Presupposition, Reference, and Politeness in Discourse Analysis

Posted on Dec 9, 2024 in Teaching & Education

Presupposition and Green’s Taxonomy

Presuppositions are a kind of linguistic inference. The difference with implicatures is that these are based on contextual assumptions, while presuppositions are built into the linguistic structure of the sentences that trigger them.

Presupposition triggers: The linguistic expressions that trigger the presuppositions. E.g. Karl’s car broke down– presupposition: Karl owns a car. Presupposition trigger: broke down.

Green presented a taxonomy (classification) and found three main kinds of presuppositions:

• Existence presuppositions: The most representative case. It concerns the existence of definite descriptions as for example: please close the window, presupposes that there is a window and that it is open. Presupposition triggers: close and the window
• Factive presuppositions: They give rise to the presupposition that a sentence occurring in that context is true. There are several sorts:
  • Subject complements (mean, be obvious or prove)
  • The object complements of epistemic (of or relating to knowledge) factives such as know or realize and the complements of emotive factive verbs such as be glad, amaze or be surprised are considered to be presupposed true, e.g. she knows Sarah’s boyfriend / I am surprised to see you.
  • On the other hand the counterfactive (contrary to fact) verb pretend, presupposes that the complement is not true, e.g. she pretended to be asleep
• Connotations (association): There is a restricted use of some lexical items, a typical example would be the verb assassinate (implies you killed someone on purpose) and it wouldn’t make sense to say: *he assassinated the guy by accident. Another e.g. the dog knitted a jumper.

Referring in Discourse

The function of referring is a distinctive characteristic of any human language. This function allows us to talk about things that are external to ourselves; these things can be in our nearby surroundings or far away in place or time. Some words or expressions like demonstratives (these, here), singular definite terms (the actor in Titanic, my grandma) and proper names (London, Kandinsky) can function to display reference. These terms refer either to an entity within either the text or the context of utterance. Some types of reference depend on mutual knowledge, thus the process by which referring expression refer to an entity is also pragmatic. We can use determinate and indeterminate expressions to referring to a thing or person depending on our intentions, as well as on our assumptions about the hearer’s knowledge of the fact we are talking about, e.g. Dorothy, a friend of mine, Paul’s wife, the one who lives up the road, etc.

There are different types of reference:

• Homophoric: Homophora is reference that depends on cultural knowledge or other general knowledge, rather than on specific features of a particular context, e.g. The use of the sun. The use of the baby between parents to refer to their own baby
• Anaphoric: Referents which have been previously evoked: this is my sister, she lives in Canada.
• Bridging: An inferred anaphoric reference: Inferable reference: the referent that we can infer from the previous text, these items can also be omitted, e.g. boil the potatoes, cut Ø into small dices…
• Cataphoric: Cataphoric reference means that a word in a text refers to another later in the text and you need to look forward to understand, e.g. when he arrived, John found his window broken.
• Esphoric: A reference that looks forward within the same nominal group. It identifies participants without us having to look elsewhere in the text; the elements point to themselves to be identified. This kind of reference occurs when one thing modifies another one and answers the question Which one? E.g. the blue door
• Exophoric: This is used for referents which we refer outside the text (think of an exit). The speaker and the listener must rely on knowledge of interpretation from the given situation. E.g. that must have cost a lot of money (that is exophoric and refers to something, e.g. a watch, that isn’t mentioned before)

Conversation Analysis: Larry King and Michael Moore

Overall organization: Refers to the organization of the totality of the exchange within some specific kind of conversation. We may speak about classes of verbal interchanges (telephone calls, talks over the garden fence, etc.) that has special characteristics in the openings: a telephone conversation typically contains a summons-answer adjacency pair, e.g. telephone rings (summons). Hello (answer to summons). Then normally the first topic slot which contains the announcement of the caller of the reason for the call. Other topics are fitted and finally we get to the closing section of the overall organization. Prototypical closing are: giving regards to family members, the use of markers such as Okay, All right, So, etc. a final exchange of terminal elements (bye, cheers, take care, etc.) We may say that telephone conversations exhibit the following overall organization: A. opening section. B. main body: topic slot 1 (the most important, it is the topic that caused the caller to make the call), topic slot 2…C. closing section.

Analysis: These two first turns constitute the opening of the telephone conversation. The caller responds to the greeting and thanks them for accepting his call, but quickly introduces the first topic slot (reason why he is calling). There is a question/answer insertion sequence in T4 and T5, which is a clarification of the question. In T7 we can see another insertion turn which contains another question related to the topic. In T8 Maher answers both questions, the initial one and the previous inserted in T7.

Closing: This kind of conversation in the media does not normally have a closing, due to time or space constraints. The caller can only ask their questions but can’t carry on talking about the subject till a normal end is reached.

The control of the floor: Analysis: It is always Kings who controls the conversation and even in T4 when Maher asks the caller a question, King feels entitled to answer on behalf of the caller, without passing the floor on to him (T5). This control varies considerably from one social group to another.

