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CHAPTER

5 Discourse
DEBORAH SCHIFFRIN

CHAPTER PREVIEW
Discourse is the use of language above and beyond the
KEY TERMS
sentence: how people use language in texts and contexts.
act structure
adjacency pair Discourse analysts focus on peoples’ actual utterances and
back channels try to figure out what processes make those utterances
coherence
cohesion appear the way they do. Through discourse, people
cohesive ties ◆ represent the world
discourse
◆ convey communicative intentions
Discourse
discourse markers ◆ organize thoughts into communicative actions
exchange structure ◆ arrange information so it is accessible to others
fragmentation ◆ engage in actions and interactions with one another
genre ◆ convey their identities and relationships
idea structure
information state This chapter provides an overview of central concepts and
integration
narrative
methods through in-depth discussion and analyses of spo-
participation framework ken discourse and written discourse. Models of function and
recipient design
referent
coherence in spoken discourse are also presented.
register
repair
schema
speech act
speech event
speech situation
tone units
transcription
turn at talk
turn continuers
turn transition place
utterance
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170 Discourse

GOALS The goals of this chapter are to:

• define discourse and demonstrate how to analyze spoken and
written discourse
• explain the relationship between structure and function in dis-
course
• demonstrate how repair in discourse works
• describe the effects of recipient design
• explicate the relationship between text and context
• describe the planes of discourse and their relationships

Language use above and beyond the sentence

Almost everything that we do in our everyday lives depends on language.
In fact, it is hard to even imagine what our world would be like without
language. So much of what keeps people and societies together depends
crucially on language. We need language to make and enforce laws; get
and distribute valued resources; create and maintain personal and public
relationships; teach children our ways of “being,” “thinking,” and “doing”;
engage in scholarly inquiry; preserve our past and plan our future.
Language allows us to make friends (and enemies), joke and argue with
each other, celebrate happy occasions and mourn sad ones.
But what is there about language that lets us engage in so wide a range
of activities? Certainly sounds, morphemes, lexical items, and sentences
are part of the story. Sounds produce acoustic signals that combine to con-
vey propositions that are systematically arranged into grammatical strings.
But what happens then? A sound, morpheme, word, sentence, or proposi-
tion almost never occurs on its own. They are put together in discourse.
In this chapter, we learn about discourse analysis, the branch of linguis-
tics that focuses on language use above and beyond the sentence. The terms
“above” and “beyond” may sound like we’re embarking on an interstellar
expedition of some kind, but they capture different features of the “dis-
course” mission. For most of its long scholarly tradition, linguistics perceived
the sentence as the limit of the language system. Linguists focused mainly on
the forms of language (sounds, morphemes, word, and sentences); how lan-
guage was used in context was not explored. Speakers, hearers, and situations
were outside the realm of analysis. It is by examining units larger than sen-
tences, then, that discourse analysts go “above” the sentence. And it is by
examining aspects of the world in which language is used that discourse
analysts go “beyond” the sentence. At the same time, it is important to
remember that real people, using language in the real world (and in the rush
of real time) are analyzing discourse as well – drawing inferences about
meaning from features of the discourse.
Because of its broad reach into the psychological, social, and cultural
worlds, discourse analysis draws from many different disciplines and from
a variety of traditions within linguistics. The construction of discourse
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Discourse 171

involves several simultaneous processes. Some are the linguistic processes

of arranging sentences and conveying meanings. Beyond these linguistic
processes are cognitive processes that underlie the organization of
thoughts into verbal form. The organization of information is influenced
by discourse processes that draw on interactional roles (who is speaking?
who is listening?) as well as more stable social relationships among people
(for example, one’s role in a family or one’s socioeconomic status). Still
other discourse processes draw upon implicit cultural models – displayed
by our elders and our peers – of what we should do, how we should act, and
what kinds of people we should be.
A discourse differs from a random sequence of sentences because it has
coherence – it conveys meaning that is greater than the sum of its parts.
It is not unusual to think of something as having its own identity beyond
the identities of the smaller parts within that entity. For example, culture
is more than what we do: it is a way of thinking about the world and a way
of locating ourselves in that world that guides the way we act. Likewise,
society is more than the sum total of the individuals who live in it.
Cultures and societies are not simply the coincidental result of human
instincts, individual drives and personalities. So, too, discourse is more
than the addition of separate sentences to each other. Rather, there are
structured relationships among the parts that result in something new
and different.
Discourse is a unit of language above and beyond a mere accumulation
of sounds, morphemes, words, clauses, and sentences. It is easy to think of
a written discourse this way. A novel, short story, essay or poem has an iden-
tity that develops through patterned relationships among sentences,
among ideas or characters, through repetition or variation of rhythm and
rhyme. In the same way, when we construct and co-construct spoken dis-
course by talking to each other, underlying processes of speaking, think-
ing, acting, and interacting come together to produce an overall sense of
“what is going on.”

Box 5.1 Formal versus functional approaches

to analyzing language
The analysis of linguistic performance – and the social and cultural
inferences it allows – raises important questions about the relation
of language to other human systems. Does language form a separate
system of rules, different in kind and function from other rules of
human thought and behavior? If not, then to what other systems could
it be related? Is language related to cognition? Is it embedded within
social norms and cultural prisms? The degree to which knowledge of
language is part of a more inclusive body of knowledge through which
we live our daily lives is an ongoing topic of discussion in the field
of linguistics. The linguistic anthropologist Dell Hymes (1974: 79)
suggests that the structural (i.e. formalist) and functional approaches
to analyzing language differ in a number of ways.
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172 Discourse

Structural approach Functional approach

Focuses on structure of language Focuses on structure of speech (as

(a code) as a grammar. acts, events) as ways of speaking.

Analyzes language structure Analyzes language use before analysis

before any (optional) analysis of of language structure. Assumes that
language use. Assumes that language structure and use are
language use derives from integrated; organization of language
language structure. use reveals additional structural
features.

Assumes that the most important Assumes that language has a range of
function of language is referential, functions, including referential, stylistic,
i.e. the use of language to and social functions.
describe the world through
propositions.

Studies the elements and Studies the elements and structures of

structures of language separately language within their contexts of use;
from contexts of use; ignores the attends to the culture (ways of acting,
culture (ways of acting, thinking, thinking, and being) of those using the
and being) of those using the language.
language.

Assumes that language structure Assumes that languages, varieties and

is independent of social functions styles can be adapted to different
and uses. Any language can situations, functions, and uses, and gain
(potentially) serve any social, different social values for their users.
cultural, or stylistic purpose.

Assumes that language is a single Assumes that language comprises a

code within a homogeneous repertoire of speech styles within a
community: each speaker diverse community: each speaker adds
replicates a uniform structure. to an organized matrix of diversity.

Assumes the uniformity of Seeks to investigate the diversity of

speakers, hearers, actions, events, speakers, hearers, actions, events, and
and communities across world communities within world languages.
languages.

Most linguists who analyze discourse adopt, at least partially, a func-

tional approach to language. This is not surprising: observing and
analyzing what people do with language leads naturally to an interest
in the “work” that language can do – the functions it enables people
to perform.

Data: language use in everyday life

Analysis of discourse is always analysis of language use. This means that lin-
guists studying discourse usually do not ask native speakers of a language
for their intuitions about grammaticality or engage in thought experi-
ments about meaning. Rather, discourse analysts examine actual samples
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Discourse 173

