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DISCOURSE ANALYSIS IN TEACHING
27 September, 2004
What is discourse analysis?
It’s a way of looking at language. Grammarians look at
with grammar as the unit of analysis. Discourse analysis is concerned with
the relationship between language and the contexts it’s used in.
It is not a methodology of teaching and knowledge of
discourse is not always useful to the language teacher. However, an awareness
of how language is used in relation to context, roles and relationship of
speakers, can sometimes be used and be useful in the classroom, especially in
getting learners to sound more natural.
We can divide discourse into 2 areas. Firstly spoken
discourse and secondly written discourse. There may be a case for arguing
some pieces of language are a hybrid of the two.
Spoken
discourse
may cover telephone calls, transactions in shops, interviews, etc..
Written
discourse
may cover newspapers, poems, letters and so forth.
One could say a wedding ritual is a hybrid; because it is
not improvised, it is based on a set text.
SPOKEN DISCOURSE
FORM and
FUNCTION
Look at extract 1. Taken from the British comedy show
Morecombe and Wise.
1.
ERNIE:
Tell ‘em about the show.
ERIC:
(to the audience) Have we got a show for you tonight folks!
Have we got a show for you!
(aside to Ernie) Have we got a show for
them?
“Have we got a show for you” changes meaning or function
during the exchange. The important thing is how we recognize this change.
Interpretation is based essentially on context, the relationship of the
people, intonation, may be pitch, conventions of speech.
In a nutshell this is what discourse analysis is about.
How we interpret language, what makes sentences coherent, what we are doing
with the language.
A more accurate knowledge of this can help us when
evaluating materials, creating materials and using language in the classroom.
SPEECH ACTS
The basic unit of spoken discourse is the speech act. In
the exchanges below we can see a pattern of INITIATE, RESPONSE and FOLLOW UP.
2.
A: What
time is it?
B: Six
thirty.
A:
Thanks.
A: Tim’s
coming tomorrow.
B: Oh
yeah.
A: Yes.
Many of our everyday exchanges follow this pattern (albeit
often very liberally).
In the exchanges below we can see how context can
determine meaning or function.
3.
A: What
time is it?
B: Five
past six.
A:
i) A:
Thanks!
ii) A: Good!
Clever girl!
iii) No it
isn’t, and you know it isn’t; it’s half past and you’re late again!
In ii) and iii) the questioner actually already knows the
answer to the question! While comprehension checking is useful in the
classroom, we have to be careful that all our teacher talk isn’t of this
tell-me-what-I-already-know kind. A balance is needed with language used for
meaningful communication.
Know you maybe thinking your normal conversations down the
pub usually don’t follow this neat INITIATE, RESPONSE and FOLLOW UP pattern.
Well, have a look at the conversation script below
(untouched) and see if you can find any examples of this pattern.
4.
(University lecturer (L) at a student bar
where he has just ordered drinks for a group of students (S1, S2, etc.). The
barman (B) is attending to the order and the group are standing at the bar.)
L:
Well, that should blow a hole in five pounds, shouldn't it?
51:
It's quite cheap actually.
L: (laughs)
51:
What's the urn lecturers' club like, senior, senior, you know.
L:
.
Ah it's very cosy and sedate and, er, you
know, nice little armchairs and curtains. . . there are some
interesting characters who get there.
S2:
Is that the one where they have the toilets marked with er gentlemen, no, 'ladies and members'?
L: Oh,oh
S2:
Yeah it was one of the other lecturers who
pointed it out, he thought it was quite amusing.
L:
Yeah, I hadn't noticed that, yeah, might
well be, yeah,
B:
Four sixty-seven please.
L: Is that all, God, I
thought it would cost more than that (pays)
. . . thank you. . . I thought it would cost mote than that.
S1:
{ It's quite cheap.
S2:
{ I wouldn't argue with that one.
S3:
{ No, it's quite good.
L:
Now, how are we going' to carry all these over?
You were right, there may be one at the beginning, where
the FOLLOW UP is a laugh.
So rather than looking for patterns, what we can focus on
is how peoples cooperate in the management of discourse. We can identify
common and recognized ways of TURN TAKING (falling intonation giving you a
cue that I’ve finished my point), OPENING or CLOSING frames (so, now, ok,
well), politeness, topic changing (anyway), norms of conversation (in the pub
the barman feels justified to interrupt to close his exchange and get the
money)
Let’s look more at this “Cooperation”
ADJACENCY
PAIRS
These are common things people say that often have an
automatic response.
GREETING
-
GREETING
CONGRATULATION
- THANKS
APOLOGY - ACCEPTANCE
INFORM - ACKNOWLEDGE
We should be aware the use of these pairs might change
across cultures. I am sure you can think of some differences in Chinese and
English usage.
EXCHANGES
Let’s look at 2 exchanges. One is a typical classroom
exchange and a second without the teacher “in the way”.
5.
i) TEACHER: Now Wang, you ask Li
WANG: What did
you do at the weekend?
LI: I went to Wales
TEACHER: Good, now Li, you ask Candy…..)etc.)
ii) WANG: What did you do
at the weekend?
LI: I went to Wales
WANG: Oh really? Where
did you go?