Turn taking – Backchannels: Vocal indications that show attentiveness by using certain common vocal indications, e.g. mmm, yeah, uh-uh… The absence of these backchannels may be very frequently interpreted negatively, as lack of interest on the part of the interlocutor or as a way of withholding agreement.

Adjacency pairs: Sequence of two utterances which are adjacent and produced by different speakers. Prototypical examples would be the following: greeting-greeting: hello, hello; offer-acceptance: would you have a tea? Yes, please; apology-minimization: I’m sorry. Oh, don’t worry. That’s O.K. Typical summons-answer adjacency pair of the opening of a telephone conversation. We don’t hear the telephone ringing but we assume that someone has advised Larry that there is a call from someone and that he knows where the person comes from since he answers saying the name from where this person comes from.

Insertion sequences: Sequences embedded within another, for example in these question-answer pair: 1-mom, can I play Nintendo now? 2-Have you cleaned up the playroom? 3- No. 4-Then, NO! Number 4 answers question number 1.

Repair: A conversational device which shows how preference organization operates within and across turns. It is used for correcting misunderstandings, mishearings or non-hearings. There are two different types: self-initiated repair: may be signalled by phenomena such as glottal stops, lengthened vowels, etc. Repairs initiated by a participant other than the speaker may be achieved by the use of echo-questions, repetitions of problematic items with stress on problem syllables, or by using expressions such as what? Pardon? Excuse me? Some sequences anticipate a turn which contains a reason for the sequence, e.g. Jim! Yes? Could you come… Other examples of pre-sequences are: pre-closing, pre-invitations, pre-requests, pre-arrangements, pre-announcements, etc. e.g. pre-closing: …and so this is what I wanted to tell you. O.K. see you tomorrow, then. See you. And remember to bring your camera! Don’t worry, I will. Bye. Pre-request: will you be here tomorrow? Yes, in the morning. So…would you mind if… Pre-invitation: do you have any plans for tomorrow? No. How about going to…?

Politeness: Fraser’s Perspective

For Bruce Fraser there isn’t a common understanding of the concept of politeness. In his article “Perspectives on Politeness” he reviews four well-known approaches:

• The social-norm view: Each society has certain rules and norms that prescribe a particular behaviour or way of thinking within a context. This sense of politeness is associated with good manners and certain speech styles
• The conversational-maxim view: Based on Grice’s Cooperative Principle (CP) and maxims. For Grice CP is always observed and any real or perceptible infringement of the maxims indicates non-explicit messages by the speaker with the purpose of being inferred by the hearer.
• The face-saving view: The best known of these approaches. Its principles and tenets are found in Brown & Levinson’s Politeness: Some Universals in Language Use. Both authors assume the general correctness of Grice’s view of conversation in interaction. This view is based on Goffman’s concept of face and the fact that some acts can threaten face and thus must have a kind of softening is the organize principle of their theory
• The conversational-contract view: An approach presented by Fraser and Fraser & Nolen, it adopts Grice’s notion of CP and recognizes the importance of Goffman’s notion of face, but it holds opposing views with Brown & Levinson’s view. In this perspective, all the participants of an understanding of a contemporary Conversational Contract at every turn, which means that being polite includes operating within the then-current terms and conditions of this Conversational Contract.

Politeness Strategies: Brown and Levinson

This theory is the most influential study on politeness. This theory is based on a particular interpretation of Goffman’s works and the role of face in social interaction. B & L adopt Goffman’s concept of face and they expand it, including the positive and the negative aspect. Positive face refers to the human desire to be valued, accepted to be recognised and liked by others. On the other hand the negative face refers to the fact that humans need independency and autonomy.

The Sociolinguistic Variables proposed by B & L serve to calculate the “weightiness” of a face-threatening act these are:

• Social distance D: the degree of familiarity between interlocutors
• Relative power P of the speaker with respect to the hearer
• The absolute ranking R of impositions in the particular culture.

Some speech-acts are considered face-threatening (FTA). Speakers choose from a range of strategies depending on which serves best to reduce a particular face-threat. If what a speaker has got to say can be offensive or impolite to the hearer, it is very probable that the speaker will use an off record strategy, characterized by the use of mitigating elements which convey certain meanings indirectly; this strategy is used to leave the interpretation to the addressee. By using this strategy one or more of the Gricean Maxims will be violated. These Maxims are:

• Relevance Maxim (off record strategy: give hints) I love that cake you’ve bought= give me some cake.
• Quantity Maxim (off record strategy: understate (suggests that it isn’t important) I think he’s fantastic= He’s horrible.
• Quality Maxim (off record strategy: be ironic) You’re really clever= you’re stupid
• Manner Maxim (off record strategy: euphemism), He’s gone to the other side=he died.

The on record strategy is used when the speaker wants the utterance to be effective (because of an emergency situation), there is only one interpretation of this strategy, so ambiguity doesn’t exist e.g. Help! Don’t move!). If the situation doesn’t call for an emergency the speaker can use either positive or negative politeness: What a lovely house you’ve got/ Can I have some water? (Negative politeness traditionally indirect request).