of people interacting with each other (by either speaking or writing) in

everyday situations. They believe that the structure of discourse can be The ethnography
discovered not from peoples’ intuitions about what they might, could, or of communication
would say, but primarily from analyses of what people do say. Discourse
Dell Hymes (a lin-
analysis focuses on the patterns in which sentences (and other units such
guistic anthropolo-
as acts and turns) appear in the texts that are constructed as people inter- gist) developed a
act with one another in social contexts. subfield of linguistics
Like other linguists, discourse analysts believe that the form of lan- and anthropology
guage is governed by abstract linguistic rules that are part of speakers’ called “ethnography
competence. But added to linguistic rules are principles that guide per- of communication.”
formance, the use of language. Knowledge about discourse is part of what He persuaded lin-
Hymes (1974) has called communicative competence – our tacit cultural guists and anthro-
knowledge about how to use language in different speech situations, how pologists to analyze
to interact with different people engaged together in different speech the social, cultural,
and linguistic prop-
events, and how to use language to perform different acts.
erties of three units
We can see how our knowledge about language intersects with our
embedded in one
knowledge about social and cultural life by taking a look at the discourse another:
examples below, drawn from a collection of routine speech events: Speech act: an
(1) Gail: Hello? action performed by
one person through
Debby: Oh hi, you’re home already!
speech. It can be
We can infer a great deal about what is going on in this brief exchange from labeled by a noun
features of the interchange. Gail and Debby seem to be talking on the that names the act.
phone; hello with rising intonation (represented by the ?) is typical of the The speaker intends
way Americans answer the phone. Notice that Debby doesn’t ask for Gail to perform the act
and that intention
(for example, Hi, is Gail there?), nor does she identify herself (Hi, this is Debby).
is recognized by the
What Debby doesn’t say, then, allows us to infer that Debby and Gail know
recipient. Examples:
each other pretty well; Debby recognizes Gail’s voice and seems to assume a greeting, a
that Gail will recognize hers. We can also infer (from the exclamation oh) request, a boast, a
that Gail’s presence is surprising to Debby. And the statement you’re home compliment.
already, shows that Debby knows something about Gail’s intended schedule. Speech event: an
Snippets of discourse from our daily lives show us how much we – as interaction between
“after-the-fact” analysts and as real-time language users – can infer about two or more people
“what is going on” from routine uses of language. Likewise, gathering in which more than
examples of routine speech acts (such as requests, compliments, apolo- one speech act
gies) and speech events (such as face-to-face greetings or telephone open- occurs. Examples:
greetings, request,
ings) can reveal both their similarities and their differences. However,
and compliance.
although collecting examples of discourse from our own everyday lives is
Speech situation:
valuable, it has several limitations. First, when we hear an interesting bit a social occasion
of discourse and then jot it down, we usually cannot capture stretches of with more than one
discourse that are longer than a few sentences or turns at talk. (A turn at speech event. During
talk is the period of time in which someone is granted and/or takes the the occasion, speech
opportunity to speak.) Second, it is difficult to reconstruct the nuances of contributes to what
speech, particularly when several people are interacting with each other. happens, but it is
These nuances are especially helpful when we try to figure out how it is not necessarily all
that interlocutors (people talking to one another) interpret what is going that happens.
on; crucial information can reside in a pause, a sigh, a downward intona- Examples: a class-
room, a party.
tion, a simple oh or well, or the arrangement of words in a sentence (for
example, I want the cake versus The cake is what I want). It is impossible to
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174 Discourse

recall all of the speech that appears throughout the course of a speech
event (the type of interaction that participants assume is going on) or the
speech situation (the type of occasion or encounter). And because our
memories are fallible, we usually fill in details based on our prior knowl-
edge of what typically happens.
Discourse analysts correct for the limitations of relying only upon what
they hear in their everyday lives in several ways. The way that they do so
depends partially upon the topic they are studying and partially upon
their interest in generalizing their findings. For example, discourse ana-
lysts who are interested in how groups of people use discourse to com-
municate at work often do fieldwork in a workplace. There they observe
activities (e.g. meetings, chats at the water cooler) and interview people
who perform different tasks (e.g. managers, secretaries). They can then
propose generalizations about that workplace and perhaps about other
workplaces with similar characteristics.
Other discourse analysts may be interested in a particular aspect of dis-
course: how do people apologize to one another? When, where, and why do
people use the word like (as in I’m like, “Oh no!” or It was like a crazy thing, like
weird)? Then they may rely upon tape-recorded speech from a wide variety
of settings and occasions, paying less attention to obtaining a sample that
represents a subset of people and their activities in a particular social set-
ting, and more attention to getting enough examples of the discourse phe-
nomena in which they are interested. Still other discourse analysts might
be interested not in the discourse of a particular setting, or one aspect of
discourse, but in every aspect of only one discourse. They might delve into
all the details of several minutes of a single conversation, aiming to under-
stand how it is that two people use many different facets of language to
construct a discourse that makes sense to them at that time.
Regardless of their type of inquiry, most discourse analysts rely upon
audio or video-recordings of interactions between people in which speech
is the main medium of communication. Once speech has been recorded,
analysts have to then produce a transcript – a written version of what was
said that captures numerous aspects of language use, ranging from fea-
tures of speech (such as intonation, volume, and nonfluencies) to aspects
of interaction (such as overlaps between turns at talk) and, if possible,
aspects of nonvocal behavior (such as gaze and gesture). Transcriptions of
spoken discourse look quite different than other scripts with which we
might be familiar. For example, unlike most scripts for dramatic produc-
tions, linguists’ transcripts try to indicate features of speech production
and interaction, often using notations like those in Box 5.2 on transcrip-
tion conventions.
Transcribing spoken discourse is challenging and often frustrating, not
to mention time-consuming: some linguists spend close to ten hours tran-
scribing just one hour of speech. But fortunately, what results is a tran-
script that they can analyze from different angles years after the original
speech. The process of transcribing is also very instructive! By listening –
again and again – and trying to fine tune one’s written record of what is
said, linguists often end up doing preliminary analyses.
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Discourse 175

Box 5.2 Transcription conventions (adapted from Schiffrin

1987; Tannen 1989)
Discourse analysts use a variety of symbols to represent aspects of
speech, including the following:

. sentence-final falling intonation

 clause-final intonation (“more to come”)
! exclamatory intonation
? final rise, as in a yes/no question
… pause of 1>2 second or more
´ primary stress
CAPS emphatic stress Analysis tip
[ overlapping speech.
] no perceptible inter-turn pause I always keep a
: elongated vowel sound tablet of paper near-
by to jot down
- glottal stop: sound abruptly cut off
observations, ques-
“” dialogue, quoted words
tions, and ideas
( ) “parenthetical” intonation: lower amplitude and pitch plus about what I am
flattened intonation contour transcribing. Those
hhh laughter (h  one second) who transcribe right
 at right of line indicates segment to be continued after on the computer can
another’s turn; at left of line indicates continuation of prior keep two files open
segment after another’s turn at the same time, or
/?/ inaudible utterance just insert comments
{ } transcriber comment on what is said (in a different font
or type size) along-
You can see many of these symbols in the excerpts of discourse side the material in
throughout this chapter. the transcription
file.

Spoken and written discourse: a first look

We create discourse by speaking or writing. These two processes rely upon
language, of course, but they do so in strikingly different ways. And not
surprisingly, their products achieve coherence through very different
means. We can see this briefly by comparing the following excerpts from
a story that Gina tells her friend Sue (in 2a) and writes (in 2b). In both
excerpts, Gina introduces a story about how her love for magnolia blos-
soms got her into trouble when she tried to smell a blossom that then
snapped off in her hand.
(2) a. Gina: Have you ever smelled a magnolia blossom?
Sue: Mmhmm.
Gina: Absolutely gorgeous.
Sue: Yeah, they’re great.
b. On one particular morning this summer, there was a certain
fragrance that I recognized to be a glorious magnolia.
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176 Discourse

In both versions, Gina describes the scent of a particular flower, a mag-

nolia blossom. In the spoken version (2a), Gina involves Sue in her descrip-
tion; they both use short tone units to take short turns at talk. (Tone units
are segments of speech production that are bounded by changes in tim-
ing, intonation, and pitch). Gina first asks Sue if she has ever smelled such
a blossom (a sensory experience referred to by a verb). After Sue acknowl-
edges that she has (Mmhmm), Gina presents her own assessment of their
scent (Absolutely gorgeous). Because Sue agrees (Yeah), and then adds her
own description (they’re great), both women have become jointly involved
in the remembered pleasure of magnolia blossoms.
In Gina’s written version (2b), the intensity of the magnolia scent is not
unpacked, piece by piece, across turns and short units. Rather, the fra-
grance is integrated into a complex sentence in which a great deal of other
information is packed. Gina introduces the flower by recalling the process
through which she encountered it. The fragrance appears at a specific
time (On one particular morning this summer). The existence (there was) of a cer-
tain fragrance (referred to as a static thing by a noun) allows Gina to rec-
ognize the presence of a glorious magnolia. Although some of the same
basic material is presented in both segments, Gina phrases and organizes
the information differently.
In the following sections, we will learn more about the properties of
spoken and written discourse and how to analyze both of these ways of
creating discourse. We compare two transcripts to describe several differ-
ent aspects of spoken discourse and explain some basic concepts and tools
of analysis. We then broaden our understanding of discourse processes
and structures by briefly comparing spoken discourse with samples of
written discourse.

