.

There are conventional implicatures

and conversational implicatures.
Conventional Implicatures
conventional implicatures are
determined by the conventional meaning
of the word used.

e.g. : He is an Englishman,
he is, therefore, brave.
Conversational Implicatures
derived from a general principle of
conversation plus a number of maxims
which speakers will normally obey. (→
Cooperative Principle)
 • Make your contribution as informative as
is required. Don’t make your contribution
Quantity
more informative than is required.
• Don’t say what you believe to be false.
Don’t say that for which you lack of
Quality
adequate evidence.

Relatio • Be relevant
n

• Be perspicious, Avoid obscurity of

expressions, Avoid ambiguity, Be brief
Manner
(avoid unnecessary prolixity), Be
orderly
 Example of conversational
implicatures
A : I am out of petrol.
B : There is a garage round the corner.
 (4) Inference
Since the discourse analyst, like
hearer, has no direct access to t
speaker’s intended meaning in producingh
an utterance, he often has to rely on a e
process of inference to arrive an at the
interpretation for utterances or for a
connections between utterances. Such
inferences appear to be of different kinds.
• It may be the case that we are capable of
deriving a specific conclusion (7c) from
specific premises (7a) and (7b), via deductive
inference, but we are rarely asked to do so in
the everyday discourse we encounter.
(7)a. if it’s sunny, it’s warm
b. it’s so sunny
c. so, it’s warm
 (9) John was on his way to school

If we were to take a formal view of the

entailments of such a declarative for
sentence (like that, example,
expressed in Smith & Wilson, 1979:150f),
we would be obligied to accept as a set
entailments of sentence which
would include the following:

(10) a. Someone was on his way to school

b. John was on his way to somewhere c.Someone was on
his way to somewhere
 I. The Context of Situation

Since the beginning of the 1970s,

linguists have become increasingly
aware of the importance of context in the
interpretation of sentences. The
implications of taking context into
account are well expressed by Sadock
(1978:281) .
(1) Features of Context
Speaker : a young mother, hearer : her
mother –in-law, place : park by a duck
pond, time : sunny afternoon in
September 1962. They are watching the
young mother’s two-year-old son chasing
ducks and the mother-in-law has just
remarked that her son, the child’s father,
was rather backward at this age. The
young mother says :
Speaker : a student, hearers: a set of
students, place : sitting round a coffee
table in the refectory, time : evening in
March 1980. John, one of the group, has
just told a joke. Everyone laughs except
Adam. Then Adam laughs. One of the
students says :
I do think Adam’s quick
 In addition to the long-term identity
of speakers (Speaker identity) which
can be indicated by how they
produce language, there are factors
in the contexts in which language is
used that affect both how we use
language and how it is received.
 Features of context are :
 Setting and scene

 Participants

 Ends

 Act sequence
 (2) Co-text
concentrated particularly on the physical
context in which single utterances are
embedded and we have paid rather little
attention to the previous dicourse co-
ordinate. Lewis introduced this co-
ordinate to take account of sentences
which include specific reference to what
 III. Expanding Context
We have been concerned to impose
some sort of analytic structure on the
lumpen mass of context.
It is relevant to be identification of a
speech event as being of a
particular kind, to the
ability of the hearer to predict
what sort of thing the speaker is likely to
say in a given type of context, and to the
 Problem of discourse
analyst
• When a particular feature is relevant to the
specification of a particural context and what
degree of specification is required.
 Expression

Those features which relate directly to

the deictic context, interpretation for
deictic expressions like :
 Temporal expression now
e.g calp altogether now (gym
mistress to class)
 Spatial expression here
e.g It’s really nasty day here
IV. The Principles of ‘Local Interpretation’
and of ‘Analogy’

One principle which we can identify we

shall call the principle of local
interpretation. This principle instructs
the hearer not to construct a context
any larger than he needs to arrive at an
interpretation.
Consider the extract presented
here,
a man and woman sitting in the living room....
The man’s bored goes to window looks out the
window.... And goes out + goes to his goes to
club + has a drink talks to the borman.
It is this principle, which instructs
not to construct a context any
larger than necesssary to secure
an interpretation, which accounts
for how we understand Sacks’
(1972) much quoted sequence :
The Baby cried
The mommy picked it up
• Experience of similar events which enables
him to judge what the purpose of an utterance
might be. It is his knowledge of the world
which constrains his local interpretation.
Consider the extract presented here:
• a man and women sitting in the living room. . .
the man’s bored goes to the window . . . goes
out. . . goes to a club.
The principle of analogy provide a
reasonably secure framework for
interpretation for the hearer and for the
analyst most of the time, things will
indeed conform to our expectation.
Discourse is interpreted in the light of
past experience of similar discourse, by
analogy with previous similar texts.
 Conclusion
In order to interpret the deictic
elements in a piece of discourse, it is
necessary to know (at least) who the
speaker and hearer are, and time and
place of the production of the discourse.
Because the analyst is investigating
the use of language in context by
speaker/writer, he is more concerned
with the relation between the speaker
and the utterance, on the particular
Topic and Representation of
Discourse Content
Chapter 3
Discourse Analysis
 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

02/17/20 30
 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.
• Topic helps determine the boundaries of chunks of
discourse because each chunk of discourse has its
own topic which is marked either formally or
notionally ( meaning)

02/17/20 31
 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 notions about where
after. one part of conversation
ends and another
• These markers help the 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
02/17/20 32
 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.