Ethnography of Communication

Ethnography (branch of anthropology that studies and describes different cultures) of communication (EOC): application of ethnographic methods to the communication patterns of a group According to Saville-Troike it has two foci:

• Particularistic focus: Because it attempts to describe and understand communicative behaviour in specific cultural settings
• Generalizing focus: Because it originates concepts and theories which are to be taken as the basis for a global metatheory of human communication.

Dell Hymes is the main figure in the development of ethnographic studies. Many of his main tenets are collected in his Foundations in Sociolinguistics: An Ethnographic Approach For Hymes EOC is an interactive-adaptive method of enquiry that carries with it a substantial content. The ethnographic approach emphasizes the idea that it is impossible to separate speech data form the history under which they were obtained. According to Hymes scholars now focus on communicative competence which involves both, the knowledge of abstract linguistic rules and the ability to use language in concrete situation of everyday life, such as the ability to check in at a hotel, to apply for a job, etc. To define the term he takes into account rules of speaking within a community.

Main Concepts in Ethnographic Research

• Speech community: A group of people who share the same rules for using and interpreting at least one communication practice. This practice might involve specific events, acts, or situations. Speech refers to verbal and nonverbal, written and oral communication. Community entails a great diversity of communication practices.
• Speech situation: Refers to the social occasion, in which speech may occur, e.g. a family reunion, in a meeting, etc.
• Speech event: Restricted to activities directly governed by rules or norms for the use of speech, e.g. a conversation during the family reunion, an interview, etc.
• Speech act: Smallest unit and the most fundamental level for the control of discourse, e.g. telling a joke within the conversation at a family reunion.
• Ways of speaking: The most general term. The ways of speaking, (about the weather, in medical encounters, etc.) identify the community to which a particular group of people belong to. The ethnographers of communication explore various ways of communication
• Fluent speaker: Is about the differences in ability to speak a language. In different communities there are different expectations for a speaker to be considered fluent.
• Rules of speaking: They focus on the observation of any change in every component of speaking.
• Functions of speech: Are determined by the relationships among components such as choices of code, topic or message form. EOC is concerned with the stylistic and social functions of language. Diversity is supposed and the differences between communities are explored.

The SPEAKING Grid

Hymes proposed a classificatory grid as a descriptive framework for EOC, which is known as the SPEAKING grid (pattern), the components of communication are:

• SITUATION– the physical location where the practice takes place (setting). The participants’ sense of what is going on when this practice is active (scene).
• PARTICIPANTS– who are the participants in this practice?
• ENDS– The goals and purposes participants may have in doing the practice; different outcomes can be attained, e.g. when you invite someone out and they refuse your invitation.
• ACT SEQUENCE– analysis of the message content and form.
• KEY– component that refers to the tone or manner of speaking. Some events are keyed as reverent and serious, other can be keyed for example as ironic, humorous or light-hearted (cheerful and happy)
• INSTRUMENTALITIES– the channel used in this communication practice: oral, written, body movement or just gestures. Some practices may be conducted via synchronous face-to-face channel (at the same time: doctor/patient encounter) and other via an asynchronous written channel e.g. e-mails, letters, etc. The language variety is another component that can be taken into account (BrE, AmE)
• NORMS OF INTERACTION AND INTERPRETATION: the component that refers to both, the norms attached to speaking and interaction (e.g. organization of turn-taking), and the norms within the cultural belief system which can be of two kinds: 1-the norm as a matter of habit (e.g. few people go to church) and 2: the right thing for one to do (one should go to church). Standards of normality are distinguished from the morally infused (filled) dimension of communicative practices.
• GENRE– identifying the textual category involved in the practice, as well as its level of formality. For example, the genre (variety) in a given practice could be that of informal oral narrative. The properties of the genre become important to its analysis, since the practice might be understood as part and parcel of, for example, a folk genre, and be analyzed in view of that. This grid is a tool for discovering the culturally relative taxonomies of speech situation, speech event and speech act)

Essential feature of EOC: The understanding of cultural relativism (truth isn’t always the same ?absolutism) constitutes an essential feature of all ethnographic studies.

Central research question of EOC: What knowledge does a speaker need to have in order to communicate appropriately in a particular speech community and what skill does s/he need to acquire in order to make use of this knowledge? This question takes for granted that language cannot be separated from how and why it is used.

EOC has been significant for different fields of research.

• Anthropology: Helps to understand relationship between language and aspects of the socialization process (values, social organization, beliefs, etc.).
• Psycholinguistics: Contribution to studies of language acquisition, account for the particular ways of speaking of particular societies and how these are developed in the process of social interaction.

Sample Analysis of Data: Bookshop Encounter

Encounter between a bookshop assistant and a customer.

• Speech situation: Service encounter
• Speech event: Shopping/bargaining for books exchange or conversation

Hymes’ SPEAKING grid:

• SETTING: Bookshop in an English town, sometime during shopping hours in the early 2000s
• PARTICIPANTS: M: bookshop assistant/owner W: customer (a middle-aged woman)
• ENDS: Buying/selling. W: wants to buy a not very expensive book as a present. M wants to sell at best possible price. Outcome (result): the book is sold at best possible price.

