The Concept of a Discourse |
ABSTRACT The concept of a "discourse" is defined with respect to the analyses that are included in his section. There are many types of discourse, most prominently: conversations, narratives, reports, arguments, technical, and electronic discourses. They are always situated. The situations shape the discourses and are embedded in them. Discourses have correlative structures: linguistic and cognitive. |
Every communication situation has at least eight components: A transaction in which a (1) sender (2) encodes a (3) message in some (5) context and sends it through a (4) channel to a (6) receiver who (7) decodes it and reacts (8 effect). The "effect" of the "message" on its "receiver" is our main concern. However, the effect is the result of all eight components combined because they are "embedded" in the message. For example, if the channel is the Internet, the relationship between the sender and receiver is different than if they were face to face. The context in which the message is sent also effects its receiver. The same remark in different contexts can have opposite effects. For example, a friend telling someone that what he's done is "really stupid" has a different effect than a stranger saying that he's "really stupid."
A message is the result of a "communication matrix," as C. Kaha Waite argues in her Mediation and the Communication Matrix. For Waite, communication is a generative matrix in which each part can be understood only in its relation to the other parts in the matrix. In her view, to isolate one element of a communication situation and consider it as if it were a "stand alone" fact, so to speak, is misleading. It would be more or less equivalent to trying to understand the taste of a chocolate cake by tasting flour. To understand what a cake is, its ingredients have to be seen in relation to each other and in the temporal sequence of making a cake. The concept of a communication matrix brings this point of view into communication studies. The components of a communication situation have to be seen in relation to each other as they are progressively embedded in it.
The term "message" (as used in the preceding paragraph) is a bit misleading since it usually refers to a very short text.
In most communication situations, the "message" is longer than a "text message." (For example, telephone conversations can go on for hours.) We are concerned with complex and elaborate "messages" which are termed, "discourses." A discourse is a string of sentences
structured by a purpose, usually a communicative one. Returning to the example of a telephone conversation, recall phone calls in which someone asked you or you asked someone for a date. Such conversations are usually more than two or three sentences.
There are many types of discourse.
For the purposes of examining discourse from the perspective of communication studies we will look at three discourse types: conversations, non-narrative discourse, and narrative discourse.
Conversations:
Daily life is dominated for most people by conversation. We spend much of our time talking to other people in person, over the phone, via the Internet, or text messaging. For a number of linguists, conversation is the prototypical form of discourse. Its characteristic discursive structure is "turn-taking."
Conversations have many features in common with all discourses: for example, "conceptual frames" that carry much of the meaning imparted through conversations. Frames tell us what to focus on just as picture frames set limits on what is pictured. They might be thought of as photographs of experiences that flash by us in conversations as "moving pictures," that give us a record of what happened at a particular time in a particular place.
Like motion pictures, conversations have a temporal dimension that creates a dynamic structure of meaning as frames are combined with other frames in a purposeful sequence.
Narrative Discourse:
Though you might tell a story in a conversation, it is noticeably different from other aspects of the conversation. For example, stories are dramatic and are usually told from someone's point of view. They are not structured by turn-taking but rather by wanting to know what finally happened.
Stories play an important role in our lives because we are the protagonists of our "life story." Much of our understanding of ourselves and of other persons is derived from personal stories. For example, if you want to get to know someone, you want to know their story. Who we are is bound up with the story we tell ourselves and others about ourselves.
From a cultural perspective, we are inundated by stories. We hear hundreds of stories every day. Friends tell us stories. So do colleagues. TV is rampant with stories. News reports are stories. Some stories are cultural configurations, told and retold in endless variations. For example, fairy tales, fables, legends, the lives of famous persons. History is hiSTORY.
Non-Narrative Discourse:
Not every discourse is a story. Some discourses are reports, descriptions of something. Others are arguments—editorials, movie reviews, proposals.
Discourse combinations:
Complex discourses can contain several discursive structures.
A news report can contain a story. Conversations can include stories. And, of course, stories include conversations and reports. It is not necessary to identify all discourse types. It's less confusing to identify the major discourse structures rather than their multiple variations. This section identifies nine discourse structures in three categories:
- Conversational Structures
- exchanging information (e.g., teaching) [framing/categorizing]
- collaborating (planning & problem solving) [questioning/answering]
- comparing (matching the features of one entity with another.) [evaluating]
- Narrative Structures
- narrating (anecdotes) [chronicling, planning]
- plotting (life stories as story structures, news stories) [storytelling]
- configuring (cultural stories as instructive stories, fables, legends, myths) [mythologizing]
- Non-narrative structures
- describing (propositions/statements) [asserting/stating]
- proclaiming (declare someone to be something, affirm or declare as an attribute or quality of someone or something, praise, glorify, or honor) [declaring]
- arguing (logically arranged propositions) [inferrin, [propositioning/counterclaiming]
This is not an exhaustive list. It is a selection of discourse structures that are frequently used and are usually strongly linked to the indirect expression of beliefs and values. Therefore, they are informative and worth analyzing.
