An Introduction to Applied Linguistics

participant
speaker/sender/addressor hearer/receiver/audience/
addressee
E
ends
purposes and goals outcomes
A
act sequence
message form and content
K
key
tone, manner
I
instrumentalities
channel (verbal and non-verbal; physical forms of speech 
drawn from community repertoires)
N
norms of interaction 
and interpretation
specific properties attached to speaking interpretations of 
norms within cultural belief system
G
genre
textual categories
Table 4.2 Hymes’s SPEAKING grid (Hymes, 1972b)
The SPEAKING grid provides a necessary reminder of the contextual dimensions 
that determine our use of language. Hymes’s ethnographic framework led not only 
to broader notions of the ‘communicative competence’ language users display but 
also to a recognition of the close relationship between speech events and their 
social or cultural contexts.
A concept that is increasingly important in language teaching is the concept of 
‘genre’. Later, we will describe some of the different genres that occur in spoken 
and written English. The term ‘genre’ is used in many different disciplines (see 
Chapter 6, Corpus Linguistics, Chapter 12, Speaking and Pronunciation and Chapter 
14, Writing). What each approach has in common is the recognition that there 
are, in both spoken and written language, different text-types or genres with their 
own different internal structures, which accord with different social goals. As the 
SPEAKING grid shows, Hymes (1972b) used the term ‘genre’ to refer to just one 
component of the speech event.

---

61
Discourse Analysis
Variation Theory
Variation theory was developed by Labov (1972) and has made a major contribution 
to the analysis of discourse, in particular, his description of the structure of spoken 
narratives, which has been very influential in language teaching. Labov, with 
Waletsky (Labov and Waletsky, 1967), argued that the ‘overall structure’ of a fully 
formed narrative of personal experience is:
• Abstract (summary of story, with its point),
• Orientation (in respect of place, time and situation),
• Complication (temporal sequence of events, culminating in crisis),
• Evaluation (narrator’s attitude towards narrative),
• Resolution (protagonist’s approach to crisis),
• Coda (point about narrative as a whole). 
(Labov and Waletsky, 1967: 363)
Labov did not use the word genre, but his analysis of text structure, in particular 
in relation to narratives of personal experience, has been particularly influential 
in work on genre in language teaching and within functional linguistics, which 
are described below.
Linguistic Approaches
The Birmingham School
In the early 1970s, Sinclair and Coulthard (1975) tape-recorded mother-tongue 
classes. The classes were traditional, teacher-fronted lessons where knowledge 
was typically transmitted by the pupils answering the teacher’s display questions 
(questions where the teacher already knew the answers), engaging in some sort of 
activity or just listening to the teacher talking. From these recordings, Sinclair and 
Coulthard (1975) built a model for the analysis of classroom discourse. A typical 
piece of classroom discourse, from a primary school class in England is the following:
T = Teacher 
P = Any pupil who speaks
T: Now then 
. . .
I’ve got some things here, too. Hands up. What’s that, 
what is it?
P: Saw.
T: It’s a saw, yes this is a saw. What do we do with a saw?
P: Cut wood.
T: Yes. You’re shouting out though. What do we do with a saw? Marvelette.
P: Cut wood.
T: We cut wood.
Note here:
(a) The teacher begins this phase of the lesson with ‘Now then’. This is a 
discourse marker that indicates a boundary, the start of something new.
(b) Pupils aren’t allowed just to shout their answers. The teacher nominates 
who speaks next.
(c) The teacher reinforces the answer by repeating it and evaluating it as a 
good answer (‘It’s a saw, yes, this is a saw’).
(d) The discourse proceeds in units of three parts: the question, the 
response, and the feedback or follow-up.
(Sinclair and Coulthard, 1975: 93 –94)

---

62 An Introduction to Applied Linguistics
This extract also shows how the discourse is organized at several different levels. 
The top level is the lesson phases usually bounded by discourse markers such 
as ‘Now then’ and ‘Right’. In the Sinclair and Coulthard (1975) model these are 
called ‘transactions’.
The next level is illustrated in the question–answer–feedback combinations. 
Sinclair and Coulthard (1975) called these ‘exchanges’.
The next level below is represented by the single actions of questioning, 
answering, feeding back, each of which is called a ‘move’.
Finally, there are local, micro-actions such as nominating a pupil to speak, 
telling the kids to put their hands up, acknowledging, etc., which Sinclair and 
Coulthard (1975) called ‘acts’.
These different levels form a rank-scale, in which any level is comprised of all 
the levels below it.