ACT SEQUENCE: M: bookshop assistant/owner W: customer

• KEY: Serious but not solemn/ironic (on the part of the assistant when bargaining)
• INSTRUMENTALITIES: Oral, face-to-face, colloquial BrE.
• NORMS: Interaction based on needs for buying and selling. Norms for bargaining: bookseller should sell at highest possible price, and customer should buy at cheapest possible price
• GENRE: Service encounter/buying-selling transaction discourse. Narrow range (the talk is mainly directed at the main and specific goal of buying and selling).

Sample Analysis of Data: Interview

Sample of analysis data: interview to a writer

• Speech situation: A television interview.
• Participants: Edwin, the person interviewed and the interviewer whose name we don’t know
• Ends: Interview a person who writes poems, novels, etc. and know more about his life.

Act sequence:

KEY: relaxed INSTRUMENTALITIES: oral channel, face-to-face, colloquial BrE NORMS OF INTERACTION AND INTERPRETATION: interaction based on interviewer/interviewed, turn-taking is respected although in two occasions interviewer seems to interrupt Edwin. Norms for interview: the interviewer should get as much information as possible from the person he is interviewing.  GENRE: informal oral narrative The participants are doing their job, the interviewer formulating Edwin questions about his life and Edwin answering them and thus becoming known to the public, which is propaganda for his work. Briefly explain why the ethnography of communication is described as an anthropological approach to Discourse Analysis. Although Anthropology and Linguistics have different goals and methods, they share a common interest: communication. The ethnographic approach to DA is based on both sciences because of this common interest. The cultural repertoire for making sense of the world entails among others the study of the way human beings communicate with each other. EOC has two main aims, to describe and understand communicative behaviour in specific cultural settings and to formulate concepts and theories which are to be taken as the basis for a global metatheory of human communication. The ethnographic approach emphasizes the idea that it is impossible to separate speech data from the history under which these data where obtained.Explain why discourse studies are essentially multidisciplinary. Provide an example of a study where this characteristic is clearly seen. Discourse studies are essentially multidisciplinary and they are multi-modal because they cross the Linguistic border into different and varied domains. Discourse studies involve psychology, sociology, anthropology, linguistics, history, poetics, communicative research and semiotics. In a semiotic sense, signs take the form of words, images, sounds, gestures and objects. This is why it is a field studied by many different experts, such as literary critics, sociologist, social psychologist, and many others The current and main aim of Discourse Analysis is to describe language in the context of human interaction; the analysts are mainly concerned with the study of language in use, they frequently use linguistic corpora as their data in order to carry out their analysis. An example where this multidisciplinary can be seen would be the analysis of a social psychologist when studying the body gestures carried out while speaking of a group of people who live in downtrodden areas and must fight everyday to defend their territory. (answer of teacher in foro de debate ) By “multidisciplinarity” we mean that discourse analysts do not only draw on linguistics to make their analysis; they may make use of the findings of psychology, sociology, cognitivism or any other discipline/field that might help understand a given discourse  /language situation. So in the example you give, we may say that an analyst may make use of the findings of different social sciences or disciplines in order to understand the way these people in downtrodden areas communicate and interact.Exercise regarding Interactional sociolinguistics. Look for the different types of contextualization cues (grammar, vocabulary, cultural, etc.) as defined by Gumperz, that give pragmatic/discursive meaning of the passage.  The interactional sociolinguistic approach to discourse analysis is multidisciplinary; it concerns the study of the relationships between language, culture and society. Its roots derive from Anthropology, sociology and Linguistics. There is a consensus between all these sciences regarding language, context and the interaction of self and other. One of the main concerns of this approach is the study of the practices of contextualization which is based on a spontaneous notion of context: context is something made available during interaction and its understanding depends on inferential practices in accordance with rules which speakers may or may not share. Two scholars have been the main contributors to the development of the interactional sociolinguistic approach: the anthropologist John Gumperz and the sociologist Erving Goffman. John Gumperz’s contribution to Interactional Sociolinguistics:He developed an interpretative sociolinguistic approach to the analysis of real time processes in face-to-face interactions. Emphasizes the fact that cognition and language are influenced by social and cultural forces What is important here is the understanding and analyzing the effects society and culture have on language A crucial concept in Interactional Sociolinguistics is contextualization cue (signals), defined by Gumperz as: … any verbal sign which when processed in co-occurrence with symbolic grammatical and lexical signs serves to construct the contextual ground for situated interpretations, and thereby affects how constituent messages are understood.Examples of contextualization cues are: intonation, any prosodic (metrical structure) choices, conversational code-switching, lexical or syntactic choices, style switching and facial and gestural signs. Gumperz notes that contextualization cues are deictic and thus share many of the characteristics of shifters, however they are not necessarily lexically based, e.g. prosody or facial and body gestures sometimes signal relational (indicating or constituting relation) values independently of the propositional content of utterances. Thus, human communication can be viewed as a multilevel system learned, automatically produced and closely synchronized verbal and non-verbal signals (Gumperz) One of the major strengths of Interactional Sociolinguistics is its insistence of the way in which speakers and hearers do not always contextualize cues in the same manner, a fact that can cause misunderstanding which