CHAPTER 1

AN OVERVIEW OF DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

1.1. What is discourse analysis?

To start out we can say that discourse analysis is the study of language. Many
people would define discourse analysis as a sub-- field of linguistics, which is the
scientific study of language. Different kinds of linguists study different aspects of
language. Phonologists study the sounds of languages and how people use them.
Lexicographers study words, their meanings and their histories. Grammarians study
how words are put together to form sentences and spoken utterances. And Discourse
analysts study the ways sentences and utterances go together to make texts and
interactions and how those texts and interactions fit into our social world.

Studying discourse analysis, however, can teach you more than that. Since the way
we use discourse is tied up with our social identities and our social relationships,
discourse analysis can help us to understand how the societies in which we live are put
together and how they are maintained through our day today activities of speaking,
writing and making use of other modes of communication. It can help us to understand
why people interact with one another the way they do and how they exert power and
influence over one another. It can help us to understand how people view reality
differently and why they view it that way. The study of discourse analysis, then, is not
just the study of how we use language. It is also indirectly the study of romance,
friendship, psychology, politics, power, and a whole lot of other things.

Discourse analysis is concerned with the study of the relationship between

language and the contexts in which it is used. And discourse analysts study language
in use: written texts of all kinds, and spoken data, from conversation to highly formal
forms of speech.
1
a. ' A N
b. Telephone Victory Danger
c. - Hi
- Hi. How are you?
- I‟m fine, thanks. And you?
- Not bad.
d. Tomorrow there will be no class. Students may stay home and self-study.
…
All of them are different kinds of discourse which may be a signal, a word, a
conversation, a text, etc. or even a long novel.

And Discourse Analysis (DA) is a general term for a number of approaches to

analyze written, vocal, or sign language use, or any significant semiotic event.

1.2. Discourse and text

People produce texts to get a message across; to express ideas and beliefs, to
explain something, to get other people to do certain things or to think in a certain way,
and so on. We can refer to this complex of communicative purposes as the discourse
that underlies the text and motivates its production in the first place. But at the
receiving end readers or listeners then have to make meaning out of the text to make it
a communicative reality. In other words, they have to interpret the text as a discourse
that makes sense to them. Texts, in this view, do not contain meaning, but are used to
mediate it across discourses.
So the term discourse is taken here to refer both to what a text producer meant by
a text and what a text means to the receiver. Of course by producing a particular text
may well relate to broader issues of what social and ideological values they subscribe
to, and another way of thinking of discourse is indeed to focus on such broader issues
2
and look at how texts can be used to express, and impose, certain ways of thinking
about the world.
Garrido (2003) describes that sentences are linked in sequences which may be
called discourses. In turn, discourses are organized into larger structures; up to texts.
In other words, words are linked to each other into phrases, phrases into clauses,
clauses into sentences, sentences into discourses, and discourses into texts.
However, “Discourse is sometimes used in contrast with text, where text refers to
actual written or spoken data, and discourse refers to the whole act of communication
involving production and comprehension, not necessarily entirely verbal. . . . The
study of discourse, then, can involve matters like context, background information or
knowledge shared between a speaker and hearer." (Bloor, M. and Bloor, T. , 2013)

1.2.1 What is a text?

A text is an object that can be read, whether it is a work of literature, a lesson
written on the blackboard, or a street sign. It is a coherent set of signs that transmits
some kind of informative message. In literary studies, a text usually refers to the
written material. We use the term text when we are discussing novels, short stories,
and dramas. Even the content of a letter, bill, poster or similar entities that contain
written material can be called a text. Besides, H.·G. Widdowson (2007) states that a
text can be defined as an actual use of language, as distinct from a sentence which is
an abstract unit of linguistic analysis. We identify a piece of language as a text as soon
as we recognize that it has been produced for a communicative purpose. But we can
identify a text as a purposeful use of language without necessarily being able to
interpret just what is meant by it. For example, in the public notice 'KEEP OFF THE
GRASS', we may know well enough what the word grass denotes (and should we be
in any doubt we can consult a dictionary to find out). But what the word denotes is not
the same as knowing what it is meant to refer to when it occurs here in the phrase the
grass. The definite article the signal that what is being referred to is a matter of shared
3
knowledge. The grass. But which grass? Obviously, one might say, the grass in the
vicinity of the notice. So what we do is to establish reference by relating the text to the
context in which it is located. But then the question arises as to how far this vicinity is
meant to extend. Does the grass refer just to the particular patch where the notice is
placed, or to other patches nearby as well, or to the whole park? The range of
reference is not specified in the language itself. We make assumptions about what it is
on the basis of what we know about public notices of this kind and how they are
conventionally meant to be understood. In other words we relate the text not only to
the actual situational context in which we find it, but to the abstract cultural context of
what we know to be conventional. And by relating text to context we infer not only
what the notice refers to, but also what its purpose is. We recognize that it is intended
as a prohibition, although whether we choose to pay any attention to it is another
matter-and one we shall be taking up later.

