Approaches to Teaching and Learning Discourse

Common Questions Q: What is discourse? A: A text, spoken or written, which consists of more than one clause. Q: What is discourse analysis? A: ‘The description of language above the sentence’. (McCarthy, 1991)

Continued Q: What is coherence? A: ‘Coherence is something created by the reader in the act of reading the text. Coherence is the feeling that the text hangs together, that it makes sense, that it is not just a jumble of sentences’. (ibid) Q: What is cohesion? A: How the links are made between clauses. There are two ‘technical’ types: grammatical and lexical.

Grammatical Coherence Reference: anaphoric; cataphoric. The dog jumped at the man. It bit him. They crowed round the sweet seller: John, Paul, Simon and Fred.

Reference Substitution: nominal; verbal; clausal Which is which? 1. He said he would take early retirement and he has too. Do you like the blue shoes or the red ones? You won the competition! That’s great!

Reference Ellipsis: nominal; verbal; clausal Which is which? Do you like Fred? Yes. The first lecture lasted an hour; the second was over in 20 minutes. Has she remarried? No but she will.

Reference Conjunction: additive; adversative; causal; temporal Which is which? And/also/furthermore Because/therefore Then/next/after that/ finally However/although/despite

Lexical Cohesion Two types: repetition and collocation (Halliday and Hasan, 1976) McCarthy (91) identifies three types of repetition; Direct repetition (A dog, the dog) Synonomy (A dog, the boxer) Antonomy. (The war; the peace)

Lexical Relations General Word Superordinate hyponym hyponym hyponym

Lexical Relations Thing Furniture table desk chair

Spoken Discourse Analysis Openings Hi/hello Taking a turn: Yes, but.. ;surely… Holding a turn: er; um; anyway; you know; Passing a turn: what do you think; isn’t it? Closing: Right; Well, anyway; Okay then.. Pre-sequence: listen, did I tell you about? Repair: self: What I really meant was.. others: Sorry, I don’t get what you mean. Upshot: self: What I’m getting at is… other: What are you getting at?

Discourse Intonation In spoken text, what are the following? Schwa Elision Assimilation Intrusion