135. For discourse analysis,133 presenting a fluent history is even more difficult than for text linguistics, not just because (as with text linguistics) much early work did not circulate widely or figured under diverse designations, such as ‘tagmemics’ and ‘ethnomethodology’; but also because discourse analysis is resolutely ‘multi-disciplinary’, and its diversity grows with its popularity.134
In early stages (up into the 1960s), work was focussed outside Europe on non-European languages and cultures. Linguistics was exploited more as a practical and functional enterprise than a theoretical and formal one, which distinguished discourse analysis from text linguistics until the trends I have summarised favoured convergence.135
136. To suggest the diversity of discourse analysis, I briefly compare four influential approaches, all more practice-driven and data-driven than theory-driven, though in differing respects.Fieldwork on lesser- known languages is allied with anthropology and ethnography, but also with linguistics through practical applications of Phonology and Morphology (II.58).Tagmemics136 extends the repertory of ‘structural units’ to the Tagmeme, a unit described by the relations between a position (or ‘slot’) and the items that can occupy it in a discourse, whether these be linguistic, cultural, or behavioural (cf. II.65). This approach led to such cogent discoveries as paragraph markers in spoken discourse and story-line markers in folktales. In a stretch of text in a Waorani folktale from Eastern Ecuador told by Dayuma about discovering cassava as a food[104], a hunter finds many tapir tracks near a cassava patch and wonders why out loud. The cassava answers him and says how to remove, cultivate, and prepare it, which he does, undaunted by a talking plant, and to the grief of the tapirs. The marker ‘ay’ appears seven times
introducing the respective instructions in the process (p = person, par = participle, fut = future, inf = inference, ast = assertive, idt = identifier).137
‘Then the cassava spoke: “Take me. […] When you carry me to the house, peel off my skin, then cook the inside (stomach) of the cassava. Then eat it.’
Waorani uses Morpheme markers for ‘assertive’ to indicate an Independent Clause in the Declarative, and for ‘inference’ to indicate what is known only by hearsay, e.g., from a story told by the ancestors. Its Morphemes build words efficiently, e.g., ‘ay‘ [see-much => then] and ‘kēwē’ [live-always => cassava]. Such folktales fill the cognitive function of explaining or personifying familiar animals and plants, and the social function of binding the community, especially ones like the Waorani under pressure from multinational oil companies and Christian missionaries.
137. Ethnomethodology is an approach to the study of social activity, including discourse, mainly in well- known languages, and allied to sociology and philosophy (as phenomenology).138 Though again more practical than theoretical, it explores the ‘theories of practice’ people apply to everyday life as common- sense reasoning, which highlights the ‘theoreticalness’ of human practices (cf. I.8); in return, less work has been done in elaborating abstract academic theories. A special tool is ‘breach studies’,139
where ordinary practices are disrupted to see how people react and possibly do ‘repairs’. In one study,140 the order of sentences was scrambled, turning[105] into[105a]. The test persons tried to restore the original order and were interviewed about their reasoning, giving responses like[106] and[107].
[105]
The second man was unlike the others. He was broader and shorter. There was much hair on his body an d his head-
hair was sleek as if fat had been rubbed in it. The hair lay in a ball at the back of his neck.He had no hair on the front of his head at all so that the sweep of bone skin came right over his ears. Now for the first ti me, Lok saw the ears of the new men. They were tiny and screwed tightly into the sides of their heads. (Inheritors)
[105a] A. He had no hair on the front of his head at all so that the sweep of bone skin came right over his ears. B. There was much hair on his body and his head-hair was sleek as if fat had been rubbed in it. C. They were tiny and screwed tightly into the sides of their heads. D The man was unlike the others. E. Now for the first time, Lok saw the ears of the second new men. F. He was broader and shorter. G. The hairlay in a ball at the back of his neck.
