Discourse Analysis The Negotiation of Meaning Systemic and Schematic Knowledge. People make sense of written or spoken text according to the world they live in, the ideational and interpersonal schemata ( conventional ways in which their socio-cultural reality is structured). They also need knowledge of what is semantically encoded in the language in order to understand text (written or spoken) pragmatically appropriate (intentions and interpretation).

Negotiation of the Meaning “ My daughter got a PROMOTION at the agency” Schematic (Frames of reference or background) Communication involves two kind of Knowledge Systemic (Semantic codes and Pragmatics )

Analysis If she´s got a promotion : she is an adult because she works (for an agency) When The mother says : “ My daughter ” The subject, the Topic (importance) By intonation they are very close and she sounds like saying her child. Daughter : picture of a female Promotion : she feels very proud. (intonation tells about it) Every aspect of the choices a speaker has made has implications for the picture the listener is supposed to build in his/her mind. All of these is possible because both of them (sender and receiver) have previous agreements, same background same interpretation of the subject.

Convergence Sender Receiver I´m the message

The two parties are involved They have common agreement A mutual understanding Meaning is achieved as required by the purpose in communication Communication is effective That means ……..

Communicative Convergence Communication is always matter of negotiating and in order to have an effective communication process it is necessary have common agreement ( same schematic and systemic knowledge) between the parties in an interaction. So there are correspondence between sender and receiver and depending on this is the level of convergence achieved.

But what happen when communicative convergence process fails? Sometimes is not so easy and we may have some problems if the communicative convergence fails. There are Different kinds of problems ( pragmatics meaning) The receiver may understand what the sender intends to say, but not what illocutionary force is intended For example: S: aren´t you driving above the speed limit? Illocution : Would you please take care, ……… We have to negotiate different pragmatic meanings….. Is the Pope a Bachelor? The pope is an unmarried man yes…..but we are reluctant to call the Pope a Bachelor …….Why? It is typical in “general” that men marry women……and if he past the typical age when people marry we call them “bachelors” …… It supposed that this man are open to marriage someday … but for the Pope even when he is not married we can´t say even he is “single” because this means he is open to find a women……

What can we do about this? There are some other different reason which we may have some troubles. But there are some strategies to solve the problems Negotiating “on line” If the communication is through the immediately reciprocal interaction of conversation. * Receiver can ask for clarification * Eliciting additional information * Wait expecting the could be solved as the conversation develops * Expect the sender reformulate the information in different terms.

If the text it is written language, the solutions are different. The producer has to anticipate what problems the receiver might have and on the other side the receiver is free to decide to take part in the co- construct of the conversation. That´s why it is considered writing is a difficult ability to acquire and reading is relatively easy one.

Negotiating Convergence

The Co-operative Principle (Paul Grice) According to Grice this principle can be expressed in 4 Maxims The Quantity Maxim: Do not provide more, or less information than is necessary.