Discourse Grammar
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This document provides an outline for a course on discourse grammar. It introduces discourse grammar as a framework that analyzes spoken and written language using terms like theme, rheme, reference and anaphoric. It discusses the texture of a text, including unity of structure and unity of texture. It also covers various aspects of cohesion like reference items, substitution, ellipsis, and lexical cohesion. Finally, it defines theme and rheme in clauses.
Discourse Grammar
- 1. Ministry of Higher Education & scientific Research Salahadin University- Erbil College of Language- Department of English. الرحيم الرحمن هللا بسم Discourse Grammar 2016-2017 AWAN K.MUHAMMED MA STUDENT
- 2. OUTLINE Discourse Grammar The texture of a text Cohesion: Reference items Cohesion: Substitution and Ellipsis Theme and rheme
- 3. Discourse Grammar Discourse Grammar (DG) is a grammatical framework that grew out of the analysis of spoken and written linguistic discourse . Discourse analysis and grammar study familiar terms like : clause, pronoun, adverbial and conjunction and attempt to adverbial and conjunction and attempt to relate them to a less familiar set of terms: theme, rheme, reference and anaphoric, in order to make link between grammar and discourse.
- 4. The texture of a text The notion of texture was introduced by Halliday and Hasan to express the property of being a text. A text has texture and this is what distinguishes it from something that is not a text Hasan (1989a, 1989b) discusses two crucial attributes of texts and which are important for the analysis of Discourse. These are ( Unity of structure and Unity of texture)
- 5. Unity of structure refers to patterns which combine together to create information structure,focus and flow in a text, including the schematic structure of the text. Unity of texture refers to the way in which resources such as patterns of cohesion create both cohesive and coherent texts.
- 6. • Cohesion refers to the the relationship between items in a text such as words, phrases and clauses and other items such as pronouns, nouns and conjunction. • It includes the relationship between words and pronouns that refer to that word (reference items). • It also includes words that commonly co-ocuur in texts (collocation) and the relationship between words with similar, related and different meanings (Lexical Cohesion). • Cohesion also considers semantic relationship between clauses and the ways this is expressed through the use of conjunction. • A further aspect of cohesion is the way in which words such as ‘one’ and ‘do’ are used to substitute for other words in a text (substitution) and the ways in which words or phrases are left out, or ellipsed, from a text (ellipsis).
- 7. Cohesion: Reference items Reference refers to the situation where the identity of an ite can be retrieved from either within or outside the text. The main reference patterns are:- • Anaphoric reference • Cataphoric reference • Exophoric reference • Homophoric refernce
- 8. Anaphoric reference Anaphoric reference is where a word or phrase refers back to another word or phrase used earlier in a text. Usually items such as : he/she or them, it, this can be decoded without major difficulty . Tom likes ice-cream but Bill can’t eat it.
- 9. Cataphoric reference Cataphoric reference (forward reference) describes an item which refers forward to another word or phrase which is used later in the text. Examples of cataphoric sentences are: - My reasons are as follows: one, I don’t ….. - Here is the news. The prime Minster…..
- 10. Exophoric reference Exophoric reference looks outside the text to the situation in which the text occurs for the identity of the item being referred to. Example Custmer: what kind of book would you say this is? Where would you put it on your bookshelves? So here both speakers clearly know what book is being referred to in this conversation( Monica’s story) . You and “your” are examples of exophoric reference.
- 11. Homophoric reference Homophoric reference is where the identity of the item can be retrieved by reference to cultural knowledge, in general, rather than specific context of the text. For example, the meaning of the phrase “the Queen” may be determined by the country in which it is spoken. Because there are many Queens throughout the world, the location of the speaker provides the extra information that allows an individual Queen to be identified. (Wikipedia)
- 12. Cohesion: Lexical Cohesion Lexical cohesion refers to relationships in meaning between lexical items in a text and, in particular, content words and the relationship between them. The main kinds of lexical cohesion are : • Repetition refers to words that are repeated in a text. • Synonymy refers to words which are similar in meaning • Antonymy describes opposite or contrastive meanings such as ‘shy’ and ‘forward’ in the earlier text • Hyponymy is a less familiar term to most people than either synonymy or antonymy, but it refers to a much more important sense relation. It describes what happens when we say ‘An X is a kind of Y • Meronymy is where lexical items are in a ‘whole to part’ relationship with eachother, such as the relationship between ‘Jen’ and ‘Stuart’ in relation to the item ‘couple • Collocation Collocation describes association between vocabulary items which have a tendency to co- occur. ( made up of two or more words that are commonly used together in English).
- 13. Cohesion: Substitution and Ellipsis Substitution With substitution, a substitute form is used for another language item, phrase or group. It can involve substituting an item for a noun. Ellipsis With ellipsis some essential element is omitted from the text and can be recovered by referring to a preceding element in the text. Ellipsis may involve the omission of a noun or noun group, a verb or verbal group or a clause
- 14. Theme and rheme • Theme is the starting point of the clause, what the clause is “about”, the “element which serves as the point of departure of the message” (Halliday, 1985: 38) • The remainder of the clause is the rheme.
- 15. In the sentence ‘Hiragana represents the 46 basic sounds of the japanes language’ The theme is ‘Hiragana’. The rest of the sentence is the rheme ; that is , what the sentence has to say about Hiragana. In this instance ‘Hiragana’ is a topical theme
- 16. Thank you