[106] The new / it’s / you’d probably say that / you know / ah / his ears / and this is what the ears were like / but you wouldn’t make a des- / re- / people’d rarely make a description of the ears and then say ‘these are the ears’
[107] Well it[the opener] had to be D or E because they were the only sentences which had nothing to do with any of the others / well which others could follow from
Such data can shed light on our claims about the Cohesion and Coherence of texts by comparing them to the accounts provided by discourse participants. The dis-ruptions in[105a] range from the less subtle, e.g., the mysterious Pronouns ‘they’ (screwed hairs??) and ‘he’ (Lok? second man?) to the more subtle, e.g. ‘no hair at all’ (as if it were expected) before ‘much hair’ (why it would be expected).
138. The historically related approach of conversation analysis is allied to soci-ology but opposed to philosophy (as speech-act theory).141 It is even more thor-oughly practice-driven and data-driven and does not disrupt ordinary practices. Only authentic recorded discourse is accredited, and not, say, conversations in ‘imaginative written texts’. Applying a brisk functionalism, analysts stress that the interactional categories of utterances are not reliably signalled by their linguistic form.142 We must consider the position of an utterance in a conversation, especially as part of a adjacency pair with another utterance. In this interchange[108] (BNC data) (/ = short pause // = longer pause), mumsy Ruth evidently guesses from experience that son Paul (age 12) is going to be reluctant. She correctly hears Paul’s questions as evasions leading to a refusal, which the slacker eventually confirms, blaming the job for just not being ‘worth doing’. The subject is dropped and somebody else defuses the standoff by reading out some sports news, which triggers a discussion about whether to go to Wembley to see a match.
[108] Ruth: Paul I’d like you to do a job Paul: I’ve done a job / I’ve been round to Merle’s Ruth: no / I’d like you to do a proper job / I’d like you to take a sponge // and I’d like you to clean the paintwork on the stairs // please. Paul: what about touching up? // I’ll touch up Ruth: I’ve done the touching up Paul: so why does it need? Ruth: you won’t help will you? // Paul: I don’t feel that it’s worth doing. Kevin: ‘Trophy holders Palace are now just three steps away from another trip to Wembley.’
If functionalism starts from the linguistic and moves toward the social, conversation analysis does the reverse. Here, the social setting indicates the relevance of Ruth’s cautious Declarative ‘I’d like you to’ (rather than the Imperative) being uttered four times whilst describing the ‘proper job’ in a sequence of steps and tacking on ‘please’ at the end after an unpromising pause.
139. The discourse analysis of schooling143 has been thoroughly functionalist too, allied with sociology and pedagogy. The data predictably show a tightly controlled organisation specific to the social setting of the classroom, where the teacher guards the initiative in soliciting specific information. The data below were observed in a ninth grade General Science class in a New York City high school (Tr = teacher, St = a student).144 In[109], teacher and students talk in repetitive circles until the desired technical term is finally (if awkwardly) produced. In[110], the teacher first refuses permission to speak to a student who can’t see the blackboard, and then spitefully declares the intent to ‘flunk’ him anyway. [109] Tr: What kind of a wave motion is sound? St: It’s — it’s a wave motion. Tr: Sound is a wave motion.
What kind of wave motion? St: Sound wave. Tr: Sound is a wave. What kind of wave? St: VibrationTr: What kind of vibration?[eventually:] St: Oh / um / uh / long / lonj-itud-inal wave. Tr: Eugene is correct[Others comment, whistle.]
[110] Jimmy: Hello there! Tr: No! If you coulda answered this question, I’da said yes.[…] Jimmy: I can’t s ee.[…] Tr: Tough. T-u-f-
f.[…] It doesn’t make any difference where I put you. As of right now, you have aflunking mark. If you change your way of living, you’ll pass.
In an ecologist standpoint, two aspects complement the linguistic ones: the cognitive inefficiency in fishing for the exact answer which the teacher insists on and which the student merely parrots (with difficulty)
out of a notebook[109]; and the social confrontation between the teacher and individual students[110]. The teacher must be unaware of the pungent irony in asking students to accommodate the middle-class values of the school system by ‘changing their way of living’ (cf. I.71) — and in personifying an ugly vindictive stereotype.