Any of these discourse structures can be combined with any other discourse structure to form a complex discourse. Most discourses are complex. Few are made up entirely of one discourse structure.
Discourses are always situated
It is impossible to have a conversation, for example, without a time and place when and where it occurs. Even if the conversation takes place through email and the persons are at a distance from each other and take turns in responding at lengthy intervals—days or weeks, the temporal and spatial dimensions of the conversation persist.
All discourses have temporal and spatial dimensions. For this reason, discourses are always "situated" in space and time. However, the "discourse situation" includes eight additional dimensions correlative to the eight components of communication. To say that a discourse is "situated" is to say that every discourse is a transaction in which a (1) sender (2) encodes a (3) message in some (5) context and sends it through a (4) channel to a (6) receiver who (7) decodes it and reacts (8 effect). Therefore the analysis of a discourse must take these aspects of the situation (communication matrix) into account.
The author of a discourse has a motive for composing it which is related to the effect he or she wishes to accomplish. The motive is invariably related to some situational contingency, for example, the contingency for this discourse is learning how to do discourse analysis. The channel (this web site) makes reading it different from reading a textbook. In composing it, I've used a variety of codes beginning with the English language. If you didn't know English, you couldn't decode it. In any event, you bring a lot of frameworks into reading this. Finally, I hope that you will learn how to do discourse analysis but the effect this entry may have on you is merely to memorize enough to pass the test.
The last sentence in the previous section reflects the circumstance that the meanings encoded in a text are not identical to those decoded from the text. This is clearest in a conversation.
Jill: Learning these abstract technical terms will help you do discourse analyses.
Jack: I plan to be a radio broadcaster, so I won't be doing many discourse analyses on the job. But knowing these terms will at least help me pass the test.
Jill: Are you saying that you are not going to analyze the broadcasts of famous sportscasters like Bob Costas?
Jack: Of course, but that's not discourse analysis.
Jill: Does he participate in a conversation when he broadcasts a game?
The conversation is shaped by the responses to what has just been said. Since conversations take place in specific situations they shape the discourse, but so does the perspective of the persons involved.
Situations are embedded in discourses
Every component of a communication situation leaves its mark on the discourse. Obviously the author's intention informs it. But the reader is marked in the discourse as well. This discourse, for example, does not imply a CPA (Chicago Pizza Authority) as its audience. It implies someone young enough to be dating. The context—learning how to do discourse analysis—is also marked in the discourse, very specifically in this sentence but also in sentences such as:
"For the purposes of examining discourse from the perspective of communication studies we will look at three discourse structures: conversations, non-narrative discourse, and narrative discourse."
This sentence also explicitly refers to the purpose of the entry which is a comment on the effect it is intended to have. The discourse employs a "code system" and there are many "instructions" about decoding it, such as "such as" above.
linguistic discourse structures
From a linguistic point of view, the discourse is structured by its seven sections. Each takes up an aspect of the concept of a discourse: its types, situatedness, and structures. These are marked by seven subheadings, each of which contains the term, "discourse." Each section "amplifies" the topic given in the subheading. The type of discourse represented by this entry is non-narrative description. Since it is a description of a concept, it could be thought of as an "extended definition."
cognitive discourse structures
None of the sentences in this entry could have been written without certain cognitive abilities. Discourses are the outcome of cognitive processes. Foremost among them is creating meaning (or signifying). To compose, an author has to be able to frame concepts in relation to each other. The relations vary: in some instances conceptions are compared. In others, they are categorized. The linguistic structure of the discourse is focused from an array of perspectives. Further the concepts presented are selected with a purpose in mind. All of the verbs in italics are cognitive abilities. Each of these abilities produces a linguistic structure that is marked in the discourse and therefore is available for analysis.
jjs
Notes:
.In the ordinary use of the word "message," one would not refer to an article in a journal as a "message." A much more characteristic use of the word occurs in the phrase "phone message" which is usually brief.
In Joseph DeVito's Messages: Building Interpersonal Communication Skills, a message is defined as "Any signal or combination of signals that serves as a stimulus for a receiver" (355). This common definition of what is sent and received is strongly associated with an information processing model of communication. This use of the term "message" reduces discourses, texts, and their innumerable genres to a combination of signals. However accurate this may be technically, it is more or less like defining love in terms of bio-chemistry or physiological arousal. ... 
. Discourse analysts have distinguished numerable types of discourse. In many cases, the distinctions are based on situations: psychoanalytic discourse, sports casting discourse, sermonizing discourse. In other cases they are based on structural features: non narrative discourse vs. narrative discourse. ...
In his Introduction to Discourse Analysis, James Paul Gee argues that "discourses can split into two or more discourses," "two or more discourses can meld together," discourses can be hybrids of other discourses." He also remarks that "there are limitless discourses and no way to count them." (21-22)!. ...
.The italicized "you" is a reference to the students in my "discourse analysis" course who were assigned this entry as a reading. ...
← previous | next →
last revised:
June 13, 2007
Send comments to jjs.
copyright © jjs, 2007