DISCOURSE MEANING

Linguistic knowledge accounts for speakers’ ability to combine phonemes into morphemes, morphemes into words, and words into sentences. Knowing a language also permits combining sentences together to express complex thoughts and ideas. The linguistic ability makes language an excellent medium of communication. These larger linguistic units are called discourse.

            The study of discourse, or discourse analysis, involves many aspects of linguistic performance and of sociolinguistics. as well as linguistic competence. Discourse analysis involves questions of style, appropriateness, cohesiveness, rhetorical force, topic/subtopic structure, differences between written and spoken discourse, and so on.

Maxim of Conversation

Speakers recognize when a series of sentences ‘hangs together’ or when it is ‘disjointed’. The discourse below, which gave rise to Polonius’ remark does not seem quite right. It is not coherent. Consider the following from Hamlet, Act II Scene ii.

Polonius : What do you read, my lord?

Hamlet   : Words, words, words.

Polonius : What is the matter my lord?

Hamlet   ; Between who?

Polonius : I mean, the matter that you read, my lord

Hamlet    : Slanders, sir: for the satirical rogue says here that old man have grey beards, that their faces are wrinkled, their eyes purging thick amber and plum-tree  gum, and that they have a plentiful lack of wit, together with most weak hams: all of which, sir, though I most powerfully and potently believe, yet I hold it not honesty to have it thus set down; for yourself, sir, should grow old as I am, if like a crab you could go backward.

Hamlet who is feigning  insanity, refuses to answer Polonius’ questions ‘in good faith’. He has violated certain conversational conventions or maxims of conversation. These maxims were first discussed by H. Paul Grice in the William James Lectures, delivered at Harvard University in 1967. On such maxim, the cooperative principle, states that a speaker’s contribution to the discourse should be as informative as is required-neither more nor less. Hamlet has violated this maxim in both ways. In answering ‘Words. Words, words’ to the question of what is being red, he is providing too little information. His final remarks goes to the other extreme in providing more information than required.

            He also violates the maxim of relevance, when he ‘misinterprets’ the question about the reading matter as a matter between two individuals.

            The ‘run on’ nature of Hamlet’s final remark is another source of incoherence. This effect is increased in the final sentence by somewhat bizarre choice of phrasing to compare growing younger with walking backwards.

            Conversational conventions such as the requirement to ‘be relevant’  allow the various sentence meanings to the sensibly connected into discourse meaning, much as rules of sentence grammar allow word meanings to be  sensibly (and grammatically) connected into sentence meaning.

            Most of the rules of grammar we have studied are for phrases and sentences. Such rules interact heavily with non-linguistic knowledge in discourse.

The articles the and a

There are discourse rules that apply regularly, such as those that determine the occurrence of the article the and a. The article the is used to indicate that the referent of a noun phrase is agreed upon by the speaker and listener. If someone says

                        I saw the hawk.

it is assumed a certain hawk is being discussed. No such assumption accompanies

                        I saw a hawk.

which is more of a description of what was seen than a reference to a particular individual.

            Often a discourse will begin with the use of indefinite articles, and once everyone agrees on the referents definite articles start to appear. A shor example illustrates this transition:

                        I saw a hawk and an eagle flying high in the sky.

                        Oh, it sounds lovely.

                        Yes, the hawk was hovering over the sea, and it

                      seemed to be watching the eagle.

            This example also illustrates that the use of pronouns is often discourse-dependent. The use of it to refer to the hawk in the final clause is necessary to avoid the stilted-sounding;

                        Yes, the hawk was hovering over the sea, and the hawk

                        Seem to be watching the eagle.