Discourse

• Discourse


  A level of language concerned with larger sections of text. Looking at how the entire text is organised.
• Conversational structure


  Methods used by speakers to structure conversation efficiently or management of conversational turn
• Sequence and structure in conversation

  • Opening and closing
  • Turn taking
  • Adjacency pairs
• Turn-taking


  The control of the floor at any time in conversation is called a turn
• Turn-taking


  • Paralinguistic signals e.g. nodding, gestures, smiles
• Back-channel signals


  A noise, gesture, expression or word used by the listening to indicate that they are paying attention
• Rosenfeld (1978) stated that the most popular back-channel signals include: head movements, brief vocalisations, glances and facial expressions
• Adjacency Pairs


  Utterances produced by two successive speakers in a way that the second utterance is identified as related to the first one and expected to follow-up to it
• Adjacency pairs are the basic structural unit in a conversation
• Insertion Sequence


  Conversation can take a linear structure, one pair followed by another. But there are also cases of embedding on pair inside an another adjacency pair
• Schegloff (1972) describes insertion sequences as Q1-Q2-A1-A2, where Q2 and A2 become the insertion sequence
• Labov's narrative model


  Elaborated on the basis of a spoken corpus of hundreds of stories told in the context of everyday conversation
• Labov's Narrative Categories (1972)

  • Abstract
  • Orientation
  • Complicating action
  • Resolution
  • Evaluation
  • Coda
• Abstract


  Signals that the narrative is about to begin and draws attention from the listener
• Orientation


  Helps the listener to identify the time, place, people and activities in the story
• Complicating action


  The core narrative, providing the 'what happened' element of the story
• Resolution


  Tells the final event in the story
• Evaluation


  Makes the point of the story very clear
• Coda


  Signals the ending of the story and the point of why they started the story in the first place
• Goodwin's model for analysing narratives


  Highlights the interactive natures of storytelling
• Goodwin's Story Structure - multi-speaker interactions

  • Story preface
  • Story solicit
  • Preliminary to the story
  • Story actions
  • Story climax
  • Story appreciation
• Story preface


  A signal that a speaker wants to tell a story and an invitation for others to show interest
• Story solicit


  A response from someone else to indicate that they want to listen to the story
• Preliminary to the story


  Background information to the story in the form of 'who', 'where', 'what' and 'why'
• Story actions


  The main body of the narrative
• Story climax


  The conclusion of the narrative
• Story appreciation


  Signals from the audience that communicate their response to the narrative. This might be at several different points during the story and could consist of questions, agreements and laughter or other emotions