may have damaging social consequences for certain members of society, especially for those belonging to minority groups.The main idea behind Gumperz’s sociolinguistics is that speakers are members of social and cultural groups, and as such, the way they use language reflects their group identity and provides indices of who they are, what they want to communicate, and how skilful they are in doing so.An example that illustrates how failing to interpret conversational code-switching (a typical contextualization cue) can lead to a misunderstanding: A black student arrives to a black people’s house in a low income, inner city neighbourhood to do an interview. He is received by the husband who says: So y’re gonna check out ma ol lady, hah? The student uses Standard English instead of answering as a typical black so as to show familiarity with local values and etiquette. This use of the Standard English was interpreted by the husband as a sign that he did not belong to his group, and therefore he was not to be trusted, which turned the interview into a stiff and unsatisfactory one. Another example would be the one of an Argentinean Spanish speaker that gets involved in a conversation with other people from the same place that she doesn’t know. The first recognizes these people as Argentinean Spanish speakers like her by their accent (another contextualization cue), and starts using the typical address form vos with the special conjugation of the verbs that accompany (vos querés). If the other speakers tune in and use her same accent it can be said that they have succeeded in recognizing the intention of the first speaker when using such a particular contextualization cue. If, on the contrary, this doesn’t happen and they adhere to the peninsular standard, the meaning of contextualization (code-switching in this case) will have failed, and this reaction will be seen as cold and distant or as a rejection of the first speaker’s positive politeness strategies. ANALYSIS of a fragment of a speech of Hillary Clinton: The context here is possibly an auditorium in North America full to the top with Democratic Party followers Hillary addresses the audience by using empathy. Pronouncing phrases like a proud mother, a proud democrat a proud American she identifies herself with her audience in one way or another, the use of a marked intonation for these utterances signals encouragement. Her lexical choice is for uniting everyone who’s present at that moment. In the same way further on she uses the words same and the sentence “A fight we must win,” in order to show the audience that she is part of their group, there is shared background knowledge between them, and they share the same culture and have the same interest. The constant use of the pronouns you, me and we, together, as well as the examples she provides, which refer to particular cases but can happen to anyone of the audience, provides a contextualization cue of unity. The register Hillary uses is a standard AmE with plain language that everyone can understand; her accent is another contextualization cue which identifies her with the addressees. The role of Hillary is of principal, animator and author (responsible for, producer, and creator of talk), she has then got the power and although we must rely on inference to know it, for sure Hillary uses a great number of facial and body gestures in order to increase the power of her conference.  Briefly write about the concepts of text and context in relation to the different definitions of Text Linguistics and Discourse Analysis.According to Schiffrin for Discourse Analysis text and context are the two types of information that contribute to the communicative content of an utterance and thus both are included as part as discourse. Text is what is said; the linguistic content: the semantic meaning of words, expressions and sentences. Context is the linguistic production, the culture, the knowledge, the beliefs, goals, etc. of people who interact one with another. The inferences that hearers have on hand depend on context.  For Beaugrande text is the study of real language in use, and together with Dressler presents text as a communicative event that must satisfy seven different criteria: acceptability, cohesion, coherence, informativity, intentionality, intertextuality and situationality. TL has a tendency towards a more formal and experimental approach and views language as a mental phenomenon. DA tends towards a more functional approach and views language as a predominantly social occurrence.Briefly write about some of the different points of view and topics that a discourse analyst can research about.DA entails the study of language in use; it involves the study of history, communication research, semiotics, anthropology, psychology, poetics, linguistics, and sociology.The current aim of DA is to describe language in other media besides language and it also considers photography, clothing, dance and song.A discourse analyst explores matters such as: turn-taking in telephone conversation, power relationships in doctor/patient interviews, discourse of politicians, use of irony or metaphor, discourse of E-mail messages, use of linguistic politeness, dialogue in chat rooms, etc.What would you as a discourse analyst, be interested in doing research about? Justify your answer.  I would be interested in knowing to what extent discourse is powerful; how the conferences of people like politicians, governors or sect leaders influence the people who listen to them. I think this would be an interesting topic, because it has happened to myself that I’ve sometimes listened to one person and I’ve thought they’re right, but after I’ve listened to one who says the contrary thing and I also think they’re right. I would like to study the way how discourse, especially the one carried out by people who are skilled in oratory can convince you about something or can brainwash you. Briefly write about the central concepts and methods of Conversation Analysis.Conversation Analysis explains the importance of the parties to an interaction while they refuse the use the investigators’ specific theoretical and conceptual definitions of research questions.Conversational analysts give importance to the study of talk-in-interaction, which includes both everyday conversation and institutionalized forms of talk such as conversation in the school, at the courts, at the doctor’s, etc.These analysts normally use data obtained from tape-recorded conversation that isn’t done at an appointed time. Some aspects of context are not very relevant for CA transcripts of talks; this is the case of social relations or aspects of the social context such