Schneider: Discourse 1

CHAPTER 12: DISCOURSE

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Dr. Schneider

Schneider: Discourse 2

What is “discourse”? Part of socio-linguistics and within that pragma-

linguistics, the field that studies the impact of different contexts on speech patterns used to succeed in getting out of an oral or written dialogue what participants want

Is culture-dependent Oral and written patterns used to communicate

successfully

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What is “discourse”? Researchers analyze oral dialogs and written

communication patterns between different individuals.

Oral communication: turn taking, topic switching, voice, intonation, pitch- when it changes and what it means and how it impacts the dialog content and continuation of participants;

Written communication: division according to purpose: persuade, describe, explain, narrate

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Terms I need to know Discourse Conversational Patterns:

Turn-taking Conventional repair Topic selection & relevance

Speech register Cross-cultural similarities and differences in oral

discourse Cross-cultural similarities and differences in

written discourse

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Conversational patterns TURN-TAKING

When and how long a person speaks and how to politely intersperse own comments

How many can speak simultaneously

TOPIC SELECTION/RELEVANCE How to select and keep a topic that is of relevance to

audience (Grice Maxime: relevance) Issue: taboo topics, meaning of abstract words

(freedom, love, hate, fairness, politeness), idioms

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Conversational patterns

CONVERSATION REPAIR How to help a person who is stuck or how to

help clarify a misunderstanding EX: Did you mean to say…? Oh, you

mean…, Say more about it… Can you give me an example? I am confused, what do you mean by saying…., Could you say that again, I could not hear you….

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Conversational patterns

APPROPRIATENESS Loudness/volume Word/phrase choices Speech register

• Personal or impersonal pronoun use (you or YOU/”your Honor”)

• Casual (slang, dialect) vs. formal (standard)

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Conversational patterns What does it mean for teachers that these

conversational patterns are culture-specific?

Do not assume ELLs pick up specific conventions in this culture automatically by watching: DISCUSS, MODEL THEM EXPLICITLY

Allow ELLs to share conventions in their L1 culture => helps native speakers become better global citizens

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Written discourse

Culture affects writing discourse Knowing about the oral traditions of a

culture helps understand representation in writing

See graph, next slide: ASSUME a difference in writing discourse

in L1 if ELL struggles with English model

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Written discourse in different cultures

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Written discourse differences In Semitic, Oriental, Romance and Russian

languages: How a topic is introduced (indrectly-indirectly) How a topic is supported (indirectly vs. directly related

arguments) How conclusion is phrasedEX: Chinese-based structures intro-loose development of topic Statement of main idea Content indirectly related to argument Conclusion of main idea

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Written discourse differences Style:

even for facts often more informal, oral writing style (Arabic)

Use of transitions (English vs. Arabic) Degree of use of repetition, parallelism (Arabic,

German) Sentence length (Spanish? German vs. English) Active voice vs. passive voice (German vs. English) Use of figurative language in factual texts (Thai)