Spoken discourse
In spoken discourse, different kinds of processes – and different configu-
rations of language – work rapidly together to produce coherence. When
we speak to each other, we try to achieve several goals, sometimes all at
the same time. For example, we verbalize thoughts, introduce new infor-
mation, repair errors in what we say, take turns at talk, think of others,
and perform acts. We achieve these goals by using and connecting a range
of different units – speech acts, idea units, turns at talk, as well as sen-
tences. Speakers anticipate what their recipients need (e.g. how much
information do they need?) and want (e.g. how polite do they expect me to
be?). Speakers design what they say in relation to “educated” guesses
about their hearers. These guesses are based on both past experience and
the current interaction.
To exemplify these points we will discuss two segments of spoken dis-
course from the same speech situation – a sociolinguistic research inter-
view – in which one speaker seeks information from another about a spe-
cific topic of interest. Together the two segments will illustrate a variety
of processes and structures, including question/answer sequences,
lengthy repairs of unclear meanings, exchanges of short turns at talk, and
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maintenance of a long turn at talk in which a story is told. Also illustrated

is how people jointly ease new information into a discourse and collabo-
ratively develop topics of talk.
We begin with an excerpt from an interview that took place while Anne
(a linguistics student) was driving Ceil (a local resident of Philadelphia)
around the city in order to learn more about its neighborhoods. The
exchange begins as Ceil and Anne enter a part of Philadelphia with an
Italian market. Both Ceil and Anne like shopping at the market and Ceil
describes how she and her cousin used to use public transportation (the
trolley car) to go to the market.

(3) (a) Ceil: This is Washington Avenue.

(b) Now here’s a great section.
(c) Over at Ninth Street.
(d) Anne: Right.
(e) That’s- that’s the Ita[lian market, huh?
(f) Ceil: [Yeh, Italian market.
(g) And I wish we had one up, where [we lived at.
(h) Anne: [Yeh.
(i) Oh, I do, [too.
(j) Ceil: [Oh:, I’d love to have one up there because-
(k) oh, I enjoy its-
(l) I love to come down there.
(m) Anne: Yeh.
(n) It’s fun. It’s fun. No kidding.
(o) Ceil: It really is.
(p) I mean, like uh-
(q) We used to come down on the trolley cars.
(r) Anne: Yeh.
(s) Ceil: And bring the-
(t) like we only had- like Ann and I, we- my cousin, Ann?
(u) Anne: Mmhmm.
(v) Ceil: We- like she had Jesse and I had my Kenny.
(w) Anne: Mmhmm
(x) Ceil: And we used to bring them two down on the trolley car.
(y) And bags of uh, [groceries. Carry all the bags, right?
(z) Anne: Is that [so?
(aa) Anne: A lot of women from Port Richmond still um, go down
that way.

Read the excerpt closely several times, not just to understand the content,
but also to get a feeling for the rhythm of the interaction (e.g. who speaks
when) and to “hear it” in your own head. You will then be more ready for
the “guided readings” that a discourse analysis can provide.

Sequential and distributional analyses

Two kinds of “readings” typically are combined in discourse analyses. One
“reading” focuses on the sequence of what happens: who says what and
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178 Discourse

when? What is its significance at that particular point in the discourse;

how is it related to what came before and what will come after? The other
“reading” focuses on the distribution of specific features or qualities of lan-
guage in the discourse; what forms, or ways of speaking, occur where? Do
some features of language occur together more than others? If so, what
could account for this co-occurrence?
Imagine that you’re interested in learning about classroom discourse.
You hear a student answer a teacher’s question by prefacing it with well
and you’re curious about the use of well in the classroom. How do you
start your analysis? A sequential analysis focuses on the details of the spe-
cific question/answer speech event – its setting, the participants, the
informational content of the question and its answer, and so on. What
you would learn about well would be its specific contribution to the
meanings that are emerging at that moment in the classroom. A distrib-
utional analysis would start by finding all the uses of well in the class-
room and then identifying their different contexts of use, including (but
not limited to) question/answer speech events. What you would learn
about well would be its relationship with other features of the discourse,
e.g. its use with different participants, contents of questions and
answers, and so on. The two analyses together enrich our understanding
of individual moments in a particular interaction and of more general
discourse features and processes.

Repair and recipient design

As we noted above, Anne and Ceil are driving around Philadelphia. In (a)
to (c), Ceil identifies (and praises) the section of the city that they have just
entered. Anne labels the section (e), Ceil agrees with the label (f) and
assesses it again. As Anne is agreeing Oh, I do, too (i), Ceil begins to explain
why she likes the market in Oh:, I’d love to have one up there because- (j). Ceil
and Anne continue to praise the market (in (k) through (l)), and then, as
indicated by the discourse markers I mean and like, Ceil begins to explain
her fondness for the market through an example. (Discourse markers are
small words and phrases that indicate how what someone is about to say
(often at the beginning of a spoken utterance) fits into what has already
been said and into what they are about to say next.)
(o) Ceil: It really is.
(p) I mean, like uh-
(q) We used to come down on the trolley cars.
Notice, however, what happens as Ceil begins to refer to those who used
to accompany her to the market. Ceil self-initiates a repair by interrupting
her own utterance in (s) And bring the- – marking something about that
utterance as a trouble source. The article the usually precedes a noun
whose referent (the thing being spoken about) is definite (that is, rela-
tively familiar or identifiable to the listener). Ceil is about to refer to some
referent as if Anne knows who she’s talking about, but apparently realizes
that Anne won’t know who she’s talking about without more informa-
tion. Her next several utterances provide the necessary information. In (t)
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Discourse 179

Ceil begins to clarify who they used to bring (like we only had-) and then
realizes that she must back up even further to explain who we refers to
(like Ann and I, we- my cousin, Ann?). In (v), she begins to return to her story
but detours again to further identify the initial referents: We- like she had
Jesse and I had my Kenny. In (x), when Ceil completes her self-repair (and the
utterance started in (q)) – and we used to bring them two on the trolley car – the
repetition of the trolley cars (q) and bring (s) from the repair self-initiation
helps us (and Anne) infer that them two (x) – which refers to Jesse and
Kenny in the previous sentence – also supplies the missing referent in the
interrupted noun phrase the- in (q).
Both the wealth of detail provided in the repair, and the cohesive ties
between its self-initiation and self-completion, show recipient design – the

Box 5.3 Repair sequences

Repair sequences are routines in discourse which allow interlocutors to
negotiate the face-threatening situation which arises when one speaker
makes a mistake. Repair sequences have two components, initiation and
repair, each of which can be handled by the speaker who made the mis-
take (self) or another participant (other). Initiation identifies the trouble
source and repair fixes it. Each repair sequence communicates a differ-
ent message. For example, the speaker who made the mistake can “self-
initiate/self-repair,” sending the face-saving message “I know I made a
mistake but it’s just a slip of the tongue and I can fix it.”

Nan: She was givin me a:ll the people that were go:ne this yea:r I
mean this quarter y’know
Jan: Yeah

This sends the face-saving message, “I know I made a mistake but I

caught it and I can fix it.”

If self doesn’t recognize the trouble-source, other can initiate a repair

but allow self to make the actual repair (and prove his competence):

Ken: Is Al here today?

Dan: Yeah.
(2.0)
Roger: He IS? hh eh heh
Dan: Well he was.

Notice that Roger waits 2 seconds before initiating the repair and
then points Dan toward the trouble source (He IS?).

What is the message sent by Al’s other-initiated other-repair (below)?

Ken: He likes that waitress over there.

Al: You mean waiter, don’t you? That’s a man.
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180 Discourse

process whereby a speaker takes the listener into account when present-
ing information. The information that Ceil added about Ann (my cousin,
Ann?), for example, showed that she had gauged Anne’s lack of familiarity
with members of her extended family. Likewise, Ceil’s repetition of
trolley car from the repair self-initiation to its self-completion attended to
Anne’s need to place the referent back into the description that had been
interrupted.
What else can we notice about spoken discourse from the transcript in
(3)? What about the ways in which each person contributes to the dis-
course? If we look at the sheer amount of talk from each person, it looks
like Ceil was the main speaker. And although Ceil and Anne both took
turns at talk, what they said in those turns was quite different. Anne
asked Ceil a question (That’s- that’s the Italian market, huh? (e)) that drew
upon Ceil’s knowledge of the city. Anne also agreed with points that Ceil
had made: Yeh (h) and Oh, I do, too (i). And while Ceil was adding informa-
tion to help Anne recognize the referent, Anne used back channels to sig-
nal Ceil that it is okay for her to continue talking. (Back channels are brief
utterances like mmhmm that speakers use to signal they are paying atten-
tion, but don’t want to talk just yet.)