as setting, personal attributes or the occupation of a given participant.For CA interaction is structurally organized, thus this kind of analysts search for repeated patterns, distributions, and forms or organization in large corpora of talk. Methods and central concepts of CA. Central criteria for CA are: 1^st that the data must be fully observabl 2^nd duplicated analysis should looked basically the sam 3^rd if data do not explain themselves, then more empirical data should be obtained.The organization of turn-taking is fundamental to conversation, it  is used for talking in different speech-exchange systems (interviews, meeting, ceremonies or debates) and it is governed by established rules as for example the fact that one party talks at a time or that the number of parties and the turn order varies.Another fundamental concept in CA is that of adjacency pair, which means that two utterances are adjacent and produced by different speakers. These two utterances are arranged as a first part and a second part and they are normally typed, so that a first part normally expects and requires a given second part or range of second parts. Prototypical examples of adjacency pairs are: greeting-greeting: hello-hello; offer-acceptance: would you like some more tea-yes, please; apology-minimization: I’m sorry-oh, don’t worry. That’s ok. Preference organization underlies the idea of a hierarchy that operates over the potential second parts of an adjacency pair. There is at least one preferred second which is unmarked and one dispreferred category of response to first parts which is marked. According to Levinson the dispreferred seconds normally show one or more of these features: delays by the use of a pause or a preface, another case would be the use of prefaces such of markers like Uh and Well, hesitators, the use of qualifiers such as I don’t now for sure…and others. Another use would be explanation for the rejection (accounts) or declination component which is normally indirect or mitigated. Other orders of organization are: Repair: device for the correction of misunderstanding, mishearing or non-hearing, it can be self-initiated which is the most common and is signalled by phenomena such as glottal stops, lengthened vowels, etc. or it can be other-initiated repair which is initiated by a participant other than the speaker, this can be done with the use of repetitions, echo-questions or expressions like what?, pardon?, etc. Pre-sequence: they prefigure the specific kind of action that they potentially precede; an example would be pre-sequences, summons, pre-closing, pre-invitations, etc. as for example the following pre-request: will you be home tomorrow? Yes, in the morning. Insertion sequences: may be concerned with, for instance, repair, or establishing a temporary hold. The telephone conversation can be separated by a turn-insertion like the following: -hello-Question: hello, can I talk to Paul? -hold on a minute please -ok -Answer: I’m sorry, he left five minutes ago Overall organization: it organizes the totality of the exchange within some specific kind of conversation. The different classes of verbal interchanges as for example a conversation over the fence, a telephone call, etc. have special features. Telephone conversations for example have openings which contain summons-answer adjacency pair that is normally followed by the first topic slot which contains the reason for the call. Other topics are fitted to the previous ones, until we reach the closing section of the overall organization. Therefore we can say that telephone calls show the following overall organization: opening section, main body: topic 1 (the most important, as it gives the reasons for the conversation being produced, topic 2,… closing section Briefly write about the process of data collection for doing discourse analysis. One process for obtaining data is through selection. There are different criteria to select a sample; the different criteria depend on the goals of research.Different procedures can be chosen, e.g. keying texts in, using text which are stored in machine-readable form, recording and transcribing spoken discourse, downloading material from the internet, etc.The different approaches to Discourse Analysis take different perspectives and have different beliefs about the methods to collect and analyze data, for example Interactional sociolinguistics focus on a few fragments of talk, whereas Ethnography of communication: requires much of social, cultural, and personal information about interlocutors.  Another field, Pragmatics, focuses on the way people understand and produce a communicative act or speech act in a concrete speech situation which is usually a conversation. Define corpus and write about the different type of corpora we may find in DA.Crystal defines corpus as “a collection of LINGUISTIC DATA, either written texts or a TRANSCRIPTION of recorded speech, which can be used as a starting-point of linguistic description or as method for verifying hypotheses about a LANGUAGE (corpus linguistics.) A corpus is a large collection of linguistic data of written or spoken texts that is used for language research. The different types of corpora we may find are:  Written (e.g. LOB) vs. Spoken (e.g. London-Lund corpus)  vs. mixed (BNC National varieties: British corpora (Brown corpus) vs. American corpus vs. international corpus Historical variation: diachronic vs. synchronic vs. corpora which only covers one stage of language history (Shakespeare corpora)Geographical variation/dialectal variation: corpus of dialect samples vs. mixed corpora.Age: adult vs. child corporaGenre: literary corpora vs. technical vs. non-fiction (news texts) vs. mixed corpora which covers all genres. Open-endedness: closed, unalterable corpora (LOB) vs. monitor corpora (Bank of English) Availability: commercial vs. non-commercial research corpora, online corpora vs. corpora on ftp servers vs. corpora available on floppy disks or CD-ROMs. Briefly write about the field of study and scope of linguistic Pragmatics establishing the differences between Semantics and Pragmatics as seen and treated in our course. Pragmatics focuses on the way people understand and produce a communicative act or speech act in a concrete speech situation which is usually a conversation Pragmatics is one of the main sources and approaches to Discourse Analysis, several aspects are included within Pragmatics:Reference: Homophoric: Homophora is reference that depends on cultural knowledge or other general knowledge, rather than on specific features of a particular context, e.g. The use of the sun. The use of the baby between parents to refer to their own baby  Anaphoric: referents which have been previously evoked: this is my sister, she lives in Canada. Bridging: an inferred anaphoric reference: Inferable reference: the referent that we can infer from the previous text, these items can also be omitted, e.g. boils the potatoes, cut Ø into small dices… Cataphoric: Cataphoric reference means that a word in a text refers to another later in the text and you need to look forward to understand, e.g. when he arrived, John found his window broken. Esphoric: a reference that looks forward within the same nominal group. It identifies participants without us having to look elsewhere in the text; the elements point to themselves to be identified. This kind of reference occurs when one thing modifies another one and answers the question Which one? E.g. the blue doorExophoric: This is used for referents which we refer outside the text (think of an exit). The speaker and the listener must rely on knowledge of interpretation from the given situation. E.g. that must have cost a lot of money (that is exophoric and refers to something, e.g. a watch, that isn’t mentioned before) Deixis: refers to those aspects of communication whose aspects of communication depend on the knowledge of the context in which a communication is taking part.  Deictic items or indexical expressions or shifters can be demonstratives, pronouns, tense, place and time adverbs as now and here.here are three main types: Person: related to the encoding of the role of participants in the speech event in which the utterance in question is delivered Place: related to the encoding of spatial locations relative to the location of the participants in the speech event: this, here (proximal) / that, there (distal) Time: related to the encoding of temporal points and period relative to the time at which an utterance is spoken. Other types are:Discourse deixis: refers to the use of expressions in an utterance which are used to refer to some portion of the discourse that contains the utterance. Time and place deictic term are discourse-deictic. It is different from anaphora because it normally involves a pronoun or expression which refers to a linguistic expression. E.g. believe me, I love you / That’s the biggest lie I’ve ever heard (that refers to the whole utterance). Discourse connector or pragmatic markers such as however, besides, well, anyway, moreover are also considered deictic when placed in utterance-initial position The difference between discourse deixis and anaphora is that the latter normally uses a pronoun to refer to the same referent. E.g. Cathy is going to France, she has… Cathy and she are co-referential because they share the same referent. Social deixis: it is a reference to the social characteristics of the participants or referents in a speech event. A kind of social deixis would be the use of the pronouns usted o tú, depending on the occasion. Deixis is organized egocentrically, thus it constitutes a deictic centre or origo, which means that the central person is the speaker, his/her location, time, social centre (status and rank of speaker) Presupposition is a kind of linguistic inference that is based on the real linguistic structure of the sentences. The linguistic expressions that trigger presuppositions are called presupposition triggers such as the change of state verb in Sara ate all the cake (presupposition: there was a cake).As stated by Green there is three main kinds:Existence presupposition: most representative case, it concerns the existence of definite descriptions: the wind broke Lucia’s tree (presupposition: Lucia has a tree (presupposition trigger)Factive presupposition: divided into several kinds:Subject complements of mean, be obvious or prove. Object complements of epistemic factives such as know or      realize as well as the complements of emotive factive verbs such    as be glad, amaze or be surprised are considered to be presupposed true, e.g. I know they have sold The counterfactive verb pretend presupposes that the complement is not true, e.g. Marian pretended to be pregnant. Connotations: an association or idea suggested by a word or phrase; implication. A typical example is found in the verb assassinate, which carries the implicit presupposition that the killing was intended, we cannot say: *He accidentally assassinated his wife. According to Leech both Semantics and Pragmatics are concerned with meaning, the difference between them is the difference in use of the verb to mean; Semantics answer the question what does X mean, whereas Pragmatics refers to what did you mean by X. thus, semantic meaning is twofold and has to do with words or expressions in a given language not considering the situation, the speaker or the hearer. Pragmatic meaning is triadic and is defined regarding the users of the language. Explain the main tenets of the theory of Speech Act, including the contribution made by authors such as Austin and Searle.Austin developed a general theory of illocutionary acts, which states that three kinds of acts are simultaneously performed while saying something: Locutionary act: the utterance of a sentence with a fixed and specific sense and reference, e.g. can I borrow your car Illocutionary act: the making of a statement, offer, promise, etc. in uttering a sentence, by virtue (because) of the traditional power associated with it, e.g. in the example before it would be the request.Perlocutionary act: the effects produced on the audience by means of uttering a sentence, such effects being special to the circumstances of utterance, e.g. the effect the question has occasioned on the hearer of the utterance, which can be intended or unintended.Speech act nowadays refers exclusively to illocutionary acts. Certain verbs (which Austin calls performatives) have the property of allowing the speaker to do the action assign by the verb by using it in a certain way, an example would be the verb promise or the verb advice. Searle later classified Austin’s work basing his categorization of the types of speech acts on felicity conditions. These felicity conditions are the social and cultural criteria that must be satisfied for the act to have the desired result.  