02/17/20 33
 What is “topic”?

 The concept of topic is elusive; different scholars

use it to refer to different phenomena, from a
constituent of a clause to propositions of a text.

 There is no widely accepted definition.

34
 Existing definitions of Topic

Defining topic Defining topic

from the from the
viewpoint of viewpoint of
form, structure content

35
Uses of the term topic:
topic as a grammatical unit
Sentential topic
• Hockett:
Hockett has distinguished between topic and
comment:
• sentential topic may coincide with the
grammatical subject
Ex. John / ran away
‘the speaker announces a topic and then says
something about it …’ p 70
02/17/20 36
 1. Topic = Subject

 A traditional grammatical analysis of a sentence: subject and

predicate :
Example 1
Subject Predicate
Mary saw John.

 Topic and comment are related to the subject and the

predicate of the sentence:
Example 1
Topic Comment
Mary saw John.

37
 BUT in discourse analysis We are
concerned with what is being talked
about! (content)

• This type of topic ( discourse topic based on

content ) is unlikely to be identifiable as one
part of a sentence.
• Morgan:
Morgan it is not sentences that have topics,
but speakers

02/17/20 38
 Content-based definitions

• Summative topic

• Topic framework

39
 Semantic approach
summative ( discourse topic) topic

 Keenan & Schieffelin: discourse topic is not simply a NP or a sentence. It is

the proposition (expressed as a phrase or a sentence), about which the
claim is made or elicited (similar to the title of discourse).

Example 2
Peter is going to Paris next week

Van Dijk:
discourse topic summarizes, reduces, organizes and categorizes the
semantic information of discourse:

Semantic representation of the topic of this sentence:

go to (Peter, Paris e & next week (e).

40
 discourse topic
• It is not a simple NP but a proposition
• Discourse topic is a proposition about which
some claim is made or elicited .
• Single proposition ( expressed as a phrase or
asentence = discourse topic
• Their experiments treated topic as equivalent
to title

02/17/20 41
 Topic as Title
• For any text, there is a single correct
expression which is the ‘topic’.p.72-73
• 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
ways of expressing the topic => represent
different judgement of what is being written
or talked about in a text.

02/17/20 42
 Problem with summative topic

This semantic approach is like writing a proposition/headline

which summarises a text. However, it is sometimes difficult to
do this kind of summary….

If there is a large number of different ways of expressing the topic

of even a short text, how can we determine which one is the
correct one?

43
 It is not as simple as this!
• The difficulty of determining a single phrase or
sentence
Thereasisthe
notopic
such of a piece
thing ofone
as the printed text
correct
is increased when fragments of conversational
expression of the topic for any fragment of
discourse are considered.
discourse.
• In any conversation, what is being talked
There will always be a set of possible expressions
about will be judged differently at different
of the topic.
points and the participants themselves may
notTyler:
havetheidentical
topic canviews
only beofone possible
what each is
paraphrase
talking about. of a sequence of utterances

02/17/20 44
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.

02/17/20 45
 Discourse approach
Topic framework
 Brown and Yule: the idea of topic framework;

 A topic framework depends on which feature of

context becomes activated in a particular piece of
discourse.

Example 4
(From the movie “Schindler’s List”)

46
 Topic framework

 What is the topic of the episode?: ”Schindler needs some

space?” “Germans decline the offer?”

 The speakers discuss several things: Schindler’s products,

Schindler’s problem of space, Germans inability to help,
Schindler offers to buy, Christmas presents

47
 Topic framework for this episode

 Schindler’s factory, 4 participants: Schindler

(has a factory, produces goods for the
German Army), Kuhnpast and Hohne (army
offices, have no space), Stern (secretary),
lack of space, K. and H. can’t help, S. offers
to buy, K and H decline, Christmas presents

48
 Characterisation of the topic:
Topic framework
• The analyst can determine what aspects 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

02/17/20 49
 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 said 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.

02/17/20 50
 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.
02/17/20 51
 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.
02/17/20 52
 Topic framework
 The final topic framework would represent a
combination of elements derived from the
activated physical context (time and place, facts
about the speaker and the hearer), and from the
discourse fragment itself (people, places, entities,
events, facts, etc.) often previously mentioned in
the discourse.