Comparing transcripts
Although close analysis of a single transcript can help us learn about dis-
course, gathering together different transcripts and comparing them is
also essential. The tools that people use when they are talking to one
another are often the same at some level (e.g. turn-taking recurs in almost
all discourse) but different at other levels (e.g. the ways that turns are
exchanged may differ). Capturing what is the same, and identifying what
is different, is an important part of discourse analysis. We all engage in
many different kinds of discourse throughout our daily lives and don’t
improvise or construct new rules each and every time we speak. Rather,
much of our communicative competence consists of general principles
about how to speak and ways of modifying those principles to specific cir-
cumstances. If we want to build up generalizations about discourse, then,
a good way to do it is to gather together examples of discourse that are the
same in some ways (e.g. both from sociolinguistic interviews) but different
in other ways (e.g. from different people). Likewise, it is useful to compare
the discourse of different kinds of speech situations and speech events in
order to see how the social features of those situations and events are
related to the way we use language.
The transcript in (4) below is also from a sociolinguistic interview, but
the speech events and speech acts that occur are quite different. In (4),
Jack, his wife Freda, and their nephew Rob have been talking with me
about different facets of life in Philadelphia, the city whose speech I have
been studying. Jack has been boasting about his childhood friendship
with Joey Gottlieb, who became a well-known comedian known as Joey
Bishop. The section below begins when Freda mentions that Jack and Joey
shared their Bar Mitzvah (a rite of passage for Jewish boys when they turn
thirteen).
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Discourse 181

(4) (a) Freda: They were Bar Mitzvahed together. Him and uh . . Joey.
(b) Debby: ]Really?
(c) Jack: We went to school together.
(d) We were in the same hh room together.
(e) We used to hooky together!
(f) He played the piano, I played the violin in the assembly.
(g) hhhwe used to jazz it up.
(h) Debby: Did you go to Southern?
(i) Jack: Southern High. Yeh.
(j) Debby: Southern High, yeh.
(k) Jack: Y’ know that teacher that came over to me, over at uh . . .
(l) She used to be- take care of all the entertaining, 
(m) Freda: Yes I do.
(n) Rob: Lamberton?
(o) Jack: ]and musical things, y’ know.
(p) She used to raise holy hell with both of [us!
(q) Freda: [Oh I bet she’s
had a lot of kids at-
(r) that passed through her, [that . . . became-. . . became all 
(s) Jack: [Oh::! But she remembered me! 
(t) Freda: all kinds of things! hhhh[hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhI guess your
mother knew of:
(u) Jack: [She used to say to me, to Joey Bishop
(v) Freda: ]all these. . . . . .
(w) Jack: [“Don’t you play the piano, when he plays elegies!”
(x) Freda: dif[ferent- that became. . . ]different
things!
(y) Jack: One day- [He and I:
(z) Freda: ]Different things like [jail: birds, and eh
comedians! And. . . .
(aa) Jack: ]One day he and I were [supposed to play elegies,
(bb) Freda: [How m- long has your mother
been teaching?
(cc) Debby: Well she hasn’t been teaching that long.
(dd) Freda: Oh. [Cause:- [That’s very
h- very
(ee) Debby:  [But she keeps in touch with some of [them.
(ff) Freda: interesting to look back!
(gg) Jack: Y’know one day, she- we- I was supposed to play elegy on
the violin.
(hh) D’ you remember then?
(ii) Freda: ]Oh, yes! [Oh, that’s the
(jj) Jack: ]All kids would [play that. 
(kk) Freda: first! [My! My!
(ll) Jack: [So he was supposed to accompany me.
(mm) On the piano.
(nn) So she had to teach him the chords.
(oo) He only hit certain chords while I’m playin’ elegy.
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182 Discourse

(pp) So, everything is set fine,

(qq) I get up,
(rr) and I start to play elegy,
(ss) and he’s givin’ me the chords.
(tt) And in a chord, he goes DAA da da da daa, da DAAA!
(uu) Well the whole: audience broke up!
(vv) Because they don’t wanna hear that elegy y’ know!
(ww) And we: . . .
(xx) Freda: ]That-hhhhhhhhhh
(yy) Jack: y’ know then I knew, he had the-
(zz) I realized he did have dry wit. 
(aaa) He knew how to get the- he knew the whole audience’d
laugh
(bbb) so he must’ve had something to him
(ccc) Even this teacher, this one that- she laughed.
(ddd) Freda: Even the teachers, huh?
(eee) Jack: She couldn’t help it!

The interchange among Jack, Freda, Rob, and me (Debby) changes

shape during the course of talk. From lines (a) to (ll), for example, several
people are active speakers, sometimes speaking at the same time. Jack
and Freda overlap, for example, in lines (p) to (s) after Jack has men-
tioned his high school teacher, in (k) and (l). Then two different conver-
sations develop: Freda asks me about my mother (who used to be a
teacher) while Jack continues to talk about his own high school teacher
(in lines (t) to (aa)). Jack eventually dominates the floor when he tells a
story in lines (gg) to (eee).

Adjacency pairs
The conversations in (4) and (3) are both initiated by interviewers’ ques-
tions. Semantically, questions are incomplete propositions; they are miss-
ing the “who,” “what,” when,” “where,” “why,” or “how” of a proposition,
or their polarity (positive or negative) is unknown (did something happen
or not? is a description accurate?). The propositional incompleteness of
questions is part of their discourse function. They perform speech acts
(requests for information or action) that have interactional consequences;
questions open up a “slot” in which whatever is heard next will be
assessed as an answer (“completing” the question). This kind of relation-
ship between two utterances in discourse is called an adjacency pair – a
two-part sequence in which the first part sets up a strong expectation that
a particular second part will be provided. This expectation is so strong that
the first part constrains the interpretation of the second part. For exam-
ple, even a silence after a question will be interpreted as a kind of answer
– if only a reluctance or inability to provide an answer.
The two parts of an adjacency pair help people organize their conversa-
tions because they set up expectations for what will happen next. These
expectations help both speakers and hearers. If I thank you for doing me
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Discourse 183

a favor, for example, that gives you clues about what I’m thinking and
what you should do next, making it easier for you to know what to say. I
also simplify my own job since I know what to listen for. Indeed, a missing
“second part” of an adjacency pair can be disconcerting; we typically lis-
ten for closure of the adjacency pair (e.g. why didn’t he say You’re welcome?),
even those that come much later than the first part.

Participation frameworks
We saw in example (3) how Ceil made a lengthy self-repair so that Anne
would know who she was talking about. Jack also introduces a new refer-
ent into his discourse, but he uses a question to do so, in (k):

(k) Jack: Y’ know that teacher that came over to me, over at uh . . .
(l) She used to be- take care of all the entertaining, 
(m) Freda: Yes I do.
(n) Rob: Lamberton?
(o) Jack: ]and musical things, y’ know.

The information that Jack provides about the teacher is enough for Freda
to recognize the “teacher” referent (Yes I do (m)). Because Jack’s description
does not include the teacher’s name, Rob interprets it as a self-initiation
of a repair sequence and offers an other-repair – a repair of a problematic
item in another speaker’s utterance. Rob provides the name of Jack’s ref-
erent (Lamberton? (n)). Rob and Freda speak at the same time and overlap
with Jack’s continuing description of the teacher (l-o). Jack’s description of
the teacher in (l) could have ended where Freda and Rob started talking,
and they anticipated this turn-transition place – a place often marked by
syntactic closure, intonational boundary, and/or propositional comple-
tion where another may begin a turn at talk.
Rob and Freda’s differing responses in (m) and (n) show that listeners
may react to different aspects of what another person has said. The ways
that people interacting with one another take responsibility for speaking,
listening, and acting are part of the participation framework. Sometimes
participation frameworks change when people adopt different roles
and/or split off into separate interactions, perhaps to pursue divergent
topics or establish a different relationship. For example, when Freda
brings up my mother (who had been a teacher) in (t), (v), and (x), and then
asks How m- long has your mother been teaching?(bb), she invites me to take a
different, more active role in the conversation.
Freda’s attempt to create a new participation framework overlaps with
Jack’s continuing talk about his music teacher, in (u) and (w). Jack opens
a new participant framework when he tells a story (from lines (aa) to (ccc))
in which he holds the floor pretty much on his own. But he had to signal
the shift to this turn-taking and story-telling status in (y), (aa), and (gg)
with the repetition of the phrase one day.
Once Jack gains the floor in (gg), he tells a narrative, a recounting of an
experience in which past events are told in the order in which they
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184 Discourse

occurred. Jack’s narrative is about a recital in which he and Joey were

supposed to play an elegy, a formal (often mournful) musical composition.
Joey, however, jazzes it up by playing a cartoon jingle (“Shave and a hair-
cut, two bits!”) instead of the expected chords.

