Assignment 7.1 Discourse Analysis

Text Analysis I

Written Text

The selected text (Appendix 1) is taken from The Daily Mirror, a popular British tabloid (or ‘red-top,’ to distinguish lower-end titles from compact-sized broadsheets such as The Independent) newspaper. In common with many red-top titles, much of the content of the newspaper is sensationalist, with a predominance of celebrity stories relating to sport and television. The text itself is 378-words long and reports on a severe weather warning issued by a government agency.

Genre

Tricia Hedge (Hedge, 1988) classifies writing into six types (Personal; Public; Study; Creative; Social; Institutional). As a newspaper article, the genre in this case is public. Further to this, Scott Thornbury (Thornbury, 1997) notes six features (purpose, content, status, style, grammar, lexis and layout) which should be considered in regard to genre. In relation to this, the purpose of the text is to inform the public about the prospect of severe weather conditions, and to give a factual account of the preparations being made.

The article is structured in a common tabloid style: short paragraphs, the first of which, written in bold, contains sensationalist information. Direct speech is preceded by the name and occupation of the speaker and a full colon, rather than the commas preferred in more formal written texts such as broadsheet articles.

The layout of the text contains a number of features common to tabloid newspapers: the large-sized headline is a continuation of a sentence at the top of the page (As 90mph winds near coast, Britain is warned….GET SET FOR A BATTERING); three photographs (one taking up almost half of the page) give a strong visual accompaniment to the article, each with text captions inlaid over the top or underneath; an information bubble in the middle of the text gives background details in the form of bullet points. The writer’s name is boxed and listed in the middle of the text.

The article also contains a number of proper nouns pertaining to the meteorological agencies from whom the quotes and forecasts are derived: Meteogroup UK (51), The Environment Agency (58) and Norwich Union (75)

Features of Written Discourse

Cohesion

Grammatical Cohesion

Anaphoric Reference

Line 2 – It refers to Britain (1)

Line 54 - Us refers to Britain and by extension its people (1)

Line 67 - They refers to the strong winds, waves and high tides (66).

Cataphoric Reference

It (81)– refers to flying objects causing damage (81)

Exophoric Reference

Line 3 – the worst storm in 20 years refers to the Great Storm of October 1987 (see detail in information bubble).

Conjunctions

Line 5 – and adds torrential rain and hail to the 90mph winds.

Line 11 – and extends the pummeling from mammoth winds faced by coastal areas to include the latest severe flood alert.

Line 50 - but links the whole of the UK to the specific regions (the west country and southern England) mentioned in the previous line.

Line 24 – as links the cause and effect of the coming storm and the cancelled ferry sailings.

Ellipsis

Line 64 – The (Environmental) Agency’s … (see 58)

Lexical Cohesion

Lexical Sets

The most notable lexical set relates to the weather: the worst storm (line 3), battered by…winds (4), torrential rain and hail (4), mammoth waves (9), severe flood alert (10), low pressure system (22) and high tides (66).

A further set is based around the preparations for and likely effects of the storm on the British population: battened down the hatches (1), bring chaos to the country (6), flights…delayed or cancelled (30), evacuated…by emergency services (35), precautions…to minimise damage (73).

Finally, there is a geographic set, including Britain(1), the UK (4) and southern England(49).

Repetition

Repetition of extreme adjective - severe flood alert (12); severe delays (17).

Repetition of superlative - the worst storm (3); possibly the worst storm since 1987 (27)

Register

Befitting tabloid journalism, the register is informal, as evidenced by the use of the phrasal verb get set in the headline. However, there are also examples of slightly more formal language, such as precautions to minimise damage, signifying the Mirror’s assumed readership: the educated, politically left-of-centre working class. Although broadly factual, the text does include a number of subjectively emphasised lexis (mammoth, devastated, battered and torrential).

The passive is a feature of written English and, particularly, of texts related to people and objects affected by severe weather conditions. Examples include, is set to be battered by 90mph winds (4), were put on severe flood alert (11), were advised to leave (38) and it is predicted winds will ease (55).

Text Analysis II

Spoken Text

The text (Appendix 2) was sourced from the BBC Voices website. Four work colleagues talk about the tendency of young people to reverse the meaning of words. Three of the participants are in their mid-40s and in managerial positions within the company. All three come from County Durham, two from Bishop Auckland (A and C) and the other from Chester-le-Street (B). The fourth (D), a salesman from Cramlington in Northumberland, is 20. The text is approximately 254-words long and is divided into eight turns.

Genre

Given the number and relationship of the participants, the short duration of each turn and the fact that the speakers are attempting any formal task beyond responding to an initial prompt, the genre can be appropriately described as a casual conversation (Cook, 1989). In the main, the turns follow each other naturally and without contradiction or discord between the speakers. Interruptions or overlapping speech serve to re-affirm, clarify or show interest in the previous utterance.

Features of Spoken Discourse

As opposed to written discourse, which provides scope for prior-formulation and drafting, spoken discourse is often unplanned, unpredictable and seemingly disorganized, featuring grammatical errors, unfinished utterances, overlaps, repetition, repair language and reformulation, discourse markers and fillers. As a consequence of this, spoken discourse will commonly have a lower density of information than written discourse of the same length, and when transcribing spoken discourse, punctuation and sentence boundaries are not always apparent.

