Page 271 - DENG504_LINGUISTICS

Unit 19: Discourse

Apart from that, it was pointed out that some utterances are invariably interrelated, which can Notes
enable teachers of foreign languages to prepare learners adequately to react as a native speaker
would. Among the phrases whose successors are easy to anticipate there are for instance: greeting,
where the response is also greeting; apology with the response in the form of acceptance or informing
- and acknowledging as a response. Such pairs of statements are known as adjacency pairs. While
the function of the reply is frequently determined by the former expression its very form is not, as
it depends on circumstances in which the conversation occurs. Thus, in a dialogue between two
friends refusal to provide help might look like that: no way! I ain't gonna do that!, but when mother
asks her son to do something the refusing reply is more likely to take different form: I'm afraid I can't
do that right now, can you wait 5 minutes? Frequently used phrases, such as "I'm afraid", known as
softeners, are engaged when people want to sound more respectful. Learners of a foreign language
should be aware of such linguistic devices if they want to be skillful speakers.
Written texts analysis
Since the examination of written language is easier to conduct than the scrutiny of oral texts, in
that more data is available in different genres, produced by people form different backgrounds as
well as with disparate purposes, it is more developed and of interest not only to linguists but also
language teachers and literary scholars. Each of them, however, approaches this study in a different
way, reaching diverse conclusions, therefore only notions that are mutual for them and especially
those significant for language methodology are accounted for here. What is worth mentioning is
the fact that in that type of analysis scholars do not evaluate the content in terms of literary
qualities, or grammatical appropriateness, but how readers can infer the message that the author
intended to convey.
Apart from differences between written and spoken language described beforehand it is obviously
possible to find various types and classes of discourse depending on their purpose. Written texts
differ from one another not only in genre and function, but also in their structure and form, which
is of primary importance to language teachers, as the knowledge of arrangement and variety of
writing influences readers' understanding, memory of messages included in the discourse, as well
as the speed of perception. Moreover, written texts analysis provides teachers with systematic
knowledge of the ways of describing texts, thanks to which they can make their students aware of
characteristic features of discourse to which the learners should pay particularly close attention,
such as cohesion and coherence.
One of the major concerns of written discourse analysts is the relation of neighboring sentences
and, in particular, factors attesting to the fact that a given text is more than only the sum of its
components. It is only with written language analysis that certain features of communicative
products started to be satisfactorily described, despite the fact that they were present also in
speech, like for instance the use of 'that' to refer to a previous phrase, or clause. As mentioned
before written language is more integrated than the spoken one which is achieved by more frequent
use of some cohesive devices which apart from linking clauses or sentences are also used to
emphasize notions that are of particular importance to the author and enable the reader to process
the chosen information at the same time omitting needless sections.
Links within discourse

Links in discourse studies are divided into two groups: formal - which refer to facts that are
present in the analyzed text, and contextual - referring to the outside world, the knowledge (or
schemata) which is not included in the communicative product itself. Since it is difficult to describe
the processing of contextual links without referring to particular psychological inquiries, therefore,
this section is devoted to representation of formal links.
By and large five types of cohesive devices are distinguished, some of which might be subdivided:
• Substitution: in order to avoid repeating the same word several times in one paragraph it is
replaced, most often by one, do or so. So and do in its all forms might also substitute whole
phrases or clauses.

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