53
 How topics are developed

Speaking topically vs. speaking

on the topic

Gender and discourse topic

54
Relevance of conversational contributions

 Once topic framework elements and the

correlation between the elements have
been identified, judgments about relevance
of contributions to the conversation by the
participants can be made.

55
 Relevance of conversational
contributions

 Gricean maxim of relevance: participants of the

conversation have to make their contributions
relevant in terms of the existing topic framework or
they are expected to be speaking topically;

 Participants are speaking topically when they pick

up the phrases form the preceding speaker and
include them into their contribution.

56
 Example of speaking topically
Example 5
A: When did you last speak to Jan?
B: I’m not sure. About a week ago. Why?
A: I’ve heard from C that she has got
engaged /…/
(participant A provides the reason)

57
 Relevance of conversational
contributions

 Lexical cohesion is a sign that the discourse topic is being

maintained

Example 6
Seals are carnivorous with a difference. Most carnivorous
live on land. Seals, however, live in the water, coming on
land only to test and to breed. There are some seals that
actually mate in water but even so, the females have to
come on land to give birth to their young, which are called
pups. When seals come out of land in large numbers to
mate and to give birth, those places are called rookeries.

58
Speaking topically and speaking on the
topic

 There are situations, where participants

have to concentrate on a particular issue
(e.g. a debate, the President’s speech).
 When participants ignore the previous
speaker’s contribution, they are often
speaking on the topic.

59
 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.

02/17/20 60
 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.
02/17/20 61
 Sentential topic & the presupposition
pool
• Presupposition pool shared by participants
restricts the analyst investigation to describing
the relationship between pairs of sentences.

02/17/20 62
 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.

02/17/20 63
 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.

02/17/20 64
 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.

02/17/20 65
 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.

02/17/20 66
 Paragraphs and Paratones
• Paragraphs: written discourse is divided into paragraphs
whose boundaries are marked by indentations. We can
distinguish between those ADVERBIALS which indicate a
connection between one sentence and the next and those
ADVERBIALS used to link a set of sentences to another set
(paragraphs).
• Paratones: in spoken discourse, there is not the visual prompt
of paragraph-initial line indentation to indicate a division in
the discourse structure. The speech paragraph or "paratone"
is identified by boundary markers.

02/17/20 67
• At the beginning the speaker typically uses an
introductory expression to announce what he
intends to talk about
• Phonologically
• prominent
• The end is marked by summarising phrases,
repeating the introductory expression and a
length pause
• long pause exceding one second

02/17/20 68
 Discourse topic and the representation of discourse
content
• In logic proposition is often held to represent the
context-independent, invariant meaning expressed in a
sentence
• In the text-analysis literature a proposition is often taken
to represent a "once-off" interpretation of a text-
sentence used in a context.
• The discourse analyst has to be able to set about the
analysis of pieces of text he encounters in newspapers,
journals, novels, textbooks and so on. He cannot restrict
his investigation to pieces of text which he construct for a
particular purpose.
• RELEVANT TO WHAT?

02/17/20 69
Problems with the proposition-based representation
of discourse content

• "What is being talked about"

• Each participant in a discourse has a presupposition pool and
his pool is added to as the discourse proceeds. Each
participant also behaves as if there exists only one
presupposition pool shared by all participants in the
discourse.
• Ways speakers make what THEY’RE talking about fit into a
framework which represents what WE’RE (as discourse
participants) talking about in conversational discourse.
• Those connections can signal the coherence relations which
make each contribution relevant to the discourse as a whole.

02/17/20 70
• No procedure exists to analyse a given sentence into its
propositional base structure. However, one can start with the
propositional expressions themselves and translate these into
English text.
• A fragment of spoken discourse should be seen in terms of a
process in which each participant expresses a personal topic within
the general topic framework of the conversation as a whole.
• It may be realized in the predicate of the sentence, or not
• That is, making contributions fit closely to the most recent elements
incorporated in the topic framework.
• Each participant contributes equally and there is no fixed direction
for the conversation to go.

02/17/20 71
 Representing text-context as a network
• On one level there is a syntactic procedure which yields a
grammatical network. The relationship between elements, are
grammatical relations such as "head-modifier" and are
reminiscent of the non-deep structure relations found in
systemic grammar.
• A conversational situation in which the participants are
concentrating their talk on one particular entity, individual or
issue.
• It is a feature of a lot of conversations that “topics” are not
fixed beforehand, but negotiated in the process of conversing.
Each speaker contributes to the conversation in terms of both
the existing topic framework and his or her own personal
topic.

02/17/20 72
• "Be relevant” = “make your contribution relevant
in terms of the existing topic framework.”
• Conversation is a process and each contribution
should be treated as part of the negotiation of
“what is being talked about”.
• An alternative representation format has been
proposed by de Baugrande. On one level there is
a syntactic procedure which yields a grammatical
network.

02/17/20 73
 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.

02/17/20 74