Narratives
Narratives contrast with other genres and speech events in a number of
ways. Narratives organize information differently than other genres, such
as descriptions, explanations, and lists. For example, narratives present
events in temporal order of occurrence, but lists need not, as we can see
in Jack’s list of habitual activities with Joey ((c) through (g)). Narratives
have a different participation framework; storytellers tend to hold the
floor alone. And finally, the content of a fully formed oral narrative of per-
sonal experience (in American English) has a relatively fixed structure,
consisting of the following parts (usually in this order):

• Abstract: a summary of the experience or its point

• Orientation: background description (who, where, when, why, how)
• Complicating action: “what happened,” a series of temporally ordered
events (often called “narrative” clauses) that have beginning and end
points
• Evaluation: syntactic, prosodic, textual alterations of the narrative
norm that highlight important parts of the story and/or help convey
why the story is being told (i.e. the point of the story)
• Coda: closure that brings the “past” of the narrative to the “present”
of the interaction in which it was told

Whereas it is relatively easy to identify the abstract, complicating

action, and coda in Jack’s narrative, it may be more difficult to identify
the orientation and evaluation. Many orientations describe the background
scene – who is present, where, and when. Jack had already introduced his
friend Joey and the teacher prior to the narrative, but Jack does spend a
fair amount of time, in lines (ll) to (oo), familiarizing his listeners with
what typically happens in a recital. This is crucial for the point of the
story; if the audience doesn’t have a schema (a set of structured expecta-
tions of what is supposed to happen), then they can’t recognize a devia-
tion from expectation. Yet the break in expectation is what underlies the
humor in Jack’s story and is crucial for its point.
But what actually is the point of the story? Here we need to turn to the
evaluation. One way in which people telling stories often indicate evalua-
tion is by using the historical present tense – the use of the present tense
to convey past events. The historical present is buried within the language
of the narrative clauses, as in So, everything is set fine (pp) through and in a
chord, he goes DAA da da da da, da DAAA! (tt). Also highlighting the humor
of the story is Jack’s singing of the tune; breaking into melody is clearly
noticeable through its contrast with the rest of the story. And clearly the
humor of Joey’s musical prank works; the audience laughs (Well the whole:
audience broke up! (uu)), as does the teacher in Even this teacher, this one that-
she laughed (ccc).
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Summary: spoken discourse

In this section, we have illustrated how different configurations of lan-
guage work together to produce coherence in spoken discourse. We have
highlighted some of the ways that speakers try to achieve several goals,
sometimes simultaneously:

• introducing new information in relation to the anticipated needs of

their hearers
• linking information through cohesive ties
• repairing errors
• initiating adjacency pairs with actions that have sequential conse-
quences for listeners’ next actions

Together, interlocutors distribute turns at talk and develop different

frameworks in which to interact. Discourse consists of a variety of differ-
ent units (for example, clauses, sentences, turns, and speech acts) that tie
together different strands of talk. As we will see in the next section, not
all of these processes appear in written discourse. Those that do, work
somewhat differently because of the complex differences between spoken
and written discourse.

Box 5.4 Cohesion and cohesive ties

Repetition is one of six language devices that help to join informa-
tion together as a text by providing cohesive ties (Halliday and Hasan
1976) among different sentences. Other cohesive devices are reference
(e.g. through pronouns), substitution (using paraphrases), ellipsis
(deleting material that can be easily recoverable from the sentence or
text), conjunction (words like and or but that connect sentences), and
lexical relations (e.g. words whose meanings are semantically related,
e.g. fruit and pear). The following short excerpt from a recipe illustrates
the different kinds of cohesive ties.
Apple1 pudding5.

First2 you3 peel and chop the fruit1. Then2 3

{sprinkle it1 with sugar
lexical relation conjunction ellipsis reference

and 3 toss with the raisins}4. [text left out] Bake the mixture4 for one hour.
ellipsis substitution

You3 may serve the pudding5 with vanilla ice cream.

repetition repetition

Italicized words and phrases sharing the same subscript number are
connected by a cohesive tie (labeled underneath each tie). So, for exam-
ple, Apple is tied to the fruit by the cohesive device of lexical relation,
and First and Then are tied by conjunction. The first reference to the
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186 Discourse

reader (you) is tied to the elided subject pronouns of the following verb
phrases and repeated you in the last sentence, and the mixture is a sub-
stitution for the product of those two verb phrases, indicated by curly
brackets {}. Finally, the repetition of pudding, in the title and the last
sentence, bookends the whole text.
Out of 36 words in the excerpt (counting the elided subject pronouns),
more than half are linked in cohesive ties which help the reader under-
stand the meaning of not just each sentence, but the entire text.

Written discourse
Learning to speak seems to occur without much effort; it is woven seam-
lessly into our early childhood socialization. But learning to write is often a
formal and explicit process that includes instruction in graphic conven-
tions (printing letters as well as connecting them together in script), tech-
nology (how to use a keyboard and manage computer files), punctuation
(e.g. when to use commas, semi-colons, and colons) and rules of “correct”
grammar (e.g. “No prepositions at the ends of sentences”). Why can’t we just
write the way we speak? One reason is that written texts have longevity, a
“shelf life”; they can be read and re-read and examined more closely than
transitory speech. Sometimes written texts also become part of a cultural
canon; they serve as official bearers of wisdom, insight, and institutional
knowledge that can be passed down over time and generation. And this
means that ideologies about what language should be – the standard variety
with the power of social institutions behind it (see Chapter 11) – often have
a strong impact on the way we write.
Of course, not all written discourse is held up to such high standards.
In addition to literature, chapters in academic textbooks, legal briefs, and
minutes of corporate meetings, we find comic books, self-help manuals,
grocery lists, and diaries. Clearly, the latter genres of written discourse are
not subject to the same standards of correctness as the former. Yet, despite
the wide-ranging differences among written genres, they all differ from
spoken discourse in several crucial ways.

Fragmentation and integration

One major difference is that speaking is faster than writing. This differ-
ence has an impact on the final product. When speaking, we can move
more rapidly from one idea or thought to another, resulting in what
Chafe (1982) calls fragmentation, the segmentation of information into
small, syntactically simple chunks of language that present roughly one
idea at a time. When writing, we have time to mold a group of ideas into
a complex whole in which various types and levels of information are inte-
grated into sentences. Integration is thus the arrangement of information
into long, syntactically complex chunks of language that present more
than one idea at a time.
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Discourse 187

We can see the difference between fragmentation and integration by

looking at the introduction of new referents into discourse – people, places,
or things that have not yet been mentioned. Recall, for example, Ceil’s
introduction of the boys accompanying her and Ann on the trolley car in
(3): like we only had- like Ann and I, we-my cousin, Ann? We- like she had Jesse and
I had my Kenny; and we used to bring them two down on the trolley car. However,
if Ceil were writing a memory book about the Italian market, she might
use a complex sentence such as the following: Before our other children were
born, my cousin Ann and I used to take our two boys, Jesse and Kenny, on the trolley
car to the Italian market. Notice that the referring expression itself (our two
boys, Jesse and Kenny) would be buried within a complex of other informa-
tion about time, activity, and other referents, and followed by a description
of where they were going and how they got there – all in one sentence! The
crucial information about the referent, then, would be integrated with
other information in one complex syntactic unit, rather than fragmented
into different tone units (segments of speech production that are bounded
by changes in timing, intonation, and pitch) and turns at talk.

Writing to be read
Another crucial difference between spoken and written discourse is the
role of the recipient. In spoken genres, the recipient is a co-participant in
the evolving discourse in two ways: (a) the recipient provides feedback
through back channels or by asking for clarification; (b) the recipient gets
a chance to become a speaker. These differences boil down to differences
in participation framework. In spoken discourse, participants are more
likely to face similar opportunities (and challenges) as they alternate
between the roles of “speaker” and “listener.” How participants manage
these shifts can have profound impacts on the overall flow of discourse.
Recall, for example, how Jack had to maneuver around the alternate con-
versations that developed between Freda and Debby before he could begin
his story. Even then, he could pursue his story only after he had secured
Freda’s attention by bringing up a recently shared experience.
Producers and recipients of written discourse interact in very different
participation frameworks than those engaged in spoken discourse.
Writers have to anticipate the informational needs of their intended recip-
ients, as well as what will maintain readers’ interest, without the benefit
of immediate feedback. Writers try to be clear and to create involvement
with their material and with their intended readers. Here they can draw
upon structures that are easy for readers to process (like short and simple
sentences), as well as dramatic devices (like metaphor and visual imagery)
to make it exciting and engrossing. And just as speakers orient what they
say to their listeners’ needs and interests, so too writers try to anticipate a
particular type of reader.
Depending on how writers construct their “ideal” readers, they use dif-
ferent aspects of language to maintain readers’ interest and to make the
text relevant to their readers’ needs and goals. This means that writers –
like speakers – also design their discourse for their projected recipients. A
good way to see this is to compare different written genres with one
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188 Discourse

another. Like the comparison of spoken genres that occur during different
speech events and speech situations, scholars sometimes call this a com-
parison between registers, ways of using language that reflect different
facets of its context (e.g. participants, goals, and setting).
The written texts in (6a) and (6b) share some general register features,
but they also differ in various ways. (6a) is from a newspaper column in
which young adults seek advice about their personal relationships. (6b) is
from the back of a bottle of hair conditioner.

