How to do Discourse Analysis

A Toolkit

James Paul Gee

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317820543
• Edición: 2
• Categoría: Lingue e linguistica
• Categoría: Linguistica

This bestselling textbook is the ideal companion to An Introduction to Discourse Analysis: Theory and Method, by leading author, James Paul Gee.

Using a practical how-to approach, Gee provides the tools necessary to work with discourse analysis, with engaging step-by-step tasks featured throughout the book. Each tool is clearly explained, along with guidance on how to use it, and authentic data is provided for readers to practice using the tools. Readers from all fields will gain both a practical and theoretical background in how to do discourse analysis and knowledge of discourse analysis as a distinctive research methodology.

Updated throughout, this second edition also includes a new tool- 'The Big C Conversation Tool'. A new companion website www.routledge.com/cw/gee features a frequently asked questions section, additional tasks to support understanding, a glossary and free access to journal articles by James Paul Gee.

How to do Discourse Analysis: A Toolkit is an essential book for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students working in the areas of applied linguistics, education, psychology, anthropology and communication.

Unit 1 Language and Context

DOI: 10.4324/9781315819662-2

• ■ 1.1 Language and Language Acquisition
• ■ 1.2 Context
• ■ Grammar Interlude #1: Deixis
• ■ 1.3 Two Tools: The Fill In Tool and the Making Strange Tool
• ■ 1.4 Working with the Fill In Tool
• ■ Grammar Interlude #2: Subjects and Predicates
• ■ 1.5 Working with the Making Strange Tool
• ■ Grammar Interlude #3: Intonation
• ■ 1.6 The Frame Problem
• ■ 1.7 The Frame Problem Tool
• ■ 1.8 Working with the Frame Problem Tool

1.1 Language and Language Acquisition

Dialects

We will start in this section with some very basic background about language. People often think of grammar as rules that tell them how to speak “correctly.” Speaking correctly is often taken to mean speaking in the way educated people do. But this is not really how grammar works.

All human beings, barring serious problems, learn a native language as part of their early socialization in life. Each person learns a certain variety—called a “dialect”—of their native language, the variety their ancestors have passed down to them. In the United States, they might learn Southern English, African-American Vernacular English, New England English, or some other dialect. Dialects can vary in terms of vocabulary, syntax, or pronunciation.

Of course, any region of the United States has people from other parts of the country in it and so there are different varieties of English in any part of the country. Dialects can vary by region (e.g., Southern English), social class (e.g., various working class dialects), and by cultural group (e.g., Appalachian English). In many other countries, the differences between dialects are much more dramatic than in the United States.

What people call “Standard English” is a rather “special” dialect. “Standard English” is the variety of English that is held by many to be “correct” both in the sense that it shows no strong regional variation and that it is used widely in mainstream media and by public figures.

Standard English has its origins in the economic power of a fourteenthcentury merchant class in London, people who spoke an East Midland dialect. Because of their growing economic clout, their dialect spread for public business across the country. It became the basis of so-called “Received Pronunciation” (“RP”) in England, and eventually gave rise to Standard English in the United States.

Because of its prestige, many people in the United States speak Standard English and pass on that variety to their children, even if earlier in their family histories their ancestors spoke other dialects. For example, many Southerners have given up their Southern dialect in favor of Standard English and speakers of Appalachian Vernacular English or African-American Vernacular English often adopt Standard English for job interviews and interactions within public institutions.

Standard English is something of a fiction. We all speak it, if we do, in somewhat different ways, as is true of all dialects. We all bring to it different linguistic influences from other dialects and languages we know or which are connected to our ancestors. Further, when we are speaking informally (in our vernacular), we all use language forms that are not used in more formal varieties of Standard English as it is used in mainstream media and in writing.

Language Acquisition

For the most part, oral language acquisition for young children is an entirely unconscious process. It does not require overt teaching or correction of any sort. The process of early language acquisition is, at least in large part, under biological control. Humans are creatures of language. They are born ready and able to acquire some variety of a human language.

