Theoretical Grammar

LECTURE 12: DISCOURSE ANALYSIS 
 
1. Discourse analysis – the study of language in use. 
 
Text as a unit of the highest level manifests itself as discourse in verbal communication. Therefore 
actual text in use may be defined as discourse. Discourses are formed by sequence of utterances. It is obvious 
that many utterances taken by themselves are ambiguous. They can become clear only within a discourse. 
Utterances interpretation, or discourse
analysis, involves a variety of processes, grammatical and pragmatic. By pragmatic processes we mean the 
processes used to bridge up the gap between the semantic representations of sentences and the interpretation of 
utterances in context. Quite often, the sentence may be ambiguous: 
His soup is not hot enough 
The hearer must not only recover the semantic representation of the sentence uttered, but decide who the 
referential expression he refers to, whether the ambiguous word hot means very warm or spicy, whether the 
vague expression his food refers to the food he cooked, the food he brought, the food he served, the food he is 
eating, etc. 
Besides, utterances have not only propositional content but illocutionary force, and ambiguities may arise at 
this level: 
You’re not leaving 
The hearer must not only recover its explicit propositional content, but also decide whether it is a statement, a 
question or an order. Furthermore, utterances have not only explicit content but also implicit import: 
A: Would you like some coffee? 
B: Coffee would keep me awake. 
The hearer (A) must recover the implication that B does not want any coffee (or, in some circumstances, that he 
does). 
2. Maxims of conversation. 
Understanding the meaning of a discourse requires knowing a lot of things. There are times when people 
say (or write) exactly what they mean, but generally they are not totally explicit. They manage to convey far 
more than their words mean, or even something quite different from the meaning of their words. It was Paul 
Grice who attempted to explain how, by means of shared rules or conventions, language users manage to 
understand one another. He introduced guidelines necessary for the efficient and effective conversation. He 
defined these guidelines as Cooperative Principle. Cooperative Principle presupposes that conversation is 
governed by four basic rules, Maxims of Conversation. There are four of them: