5.4

5.4 Discourse analysis

Inasmuch as grammar deals with the system by which sound is related to meaning, grammarians have, for the most part, confined their analysis to single sentences. Yet, it is obvious that the meaning of many sentences is not clear without considering the sentences which precede or follow in the same conversation. For example, linguists studying reported speech (Zwicky 1971) generally confine their discussion to individual sentences and reports of sentences. But to do so is to ignore the nature of discourse. For example, as Sherzer (1973:273) has indicated, “If John asks Harry Are you going to the movies?, and Harry replies, Yes, then John can later report to Mary that Harry said that he was going to the movies in spite of the fact that all Harry said was yes. Any adequate account of reported speech must describe this and other aspects of the discourse properties of reporting.”
It follows that if analysis of language is to be realistic, one must observe actual speech and not merely concoct sentences out of one’s own intuitional resources. The social context, as well as the linguistic context, of each sentence must be considered. In discourse analysis, the first step is to distinguish what is said from what is done. We attempt to relate sentence types, such as statements, questions, and imperatives, by means of discourse rules to the set of actions done with words. There is no simple one-to-one relationship because, for example, refusals, challenges, retreats, insults, promises, or threats. The discourse analyst tries to show that one sentence follows another in a coherent manner.
Discourse rules include rules of interpretation (with their inverse rules of production) and sequencing rules, which connect actions. Other elements of discourse are based on shared and unshared knowledge and notions of role, rights, duties, and obligations associated with social rules (for example, cf. discussion on directives in section 5.6, also the collections edited by Freedle 1977 and 1979).
Lakoff (1972:907) notes that in order to be able to predict how rules are going to apply, one has to be able to identify the assumptions about the social context of an utterance, as well as any other implicit assumptions made by speakers. She observes that the following sentences are in descending order of politeness, although under other more ordinary circumstances, must imposes an obligation, should merely gives advice that may be disregarded, and may allows someone to do something he already wanted to do. The fact that the sentences are spoken by a hostess at a party is reflected in the inverse order to politeness expressed by choice of modals :

(1) You must have some of this cake.
(2) You should have some of this cake.
(3) You may have some of this cake.

Such distinctions are sometimes made in other languages by different honorifics, as in Japanese.
Although silence is the absence of speech, it often can communicate something. For example, as Key (1975b:116-117) notes. “It can convey respect, as in the presence of a great person or an elder or at a funeral or coronation; comfort, to a distressed loved one who wants to be quiet; companionship, when watching a sunset; support when a toddler is learning to tie a shoe; rejection, when a black employee wants to join the office chatter, reprimand, as to a child, or a pear, when words would be too embarrassing, consent as an answer to a challenging statement; and no consent, as an unspoken answer.”
In some American Indian groups, an acceptable social visit may consist of go8ng to a friend’s house, sitting silently for half an hour, and then leaving without saying anything. in such a cultural setting, speech is not necessary if a person has nothing to say. A teacher may discover that a particular boy cannot and will not speak to a girl in the class because they bear a certain kinship relation to each other in the Navaho community (Hymes 1961:60-61).
Work impinging upon discourse analysis has been carried out primarily by the generative semanticists on the one hand, and on the other by sociologists doing fine grained analysis of the sentence, recognize aspects of discourse but force them into the structure of sentences, as if discourse had no structure of its own. On the other hand, those studying language from the perspective of the ethnography of communication and social interactionism have been developing rigorous ways of analyzing discourse in terms of the dimensions of speech usage and the nature of discourse rues. They have studied how, in coherent discourse, utterance follow each other in a rational, rule-governed manner, as well as the selection of speakers and the identification of persons.
One particularly active field of research the past few years has been the analysis of children’s discourse (see, for example, Ervin-Tripp and Mitchell Keman, eds. 1977). A number of scholars have been analyzing children’s turn taking sequencing etc. they are beginning to realize the wide range of interactional strategies which children use, which reveal their assumptions about the nature of the participants and the most appropriate and effective way to use language in interactions with them (Boggs and Lein 1978). Studies have focused on both child-child and child-adult conversations. It appears that the child learns conversational strategies at the same time that he is learning grammar. In any case, it appears on close examination that children are very skilled interact ants indeed.