Young children do not need correction. When they say things like “go-ed” instead of “went,” they often do not pay attention to correction even if they get it from adults. They all end up eventually saying “went” as the past tense of “go.” In fact, when children say “go-ed” instead of “went,” they show they are catching on to the general pattern that English forms the past tense of verbs by adding “ed” to a verb, but with some exceptions to the rule (as with “went”). They are over-extending or over-generalizing the pattern, a common occurrence in language acquisition. This shows that children are actively looking for—making hypotheses about—rules or patterns. They are not just memorizing what they hear.

The grammars of all dialects of all languages follow certain patterns that are, partly at least, controlled by a human biological capacity for language. The human brain sets certain constraints on what a human language can look like and all dialects of all languages follow those basic constraints. Thus, no dialect is “incorrect.” Dialects are just different from each other. They do vary, of course, in prestige, thanks to how people think about their speakers and their speakers' social positions.

People often think a structure in a dialect is a mistake or “wrong” because it is different from Standard English. For example, in African-American Vernacular English, some speakers use a “naked be” form as in “My puppy, he always be following me” or “We be having leftovers these days.” Since Standard English does not use this form, many speakers of Standard English think it is incorrect. They may even say that “People who speak that way don't know English.”

However, the naked be form has a meaning. It is not a mistake. It is what linguists call a “durative aspect marker,” that is, a form that means that an action or event is a regular event, happens over and over, and is characteristic or typical. Lot of languages have a durative aspect marker, even though Standard English does not. This form was added to English by young African-American children acquiring English and looking for a way to express durative aspect. Throughout history, children have changed language as they acquire it (that's why, for example, Spanish and its mother language Latin are so different from each other).

The linguist Noam Chomsky has famously argued that there is a biological capacity for language that sets a basic design for all human languages and sets, as well, parameters of how different languages can vary from this basic design. Language is, thus, for humans, innate or an “instinct” (as is nest building or song for some species of birds, who innately know what their nest or song is like without having to learn it), at least in regard to the core or basic properties of any language. In this sense, at a deep-seated level, all human languages resemble each other in important ways.

According to this view, all varieties of language acquired by humans as native (first) languages are equal, since they all fit the basic pattern or design dictated by our human biological capacity for language. Chomsky's views are controversial. However, it is clear that all humans are born ready to learn language and that human languages do not differ from each other in completely arbitrary ways (i.e., there are language universals, such as the fact that all language have nouns and verbs and subjects and objects).

Language changes all the time. Children change it when they are acquiring it. For example, at one time in the history of English “apron” was said as “nappron.” But children heard “a nappron” as “an apron.” Once a whole generation said “apron” instead of “nappron,” the “correct” form was “apron.” The “nappron” form can still be seen in the English word “napkin.” Adults change language, as well, as they are influenced by other languages (e.g., bilinguals) or the need to communicate new things.

Speed and Clarity

Human languages must be both fast and clear. We humans want to be able to communicate without undue slowdowns and yet we also want our communications to be clear. These two demands can come into conflict with each other. If we speak quickly and run our words together, communication can get unclear. If we seek total clarity by spelling everything out explicitly, communication can get too slow.

We can see in the history of languages the constant pressure to balance speed and clarity. For example, Latin had “case endings” on its nouns. Different endings on nouns indicated whether a noun was the subject of a sentence or the direct object. So “puella” was the subject form of the word “girl” and “puellam” was the direct object form. Latin had other case endings for other grammatical relations. Because endings on the nouns indicated what was subject and object, Latin did not have to use word order to indicate this (as English does) and could vary word order pretty freely. Sentences like “Puella amat puerum,” “Amat puella puerum,” and “Puella puerum amat” (the girl loves the boy) were all grammatical.