According to Searle and Austin all utterances not only express propositions, but also perform actions. Searle based his typology of speech act on a series of illocutionary verbs which represent the five basic kinds of action that a speaker can perform using the following five types of utterances: Representatives: acts which commit the speaker to get the addressee to do something, e.g. concluding, asserting Directives: the speaker tries the addressee to do something, e.g. forbidding, urging, warning, requesting, ordering, begging, instructing. Commisives: acts which commit the speaker to some future course of action, e.g. promising, inviting, volunteering, vowing and pledging (serious promises), threatening, offering, guaranteeing, undertaking, warranting. Expressives: acts which express a psychological state, e.g. welcoming, thanking, congratulating, apologizing, regretting, detesting, deploring (very wrong or immoral). Declaratives: acts which bring about immediate changes in the institutional sate of affairs, these acts rely on extra-linguistics institutions, e.g. christening, marrying, declaring a war, naming (a boat), pronouncing (declaring) , excommunicating.Another contribution that Searle made was the development of a theory of indirect speech act. This theory was based on the observation of for example what is supposed to be a question can be an illocutionary act, for example if someone says I love apple pie (representative) in a bakers, it can be understood that that person is making a request, e.g. please get me a piece (directive). These fact led Searle to observe that often more than one thing is done at once in the same utterance, which is part of the important issue of indirect speech acts. For example if a mother tells her child: you won’t have a yogurt if you don’t eat your food can be interpreted by both a representative (assertion), a threat (commisive) and an order (directive).different approaches to the phenomenon of discourse. Include the perspective of authors like Schiffrin, Leech and Whetherell et al. explain why the terms discourse and discourse analysis are used to mean different things by different researchers. According to Schiffrin for Discourse Analysis text and context are the two types of information that contribute to the communicative content of an utterance and thus it involves the study of both; furthermore DA views language a primarily social occurrence. Leech and Schiffrin distinguish between two main approaches to discourse:The formal approach:  discourse is a unit of language further than the sentence The functional approach: discourse is language use. Whetherell et al. present four possible approaches to DA: The model that views language as a system.  The model based on the activity of language use. Language is viewed as a process, thus researchers focus on interaction.  The model that searches for language patterns associated with a given topic or activity (legal discourse, psychotherapeutic discourse, etc.) the model that looks for patterns within broader contexts, such as “society” or “culture” Discourse is language in use composed by text and context, it is considered multimodal because it uses more than one semiotic system. Discourse Analysis aims to describe language in the context of human interaction and the discourse analysts are more concerned with the actions of speaker or writers than with the formal relationships between sentences. Discourse analysts explore matters such as: turn-taking in telephone conversation, the conversation at a dinner table, the characteristics of persuasive discourse, and the use of irony or metaphor for certain communicative aims, etc. Briefly write about the origins and evolution of Text Linguistics and Discourse Analysis. Other schools such as Text Linguistics, Pragmatics, sociolinguistics and Discourse Analysis emerged parallel with the Chomskyan Generative School. These schools argued that certain meanings and aspects of language cannot be understood or accepted if its study is limited to the syntactic analysis of sentences. TL and DA integrated progressively one with another and through time we can observe how many scholars, such as van Djik, have moved from TL into DA as part of the natural flow of their beliefs The current aim of DA, is to describe language, i.e. in the context of human interaction which, we must bear in mind, involves other media besides language, such as gesture, dance, song, photography or clothing. The connection between these systems of language is also a discourse analyst’s job. Define the concept of corpus and write about the essential characteristics of corpus-based. Why are corpora good for DA? What types of corpora are they? Etc A corpus is a large collection of linguistic data of written or spoken texts that is used for language research. Corpus linguistics is the study of language by using these corpora. According to Biber et al. the essential characteristics of corpus-based analysis are: Empiricism: it analyzes the actual patterns of use in natural texts Use of a large and principled (based on principles) collection of natural texts, known as a “corpus,” as the basis for analysis General use of computers for analysis, using both automatic and direct communication techniques Use of both quantitative and qualitative analytical techniques. The use of corpora is important for discourse analysts as it facilitates the investigation of language in use, the use of corpora allows researchers to deal with larger and more varied texts. It also allows for a more precise and objective description of the use of language, something that is not possible by introspection (self-examination). One of the most important facts about corpora is that it’s an inexhaustible (unlimited) source of hypotheses about the way language works. The aim of corpus-based studies is to describe registers, dialects, etc. in relation to their linguistic association patterns. Although originally done by hand, the use of computerized corpora is of great advantage since it allows the storage and analysis of a much greater amount of natural language texts. There are different types of corpora that can be used depending on our aims; Reich offers the following classification: Medium: spoken vs. writtenNational varieties: British vs. American corpora vs. an international corpus of English. Historical variation: diachronic corpora vs. synchronic vs. corpora which only cover one stage of language (Shakespeare corpora) Geographical variation/dialectal variation: corpus of dialect samples (welsh) vs. mixed corpora (BNC: offers samples of speakers from all over Britain) Age: adult English vs. child corpora English Genre: corpora of literary texts vs. corpora of technical English vs. corpora of non-fiction (news) vs. mixed corpora (covers all genres) Open-endedness: closed, unalterable corpora (corpora of a particular period e.g. LOB) vs. monitor corpora Availability (the degree to which as system is operable): commercial vs. non-commercial research corpora, online corpora vs. corpora on ftp servers (used to transfer data from one computer to another over the internet or through a network) vs. corpora available on diskettes or   CD-ROMs