Lack of Sentence Definition

I cannot think of the word right now, but like phrasal use or even me daughters used to use words that I thought were… /ɑ:/…it was…...minging ….and I…mean it ‘s good sometimes…. (Line 5 – 6)

Overlaps and Interruptions

In the conversation genre spoken discourse is interactive, with participants interrupting, overlapping, responding to or completing points made by other speakers. There are several examples in the extract, notably:

Line 9 – A: Hellish, aye that’s the word I was………..
C: II Hellish
B: II Yeah

Line 5-7 – A: …..… /ɑ:/…it was…...minging. And I…..
B: I think I know what you mean…..
A: II mean it’s good sometimes.
B: …Is it…. do you mean when you say something’s hellish?



False Starts and Self-Correction

On occasion the speakers abandon a line of thought or reformulate utterances in mid-sentence:

Is it…do you mean when you say…. (Line 7)
It means like…it means… (Line 16)


Discourse Markers and Fillers

Common to most, if not all, spoken discourse, a number of discourse markers and phatic fillers were used to introduce points, cover pauses, signify attention to the speaker and provide thinking time:

…but don’t you find…. (Line 1)

/həm / (Lines 2 and 4)

….that I thought were… /ɑ:/…it was…...minging. (Line 5)

My cousins just use it as like…as something… (Line 16)

Aye (Line 8)

Yeah (Line 17)

Repetition

…kids’ll use (Line 1)
….like phrasal use or even me daughters used to use (Line 5)

…it was like hell, it’d be fairer to hell…it was hell like… (Line 14)

..the way she looks at it is it’s…. (Line 13)

Vague Language

Due to the real-time nature of spoken discourse, vague language is used to convey approximate meaning in cases where the speaker is unable to find the most accurate word.

I cannot think of the word right now but like phrasal use (Line 5)

…something you say before anything else (Line 16)

Contractions

..that’s the word.. (9)

It’d be… (14)

…they’ll say it’s hellish good… (16)

Lack of Complex Clauses and Conjunctions

The utterances are linked by simple conjunctions, most commonly and, but and so:

Like what was crap years ago is now good and what was good is now bad (3)

Aye, that’s right…but me mam… (13)

….so it makes it their own (1)


Cohesion

Grammatical Cohesion

Anaphoric Reference

Numerous anaphoric references are used to bind the discourse together. Among the many examples are:

Line 1 - Makes it their own. It refers to the opposite word; their refers to kids.

Line 5 – It was minging. It refers to the word ( 5)

Line 6 – It’s good sometimes. It refers to minging (5)

Line 14 - But that’s probably what it was. It refers to bad (13)

Line 16 – They’ll refers to the cousins (16)

Exophoric Reference

Hellish for us (lines 10 and 12). Us refers to people of the speaker’s age group and background.

You must go on there (Line 12). There refers to a fairground ride.

Lexical Cohesion

Lexical Set

There is a lexical set based on partial synonyms for the original meaning of hellish: crap (3); minging (5); horrible (10); awful (11); bad (13).

Parallelism

It’s hellish, you must go on there…I must see that film, it’s hellish… (Line 12)

Reformulation

Because of the speaker’s apparent difficulty in completing line 16, the word extremity is reformulated as the phrase from one extreme to the other (18).

Register

The register is informal as illustrated by the numerous interrupted turns, none of which are marked with apologies or requests for permission (Excuse me…; If I could just interrupt….). The informality is further denoted by the use of the word crap (3), which would be considered offensive in more formal contexts. The speakers use a number of colloquialisms and dialect words such as aye, yeah and me daughters (5).

Phonology

Pitch and Volume

The start of each turn is commonly marked with a higher pitch. Speakers signal the end of their turn or invite a helpful interruption with a falling tone. In line 16, the speaker’s tone falls as he searches for the word extremity, encouraging the definition from speaker C at the end of the transcript.

Changes in pitch also mark the beginning and end of a train of thought:

Aye, that’s right…but me mam, the way she looks at it is it’s bad….and now hellish is good.

In this example, the pitch rises on the words but and and, while falling on right and bad.

Changes in volume are used to signify that a speaker is starting a turn, rather than adding support, clarification or agreement. In line 7, the volume of Is it…do you mean is noticeably higher than I think I know what you mean in the previous line.

Contrastive Stress

In spoken discourse, stress is used to provide emphasis and clarity. In the following example, the pronoun is stressed to emphasise the meaning of the word hellish to the speaker’s contemporaries:

…hellish for us was something horrible (10)

Conclusion

Both texts contain features that make them immediately recognisable as examples of written or spoken discourse – the phatic fillers and false starts in the spoken text, for instance. Looking at both together, we can discern many of the differences between the two forms – not least the lack of clause complexity, unclear sentence definition and real time, interactive nature of spoken discourse – in addition to the similar characteristics (as in cohesive devices such as referencing, lexical sets and conjunctions) that help bind both spoken and written texts together.

Word Count: 1,912