(6) a. Tell Me About It ® By Carolyn Hax

Washington Post, Sunday, January 2, 2005; page M01
Dear Carolyn: I have finally met a guy I really like. We have been see-
ing each other on and off for a couple of months. Should I ask where
this relationship is going or just see where it takes us? I have been
raised to believe the guy should bring up stuff like that. I’m worried
that if I say I would like to be exclusive I might scare him off.
C. I was raised that way, too, but then reconditioned to believe
that if honesty kills your relationship, then it was already dying of
natural causes. “Where is this going?” still lays it on him. Asking to
be exclusive is honest, and also such a compliment that it would be
a shame to withhold it out of fear that he might not agree.
b. HEADRESS VOLUMIZING LEAVE-IN CONDITIONER is blended with
Panthenol, Vegetable Ceramides and Kerotin Amino Acids to add
incredible body and lustre to any hair type. As hairdressing, the
concentrated formula instantly releases tangles and increases
combability to control styles. When used as a styling tool with
thermal appliances, HEADRESS protects hair from heat and dry-
ness while adding fullness and shine. Time released Antioxidants,
UVA and UVB Protectors guard against harsh environmental
elements so hair continuously shines with radiant health.
[A section explaining the technology of Headress has been left out]
DIRECTIONS: Apply a small amount to palm of hand. Rub hands
together and distribute evenly through hair. Comb through and
blow dry, or dry naturally. Style as desired.
[Three sections left out: guarantee, contact information, list of 34
ingredients, information about manufacturer]

Let’s look first at the content of these texts and how they are con-
structed: what is being conveyed and how? Both texts are about a problem
and a solution. The problem in each is how to manage something –
commitment in a relationship, unruly hair – whose solution may require
the reader to be assertive, either verbally (Should I ask . . .) or physically
(to control styles). Each solution requires a transformation of some sort from
an initial state. Asking about commitment requires being reconditioned
from the way one was raised. So too, gaining body and lustre in one’s hair is
the result of a conditioner.
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Discourse 189

Both texts rely upon the integration of more than one idea in each sen-
tence to present their respective problems and solutions. For example, the
last sentence of C’s advice (6a) integrates two pieces of information about
asking to be exclusive: it is honest; it is a compliment. The last sentence in
the HEADRESS description (6b) also integrates two solutions – time released
Antioxidants and UVA and UVB Protectors – to guard against the problem of
harsh environmental elements.
These sentences don’t just present solutions to problems; they also pos-
itively evaluate those solutions. The Dear Carolyn text calls the solution
(asking to be exclusive) such a compliment that it would be a shame to withhold it;
the alternative (not asking to be exclusive) is negatively evaluated (a
shame). In the HEADRESS text, the product’s ingredients provide protection
so hair continuously shines with radiant health, evoking glowing, positive
images, reminiscent of the sun. So although neither text comes right out
and says “this is the right solution for you!”, this message is clearly
implied through the texts.
These problem/solution texts also construct and reflect their participa-
tion frameworks – the roles and identities of the writer and the reader.
The topic of each text is likely to be relevant to a limited set of readers –
young women – simply because the problems concern a boyfriend (6a) and
hair (6b). Despite this broad similarity, the two texts set up different rela-
tionships and identities. Although we don’t know anything about the
identity of the person asking for advice in (6a), the identity of the person
giving advice appears several times, encouraging reader involvement with
the writer as a real person. In contrast, in the HEADRESS text the only
information about the source of the text is the name of a company and
how to contact it.
The language of the two texts also creates different types of involvement
between writer and reader, which in turn help to construct their respective
social identities. Dear Carolyn uses casual terms like a guy and stuff like that,
typical of a young adult chatting with a friend on the phone. The HEADRESS
description is filled with referring expressions that are not part of our
everyday vocabulary – e.g. thermal appliance instead of ‘hairdryer’ – or that
we may not even know (Panthenol? Vegetable Ceramides?). This unfamiliarity
lends the text an air of scientific legitimacy. Whereas the advice column
resembles a chat between friends, the Headress text mimics a consultation
with an expert professional.
Differences in what is being conveyed (and how), and identities (and
relationship) of writer and reader, come together in the way each text
proposes a solution to the problem. In the advice column, C’s response
establishes camaraderie (I was raised that way, too). In HEADRESS, on the
other hand, the DIRECTIONS are a list of imperative sentences: there are no
subject pronouns, just verbs (apply, rub, distribute, comb) that instruct and
command, conveying a sense of routine procedure, not personal concern.
Dividing discourse by how it is created – by writing or speaking – overlooks
the many different genres and registers within each type. But there are still
some overall differences. Spoken discourse is more fragmented and written
discourse is more integrated. Although people are certainly judged by the
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190 Discourse

way they speak, the longevity of many written texts subjects them to fur-
ther and more intense scrutiny and to higher standards. All language
users, however, orient their discourse to whoever will hear (or read) what
they say (or write). Whereas speakers have the chance to continuously
adjust what they say – sometimes with the help of their listeners – writers
have the luxury of more time. Yet both end up honing their messages,
shaping and reshaping them to structure information in ways that set up
nuanced and complex relationships with their recipients.

Box 5.5 Registers

Language variation according to the situation in which it is used is
called register variation, and varieties of a language that are typical
of a particular situation of use are called registers. Each situation
makes its own communicative demands – informational, social, refer-
ential, expressive – and people use the features of their language
which meet the communicative demands of the situation. The set of
language features – phonological, lexical, syntactic, and pragmatic –
which is normally used to meet the demands of a particular commu-
nicative situation is the register of that situation.
Sociolinguist Dell Hymes proposed the acronym SPEAKING as a
mnemonic (or memory aid) for remembering the components of most
speech situations. Think of the SPEAKING mnemonic as a grid; each
element is a variable, a range of possible values which may describe the
situation. Filling in the value of each variable in the SPEAKING grid
goes a long way toward describing a given communicative situation.
Setting Physical location and social significance
Participants Respective social status, local roles in interaction
Ends Purpose of the event, respective goals of the
participants
Act sequences Speech acts that are functionally or conventionally
appropriate to the situation
Key Tone or mood (e.g. serious, ironic)
Instrumentalities Mode of communication (e.g. spoken, written, via
telephone)
Norms Expectations of behavior and their interpretation
Genres Type of event (e.g. conversation, lecture, sermon)

To show how the SPEAKING grid helps describe a speech situation –

and how the situation demands particular uses of language – imagine
a cooking class:

• The setting is a kitchen being used as a classroom, so tables have

been arranged to allow students to see and practice the techniques
the teacher is demonstrating. The shared physical setting allows
use of definite articles (“Put the butter in the saucepan”) and deictic
pronouns (“Now add this to that”), as well as first and second
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pronouns and temporal references (“Now I want you to stir briskly

for two minutes”). Food and cooking vocabulary are also frequent.
• The participants are the chef/teacher and the students/clients. Their
physical placement in the kitchen reflects their respective roles, as
does their use of language. For example, many of the teacher’s verbs
are imperatives, while the students’ use the auxiliary do frequently
to ask questions (e.g. “How do I . . .?” and “Does this look right?”).
• The ends of the speech event are several. Teacher and students have
a shared goal of transferring knowledge about cooking, but have
different relations to that goal. The students’ goal is to learn new
cooking techniques and recipes – and probably to enjoy the
process, as well. The teacher shares these goals but mainly as a
means toward the broader goal of keeping clients satisfied and
generating new business.
• The cooking class includes a number of routinized act sequences. At
the beginning of the class, the teacher greets the students, then
introduces the topic of that day’s class. The teacher then demon-
strates and explains cooking techniques, offering definitions of
technical terms and verbal explanations of physical actions (like
chopping, slicing, etc.). The students attempt to imitate the
teacher’s actions, ask questions, seek clarification, and request
confirmation that they are performing the actions correctly.
These acts are sequenced in conventionalized routines; for exam-
ple, the teacher gives a directive (“Stir briskly for two minutes”),
a student asks for clarification (“Like this?”), and the teacher
offers confirmation (“Yes, good”) or further instruction (“A little
slower”).
• The key of the class varies, from serious (instructions and warn-
ings) to entertaining (anecdotes about fallen soufflés and burned
sauces). Instructions are characterized by (present-tense) imperative
verbs and reference to objects in the classroom (“Take the pan of
onions off the flame”), while anecdotes are characterized by past-
tense verbs and third-person reference to nonpresent people and
objects (“The customer began fanning his mouth and drank three
glasses of water”).
• The main instrumentality of the class is spoken discourse, but stu-
dents may refer to written recipes or take notes. Recipes share
some of the features of the teacher’s instructions (directive verbs,
definite articles) but do not include the teacher’s definitions and
explanations. Students use abbreviations and delete articles to save
time and space in their notes (“Add 1 Tsp sug to sauce”).
• The norms of interaction include, for example, recognition that
suggestions from the teacher (“You might want to turn down the
flame”) are usually directives, and that requests by students for
clarification (“Am I doing this right?”) are often requests for the
teacher’s approval (“Yes, good job”).
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• The genre of the event is “class.” This helps teacher and students to
recognize the range of language use that is conventionally appro-
priate to the situation.
All of the linguistic and discourse features mentioned above co-occur
frequently in cooking classes and therefore are part of the register of a
cooking class.
Following the work of Douglas Biber, linguists have identified the
sets of linguistic features that tend to co-occur across many speech (and
writing) situations. The main communicative functions that those sets
of features serve include interpersonal involvement, presentation of
information, narration, description, and persuasion. With our varying
emphases on these basic communicative tools, we mark and construct
each speech situation.