140. A dramatically different approach to discourse analysis began as analyse du discours145 in France, allied to sociology and anthropology, and later branching out into philosophy, pedagogy, rhetoric, and political science on an international scale. This approach defines discourse in the broadest sense for all modes of human expression, including discourse in the usual sense along with manifestations of social institutions, the human body, clothing, commodities, and so on. Here, the theoretical decidedly dominates the practical in the special sense of imposing ingenious theoretical interpretations upon practical objects or actions, viz.:
[111] Cars today are almost the exact equivalent of the great Gothic cathedrals: the supreme creation of an era, conceived with passion by unknown artists, and consumed in image if not in usage by a wholepopul ation which appropriates them as a purely magical object.[…] It is obvious that the new Citroën has falle n from the sky inasmuch as it appears at first sight as a superlative object;[…] one can easily see inan obj ect the best messenger of a world above that of nature: at once a perfection and an absence of origin, a cl osure and a brilliance, a transformation of life into matter… (The New Citroën, 1957)146
If our own mode of discourse analysis works from a centre of linguistic data outward into widening cognitive and social circles (II.102, 110), this mode seem to revolve around an absent centre. How the data (in this case the commodity) relate to the analysis is a bit mysterious, yet the discourse of the analysis itself radiates certitude (underlined items); in the same text I find ‘of course’, ‘obviously’, ‘it is certain’, ‘it is well known’, and always for what’s far from obvious. Still, the 1957 Citroën was a tangible practical object; in the more recent versions of this approach, the interpretation becomes hermetic and even the object seems to be absent, though the certitude remains (e.g., ‘we can clearly see’ in[112]).
[112] We can clearly see that there is no bi-univocal correspondence between linear signi- fying links or archi-writing depending on the author, and this multireferential, multi- dimensional machinic catalysis. Thesymmetry of scale, the transversality, the pathic non-
discursive character of their expansion: all these dimensions remove us from the logic of the excluded mi ddle and reinforce us in our dismissal of theontological binarism (Felix Guattari, in le Figaro) 147
In cognitive or social terms, this mode of discourse analysis is hard to situate. Any ecological potential would require becoming more accessible to the society whose discourses it purports to analyse.
141. Among the youngest and most vigorous approaches is critical discourse analysis,148 devoted to ‘the analysis of linguistic and semiotic aspects of social processes and problems’ (Ruth Wodak).149 The analysis engages with discourse to pursue such factors as cultural allegiances, ideologies, power relations, and political factions. In its own way, it uncovers the ‘theoreticalness’ of social and discursive practices as reflexes of underlying ideologies:
[113] I view social institutions as containing diverse ideological-
discursive formations[which] ‘naturalise’ ideologies, i.e., win acceptance for them as non- ideological ‘com-
[and] shows how social structures determine properties of a dis-course and how discourse in turn determines social structures (Norman Fairclough)150
Yet ‘critical thinking’ inherently reaches out for ‘solidarity’:
[114] True dialogue cannot exist unless it involves critical thinking, which discerns an individual solidarity between the world of humans, admitting of no dichotomy between them,[and] perceives reality as process and transformation[…] for the sake of continu-ing humanization.[…] (Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed)151
[114] profoundly resonates with ecologism in its utopian hope for ‘humanization’.
142. For the future, a vital path for discourse analysis, and for text linguistics too, might be to integrate these several approaches, and to cultivate alliances with disciplines who share an interest in text and discourse: semiotics, ethnography, cognitive psychology, and computer science, but also ‘inter- disciplines’ like cognitive science, discourse processing, social psychology, rhetorical psychology, constructivism, and post-modernism. Despite their diversity, these could all gain from an ambience of transdisciplinarity:152 not just the sharing across borders that sustains ‘interdisciplinarity’, but a comprehensive and unifying design intended from the outset to serve multiple disciplines.