FOLLOW UP MOVES: How nice, that’s interesting, oh dear, I
see, did you….etc.
We can see the danger of the teacher controlling and not
allowing or encouraging follow up phrases. The problem as teachers is that we
may often, unknowingly, limit the kind of role and functions that are
students use. Hence the high popularity of role-plays. One role-play to be
aware of, however, is the “interview”. If you are encouraging natural
conversations, the role of the interviewer is not a particularly good one.
There is often little follow up response and little need to really listen to
what the other person is saying.
So the presentation of language (turn-taking, follow up,
interrupting etc..) and then a real opportunity to use it is all important.
*One useful method is to give students an activity to do,
such as a role-play. Second, they then listen to some native speakers, or
even better other students a of a somewhat higher level than them, doing it
(all previously recorded by the teacher). Then, students identify the
discourse (how the language was used, how turns were established, how someone
interrupted and so on). Finally they repeat the exercise themselves.
It’s time consuming to record, but useful because 95% of
all pre-recorded material is touched up in some way. This is a real
opportunity to listen to “natural” discourse.
WRITTEN DISCOURSE
Have a look at this extract of discourse. What is it?
6.
The Broken House. Michael Tomlinson. Cambridge University
Press. 2003. To my father. Chapter One. It was a dark and sultry night, the
rain was beating in my head.
Apart from recognizing markers (past tense, gerund, etc.)
and cohesive devices (and, etc.) how did you interpret the text?
What you do when you read is bring your knowledge of the
world and of writing to the text.
When you read there is a continual internal conversation
happening between you and the text. You read “The broken house” and ask
“Whose is the house? Why is it broken? Is this an advert?” etc. and this goes
on until you satisfactorily interpret the text.
So how can we help students read? One way is increasing
world knowledge (by no means an easy task!) and increasing knowledge of text
patterns for different text types.
7.
TEXT PATTERNS
Phenomenon
–reason: Cause – consequence: Instrument – achievement: Problem – solution
These are some common patterns found in writing.
The phrase “Feeling ill, he went home”.
Could be cause –
consequence or even, problem -
solution.
The problem –
solution pattern is typically used in adverts.
Different patterns have common related or key vocabulary
as seen below
8.
Problem
concern, difficulty, dilemma drawback,
hamper,
hinder{er/ance),
obstacle, problem, snag.
Response
change, combat, (vb), Come up with, develop,
find,
measure(s), respon
(d/se)
Solution/result answer, consequence, effect, outcome,
result, solution,
(re) solve
Evaluation (in)effective, manage, overcome, succeed,
(un)successful, viable, work (vb)
As teachers we can point out the vocabulary that signals a
pattern and then students identify patterns in texts, (bottom-up) or we
indicate the patterns and let students find the signaling vocabulary
(top-down). Vocabulary can then be stored in pattern lists.
THEME - RHEME
Another feature of written discourse is theme – rheme.
“I live in Beijing.” “I” is the theme and “live in
Beijing” is the rheme.
In the following text you can see a pattern (all too
familiar!) of the style in Option (b)
“I live in Beijing. I work in a bank. I like my job. I
work very hard.”
You can see an example of Option (a) in the text below.
9. THEME -
RHEME
Option (a)
theme1 -----rheme1
theme2-------rheme2
theme3 -------etc.
Option (b) theme
1-------rheme1
/
theme 1------rheme2
/
theme1--------etc.
So how would the “I live in Beijing” text look with option
(a)?
Both options are valid, but one may be more appropriate or
effective in a given situation.
Awareness can be raised by showing students texts and
having them identify, if possible, evidence of these patterns.
*An exercise to help work on recognition of coherence,
sequence of sentence and paragraphing is as below.
Use a text the
students have already read and done some work on.
Take the text and cut it up into say 10 sentences
(paragraphs at very high levels).
Give on group/student 1,3,5,7….and another 2,4,6,8…
They then have to reconstruct the missing sentences from
their sentences and memory.
Then remove all the original sentences you handed out at
the start. Now in groups/pairs, they put their sentences together and discuss
how well they gel, why? and why not?
10.
TEXT COHERENCE
The result is…
The reason is….
The fact is that…
This contrasts with…
*Here is another exercise to help raise awareness and use
of coherence in texts.
Give the first and last sentence of a text to all
the students in a small group.
E.G.
“Young people today are exposed to a lot of violence on
TV”
“This suggests some sort of censorship may
be necessary to solve the problem”
Then each student has to write individually a sentence
from his cue E.G. “The result is” “This contrast with” etc.
They then put all their sentences together and discuss how
well the text gels and what needs to change to make it work.
All of the ideas on Writing discourse of course are
equally applicable to reading.
CONCLUSION
So knowledge of discourse can raise awareness of natural
language, register, style, text patterns and so on. Language rarely follows
the rules or patterns suggested 100%, of course and it is important students
are told this.
We have just touched on the surface of discourse analysis
here and if you want to find out more try “Discourse Analysis for Language
Teachers” by Michael McCarthy. (Just 13Yuan!!! Shanghai Foreign Language
Education Press).
There is an excellent site at http://extra.shu.ac.uk/daol/
Check it
out and have fun……!!!!
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