Language functions
All approaches to discourse analysis address the functions of language,
the structures of texts, and the relationship between text and context. A
main function of language is referential: we use language to convey infor-
mation about entities (e.g. people, objects), as well as their attributes,
actions, and relationships. But language also has social and expressive func-
tions that allow us to do things – like thanking, boasting, insulting, and
apologizing – that convey to others how we feel about them and other
things. We also use language to persuade others of our convictions and
urge them toward action by crafting texts that demonstrate the logic and
appeal of those convictions.
Figure 5.1 (adapted and modified from Jakobson 1960) presents six func-
tions of language – six jobs that people accomplish by using language.
Jakobson’s model of language functions represents the speech situation as
a multidimensional set of relationships, a bit like a multifaceted diamond.
When we view the speech situation from different angles, we see different
facets, different connections between the components of the speech situa-
tion, the features of language used, and the communicative function per-
formed by that language. Each language function is related to a different
facet of the speech situation. The arrows in Figure 5. 1 indicate the relation-
ship between speech situation and function, and suggest how different
aspects of the speech situation – and different functions – are related to one
another. The unbroken arrows indicate paths by which ADDRESSOR and
ADDRESSEE are connected – back and forth through CONTACT or unidirectional-
ly through a MESSAGE. The arrows in dashes indicate that CONTEXT pervades
the way ADDRESSOR and ADDRESSEE speak, as well as the circumstances of their
CONTACT. The dotted arrow from CODE to MESSAGE highlights the contribution of
language to the MESSAGE.

• Referential function: sentences focusing on aspects of the speech situ-

ation mainly serve a referential function. For example, a sentence like
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Discourse 193

FIGURE 5.1
Speech situation and functions. Each facet of the situation is in upper case; the
language function is in brackets. Terms that have been used interchangeably with
Jakobson’s terms are in italics.

The coffee is hot relates a proposition about some aspect of the partici-
pants’ shared context to their respective roles in the interaction and
the circumstances of their contact (some reason for remarking on
the temperature of the coffee). However, CONTEXT influences the
ADDRESSOR’s and ADDRESSEE’s identities and the kind of CONTACT between
them. For example, if your close friend works part time in a coffee
shop, when you go in to buy coffee, the context of your contact will
(at least partially) include a waiter/customer relationship.
• Phatic function: sentences focusing on the relationship (CONTACT)
between participants mainly serve a phatic function. For example, Hi!
Good to see you! provides little information about the surrounding
context, but as a first pair part of a greeting sequence, it initiates an
interaction and a re-negotiation of the status of the participants’
relationship.
• Poetic function: sentences that focus on the MESSAGE itself serve mainly
a poetic function. For example, Carl Sandburg’s line, The fog comes in
on little cat feet, manipulates the CODE to convey the silent approach of
the fog through metaphor.
• Emotive function: sentences that express the impact of some facet of
the external world (context) or internal world (feelings, sensations) on
the ADDRESSOR mainly serve the emotive function. For example, I am
hungry states an internal condition of the ADDRESSOR. But because it
may be interpreted as a request that the ADDRESSEE make dinner it may
also have a conative function.
• Conative function: sentences that focus on the relation of the
ADDRESSEE to the context or the interaction mainly serve the conative
function. For example, Are you hungry? can be interpreted as either a
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194 Discourse

request for information from the addressee or as an invitation to join

the addressor for dinner.
• Metalinguistic function: sentences focusing on the relation between
code and situation serve mainly a metalinguistic function. For exam-
ple, asking Did you just say “Don” or “Dawn” was coming? focuses on the
pronunciation and reference of some prior word.

Sentences typically serve more than one function at a time. Although a

sentence may have a primary function, it is likely to be multifunctional.
Suppose, for example, someone says What time is it? The sentence’s primary
function is conative: it is a question that requests something of the
addressee. But it may also have a phatic function if it opens contact. And it
certainly has an emotive function (it conveys a need of the addressor) and
a referential function (it makes reference to the world outside of language).

Planes of discourse
Jakobson’s model of language functions stresses the context “beyond the
sentence,” but it ignores the text – the unit of language “above the sen-
tence.” What we say or write never occurs in a vacuum: it is always sur-
rounded by other information in other utterances. The accumulation of
information through successive chunks of language complicates the view
of multifunctionality presented in Jakobson’s model. Since functions pile
up with each successive sentence, how do we manage to sort out which
functions we should pay attention to and which we may safely ignore?
How are sentences with multiple functions strung together to create
coherent texts?
To answer this question, we must shift our attention from the “sentence”
to the utterance, a contextualized sentence. Whereas a sentence is a string
of words put together by the grammatical rules of a language, an utterance
is the realization of a sentence in a textual and social context – including
both the utterances which surround it and the situation in which it is
uttered. An utterance is the intersection of many planes of context, and as
we speak and listen, we rely on these intersecting planes of context to con-
vey and interpret the meaning of each utterance. An utterance thus
expresses far more meaning than the sentence it contains.
The examples in (7) can help disentangle the difference between
sentence and utterance.

(7) a. Discourse analysis is fun.

b. Discourse analysis is fun.
c. Bob: I really like my linguistics courses.
Sue: Oh I do too! Discourse analysis is fun.

Although the sentences are the same, the three occurrences of “Discourse
analysis is fun” in (7) are three different utterances, because they are pro-
duced in different contexts. Although (7a) and (7b) appear in the same
social context (as examples presented in a textbook), there is a difference
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in their textual contexts: (7a) is the first appearance of the sentence, and
(7b) is the second appearance (a repetition) of the sentence. (7a) and (7b)
both differ from (7c), as well. Although (7c) is an illustration in a textbook,
it is also part of an interaction between two interlocutors, so it has a dif-
ferent social context than (7a) and (7b).
Focusing on utterances allows us to see how several planes of context are
related to, and expressed through, the language used in an utterance. Like
the facets of a diamond, an utterance simultaneously has meaning as:

• a reflection of a social relationship (who are you? who am I?)

• part of a social exchange (who will talk now?)
• a speech act (what are you doing through your words?)
• shared knowledge (what can I assume you already know?)
• a proposition (what are you saying about the world?)
Each utterance is simultaneously part of – and has meaning in – a
participation framework, an exchange structure, an act structure, an
information state, and an idea structure. Each utterance is connected to
other utterances and to the context on each of these planes of discourse;
part of each utterance’s meaning is these connections. Speakers indicate
which aspects of meaning of a prior utterance they are emphasizing by
the construction and focus of their own “next” utterances in a discourse.

Participation framework
The participation framework is the way that people organize and main-
tain an interaction by adopting and adapting roles, identities, and ways of
acting and interacting. Included are all aspects of the relationship
between a speaker and hearer that become relevant whenever they are
interacting with one another, either in the “real time” of spoken dis-
course or the “displaced time” of written texts. We continuously align
with others through what we say. For example, we frequently depend
upon what is being said (and how it is being said) to assess the status of
our relationship with another speaker: is he trying to convince me to take
his point of view? Does she seem distant? Have I hurt her feelings? Why
does he now seem skeptical about our plan to go out tonight? What we say
and how we say it are thus critical to the formation, management, and
negotiation of our interpersonal relationships.

Exchange structure
The exchange structure concerns the way people take turns in talk: how
do we know when to start talking? Do we ever overlap, and if so, where,
when, how and why? What does such overlap mean to the person already
talking? How is exchange in multiparty talk managed? Because participa-
tion in spoken discourse typically requires alternating between the roles
of speaker and hearer, the exchange structure is connected to the partici-
pation framework. Thus we might find that turn-taking would differ
along with participation framework. During a job interview, for example,
we might wait for a potential employer to finish his/her question before
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196 Discourse

we start the answer. When gossiping or joking around with an old friend,
however, we might end up talking at the same time, viewing our overlap-
ping turns as welcome signs of enthusiasm and solidarity.