Old English also had cases on its nouns, much like Latin. But, of course, cases endings make words longer, more complex, and slower. So there is a tendency for these case endings over long periods of time to “erode” (get shorter) and finally disappear. This makes language quicker. But once case endings are gone, there is no way to tell whether a noun like “girl” is being used as a subject or object. So we have lost some clarity. English has lost case endings on its nouns (though they are still on pronouns, as in “he” and “him,” “she” and “her”). To indicate what is subject and what is object, English uses the word order “Subject Verb Object,” as in “The girl loves the boy,” and, thus, has lost the word order freedom Latin had.

So far we are only talking about oral language, not written language. For linguists, oral language is the fundamental form of language. Oral language has been in human history since we became human (and maybe even before). Oral language is part of human biology in the sense that we are certainly creatures prepared and helped to learn oral language by our biology, that is, by structures in our brains.

Written language is much newer in human history, at best it is about 10,000 years old. Not all cultures invented written language (in fact, most did not), while all cultures have oral language today and have had it in the past. Written language is not old enough in human evolutionary history to be part of human biology.

Nonetheless, written language is, of course, an important form of language and important in communication. We will deal with both oral and written language in this book. By the way, American Sign Language counts as “oral language,” even though it is signed, since it is acquired as a native language by some children and used for face-to-face communication.

Reading

• Chomsky, N. (2006). Language and mind. Third Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Clark, E. (2009). First language acquisition. Second Editionrf. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Gee, J. P. (2011). Social linguistics and literacies: Ideologies in Discourses. Fourth Editioned. London: Taylor & Francis.
• Milroy, J.and Milroy, L. (1991). Authority in language: Investigating Standard English. Second Edition. New York: Routledge.
• Pinker, S. (1994). The language instinct: How the mind creates language. New York: William Morrow. [A good introduction to Chomsky's and Pinker's own arguments for the innateness of the language capacity.]
• Slobin, D. I. (1977). Language change in childhood and history. In J. Macnamara, Ed., Language learning and thought. New York: Academic Press, pp. 185–214. [Slobin's work is the source of the argument about speed and clarity being competing demands in language.]
• Wolfram, W.and Schilling-Estes, N. (2006). American English: Dialects and variation. Second Edition. Malden, MA: Blackwell.

1.2 Context

Context and Cultural Knowledge

In the last section we argued that human languages must be both fast and clear. We speakers face the trade-off between speed and clarity every day. When we communicate we do not want to be too slow (or, worse, have our listeners tell us to get on with it). Nor do we want to be unclear (or, worse, have our listeners tell us they don't know what we are talking about). We always have to make a judgment about how much clarity we can sacrifice for speed and how much speed we must give up to achieve an appropriate amount of clarity for the context we are in.

In order to speed things along, any speaker leaves some things unsaid and assumes they will be understood based on listeners' knowledge of the context in which the communication occurs. “Context” is a crucial term in discourse analysis. What do we mean by it? For now, we will define “context” this way: Context includes the physical setting in which the communication takes place and everything in it; the bodies, eye gaze, gestures, and movements of those present; what has previously been said and done by those involved in the communication; and any shared knowledge those involved have, including shared cultural knowledge.

Let's for a moment think about just one aspect of context, namely shared cultural knowledge. For example, in my cultural group, I assume people eat dinner roughly between 6 and 8 o'clock at night. If I invite you out to dinner and ask when you want to meet, I assume, without saying so explicitly, that you will give me a time between 6 and 8. People in other cultures will vary about what their taken for granted “normal” dinner times are. It is hard for us to see how much shared cultural knowledge speakers assume and listeners bring to a communication, since such shared knowledge is usually just taken-for-granted.

A Yucatan Example

Since shared cultural knowledge (one aspect of context) is so often taken for granted, let's look at a communication in what is a foreign culture to most of us. Here we will not know what cultural information speakers assume can go unsaid. My example is from William Hanks' excellent book Language and Communicative Practices (...