Act structures
Act structures are ordered sequences of actions performed through speech.
For example, the first parts of adjacency pairs like questions, greetings, and
compliments constrain the interpretation of the following utterance (and
the role of its speaker). An accusation presents the accused with the act
choices of confession, denial, or counter-accusation. An accepted bet will
eventually recast one participant as the winner and the other as the loser
(and maybe debtor). Speech acts have still other consequences for partici-
pants and their relationship. Almost all speech acts – commands, questions,
requests, hints, compliments, warnings, promises, denials – allow people to
exert different degrees of responsibility and control that create feelings of
distance or solidarity, power or equality between speaker and hearer.

Information state
The information state is the distribution of knowledge among people inter-
acting with one another. Speakers take into account their listeners’ infor-
mational needs as they construct their utterances: what common knowledge
can the speaker assume? How does he/she present brand new information?
Often we can see changes in the information state by looking at the
nuts and bolts of repairs, like Ceil’s repairs in example (3) that filled in
information that Anne didn’t have. But we can also find speakers accom-
modating to their hearers’ knowledge by looking at the choice of words,
and their arrangement, in sentences that don’t undergo repair. For exam-
ple, speakers in conversation mix together old information (which they
believe their addressees know or can figure out) with new information
(which they believe their addressees don’t know and can’t figure out). The
utterances in (8a–c) all introduce new referents into a conversation:
(8) a. there’s a school in my mother’s neighborhood like that
b. they have those big three-story houses on Chestnut Street
c. y’know that guy down the street? who’s remodeling his house?
Syntactic subjects – the italicized forms at the beginning of the sentences
in (8) – rarely introduce new referents to a conversation. The minimal
information conveyed by simple and uninformative initial clauses (like
there is, they have and y’know) puts the focus on the new information at the
end of the sentence.

Idea structure
Idea structure concerns the organization of information within a sen-
tence and the organization of propositions in a text: how bits of informa-
tion are linked together within, and across, sentences. Different genres
typically have different idea structures. Recall the problem-solution
organization of the advice column and hair conditioner label. Recall also
Jack’s narrative in example (4). Once Jack got started on his story, each
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clause presented an event in the order in which it was presumed to have

occurred. A narrative has an idea structure with a linear organization
based on temporal progression. The email entries below show two other
genres – a list (9) and an explanation (10).

(9) Okay, here’s the grocery list. Don’t forget the fruit – we need
apples, pears, if they’re ripe enough, bananas. And we also need
some milk and eggs. And if you can find something good for
dessert, like some chocolate chip cookies or small pastries, that
would be great!
(10) I don’t really think we should go out tonight. For one thing, it’s sup-
posed to snow. And I’m really tired. I just finished work and would
rather just watch a movie on TV or something. So is that okay with
you?

The idea structure of the list in (9) reflects semantic relationships among
the items to be bought at the food store. Fruit is a superordinate set that
includes apples, pears, and bananas. Milk and eggs are items that both
require refrigeration in the dairy section of stores. And dessert includes
cookies and pastries. The idea structure of the explanation in (10), howev-
er, is based on the relationship between a conclusion (not to go out) and
the events (or states) that justify that conclusion (weather, physical state,
time, alternative activity).

Linking together planes of discourse

Although we have been discussing each plane of discourse separately, we
need to remember that every utterance is simultaneously part of – and
has meaning on – different planes of discourse. We can get a clearer pic-
ture of these relationships by taking a look at the discourse in (11), an
excerpt from an interaction between a librarian and a patron at the refer-
ence desk of a public library.

(11) (a) Patron: There used to be a monthly report that comes

from S-Securities Exchange Commission. . .
(b) on insiders’ transactions,
(c) Librarian: Uh huh
(d) Patron: and many years ago you used to carry it,
(e) and I haven’t seen it in a long time.

Part of the librarian’s job is to help patrons find material in the library.
After opening this speech situation (e.g. with eye contact or excuse me),
patrons typically use the speech act “request” to get help. Although the
patron doesn’t say anything like “Can you give me. . .” or “Do you have. . .”,
her utterance still performs the speech act of a request. We know this (as
do librarians and library patrons) because the participation framework
(the identities and roles of librarians and patrons) helps us recognize that
an utterance that sounds as if it is asserting the existence of a report (There
used to be a monthly report (a)) is also performing a request.
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198 Discourse

Notice that the utterance about the existence of the monthly report
appears as a long and complex sentence spread over four lines in the
transcript ((a), (b), (d), and (e)). These lines reflect different tone units,
segments of speech production that are bounded by changes in timing,
intonation, and pitch. Because the sentence is spread out over multiple
tone units, it ends up bypassing turn-transition places (locations at
which the listener is given the option of taking a turn) and allows the
patron to complete the speech act (a request) that is pivotal to the speech
event and speech situation.
The division of the patron’s long sentence into four tone units also
reflects the information state and the recipient design of the utterance for
the librarian. The patron pauses after providing two pieces of information
about the item she’s looking for: its frequency (a monthly report) and source
(that comes from S-Securities Exchange Commission). This pause is an opportuni-
ty for the librarian to display her recognition of the requested item and to
comply with the request. When that doesn’t happen, the patron continues
her description of the report, in (b), (d), and (e), pausing after each new piece
of potential identifying information to give the librarian another chance to
respond. The pauses at the turn-transition places after (a), (b), (d), and (e)
make it easier for the librarian to complete the adjacency pair and respond
to the patron’s request at the earliest possible point. The act structure, the
participation structure, the exchange structure, the information state, and
the idea structure thus reinforce each other to make the production and
the interpretation of the request (and its response) clear and efficient.

Chapter summary
Discourse is made up of patterned arrangements of smaller units, such
as propositions, speech acts, and conversational turns. But discourse
becomes more than the sum of its smaller parts. It becomes a coherent
unit through both “bottom up” and “top down” processes. We construct
coherence online and bottom-up by building upon our own, and each
others’, prior utterances and their various facets of meaning. At the
same time, however, our sense of the larger activity in which we are
participating – the speech event, speech situation, and genre that we
perceive ourselves to be constructing – provides an overall top-down
frame for organizing those smaller units of the discourse. For example,
turns at talk are negotiated as participants speak, but participants also
are aware of larger expectations about how to share the “floor” that are
imposed by the speech event (e.g. a discussion) in a speech situation
(e.g. a classroom). Thus the very same turn-taking pattern may take on
very different meanings depending on whether it is taking place in a
classroom, in a courtroom, or during a first date.
The bottom-up and top-down organizations of discourse work in
synchrony. The overall frame helps us figure out how to interpret what
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Discourse 199

is being said and done. It also helps us figure out where to place the
smaller units in relation to one another. Yet choices that we make
about the smaller units – should I take a turn now? should I issue a
direct order or make a more subtle hint? – can also alter the general
definition of what is “going on” in a situation. The combination and
coordination of all the different facets of discourse – the structures
that they create and the frames that they reflect – are what gives
discourse its coherence, our overall sense of what is going on.
The multifaceted nature of discourse also arises because we try to
achieve several goals when we speak to each other, often all at the
same time. We verbalize thoughts, introduce new information, repair
errors in what we say, take turns at talk, think of others, perform acts,
display identities and relationships. We are continuously anticipating
what our recipients need (e.g. how much information do they need?)
and want (e.g. how polite do they expect me to be?). We achieve these
multiple goals when we are speaking by using a range of different
units, including sentences, tone units, utterances, and speech acts,
whose functional links to one another help tie together different
planes of discourse.
Discourse analyses – peering into the small details of moment-by-
moment talk – can be very detailed. And such details are in keeping
with the assumption that knowledge and meaning are developed, and
displayed, through social actions and recurrent practices, both of
which depend upon language. Yet for some scholars the scope of dis-
course stretches beyond language and its immediate context of use to
include what Gee (1999: 17) has called “Discourse” (with a capital D):
“socially accepted associations among ways of using language, of
thinking, valuing, acting and interacting, in the ‘right’ places and at
the ‘right’ times with the ‘right’ objects.” This conception of Discourse
reaches way above the sentence and even further beyond the contexts
of speech act, speech event, and speech situations. It makes explicit
that our communicative competence – our knowledge of how to use
language in everyday life – is an integral part of our culture.

Exercises
Exercise 5.1
What inferences would you draw from the two exchanges below? What is the
social relationship? The setting? And what features of “what is said” (e.g. what
specific words and phrases?) allow you to make these inferences?
Debby: Manela, sorry to bother you,
but are the payroll forms ready?
Manela: Oh sure.
Here they are.
Mr. Kay: Okay, let’s get started.
First we’ll go over the problems from last night.