1.2.2 What is discourse?

The noun discourse comes from the Latin discursus which means "an
argument". The argument in discourse refers to an exchange of ideas - sometimes
heated - that often follows a kind of order between the participants. It's the kind of
argument and discussion (Vocabulary.com dictionary). In other words, discourse was
interpreted as dialogue – an interaction between a speaker and a listener. Thus,
discourse referred to authentic daily communications, mainly oral, included in the
wide communicative context. Crystal (1992:25) states that discourse is a continuous
stretch of (especially spoken) language larger than a sentence, often continuing a
coherent unit, such as a sermon, an argument, a joke or a narrative. Webster dictionary
defines discourse as a conversation or a talk. Garrido, J. (2003) adds that a discourse
is not defined in terms of contextual information, but it is the result of connecting its
component sentences. In order for this connection to take place, additional information
must be included. In real life situations, every sentence makes salient the piece of
4
available information that is required in order to link the sentence interpretation (that
is, to link the sentence itself) to the discourse and the text it belongs to. In the
following example, the first speaker A says its first sentence, A1, whereas the second
speaker, B, says two sentences, B1 and B2 (notice that a sentence may or may not
include a clause structure):
A1: ¿you want a drink?
B1: no
B2: it‟s late
The only way to make sense out of the three sentences is to link them in two steps: B1
and B2 are the answer to A1. There are two discourses, to be interpreted as an
invitation and as a refusal to the invitation, respectively: D1 (consisting of A1) and D2
(consisting of B1 and B2).

1.2.3 Discourse versus text

Nunan (1993) asserts that the two terms „text‟ and „discourse‟ are
interchangeable. He defines text as any written record of a communicative event,
while discourse as the interpretation of the communicative event in context. In short,
“Discourse = text + situation”, while “Text = discourse minus situation”.

However, Hawthorn (1992) distinguishes text and discourse that text may be
non-interactive where as a discourse is interactive. In other words, text is non-
interactive that‟s it only fulfills the function of conveying some meaning. But
discourse is always involved in two ways responses in some formal or informal
conversation and dialogues, etc. Hawthorn (1992) further says “discourse is a
linguistic communication seen as a transaction between speaker and hearer. While text
is also a linguistic communication seen simply as a message coded in its auditory or
visual medium”.

5
 To conclude, we can say discourse and text have something in common as both
use the medium of language whether in sign language. Both have some meaning that
they try to convey.

But text has a limited scope as compare with discourse. In other words, we can
say discourse is somewhat broad category in the system of language. And text deals
with the written form of language. Obviously, discourse has different forms as
discourse of advertising, discourse of racism, discourse of medical, etc. But text has no
such forms. In addition, discourse can be found with in text. And not vice versa. In
brief, text has its maximum interpretation in its own self but discourse has a lot of
things above the language level.

Based on the definitions of discourse and text, discourse analysis (DA) and text
analysis are mentioned as follows:
- DA focuses on the structure of naturally spoken language as found in
conversation interviews, commentaries and speeches.

- Text analysis focuses on the structure of written language, as found in such text
as essays, notices, road signs and chapters.
(Crystal, 1987)

SUMMARY
Text Discourse
written spoken
Text analysis Discourse analysis
investigates written form analyzes spoken form.

6
 1.3 Discourse and context
Texts are a material manifestation of discourse, but discourses exist beyond the
individual texts that compose them. (Hardy,2002). However, a discourse cannot be
identified based on a single text alone; rather discourses emerge from the interaction
between different social groups, their „texts‟, as well as from the context, in which the
interaction is embedded. Therefore, the understanding of context is crucial in
discourse analysis, which often has been criticized just for its inadequate attention to
context (Fairclough, 1995).

While discourses cannot be understood without their context, it should also be

clear that context does not determine a certain discourse (Potter, 2001). Furthermore,
discourse is situated sequentially (Potter, 2003), in the sense that the primary context
within which social interaction occurs comes first and largely shapes accounts and
constructions of participants involved in discourse.

The study of context has been gaining popularity in recent years, either in
linguistics itself or in many other interdisciplinary subjects such as semantics,
pragmatics, and discourse analysis as well. However, context theories are not formed
overnight. They involve a long process of development, during which comparative
linguistics, structural linguistics and transformational-generative linguistics all
contributed to the theoretical foundations of context theories. When we introduce
context theories to the field of discourse analysis, we must take into consideration not
only the discourse itself, but also the context in which the discourse takes place.

1.3.1 Definitions of context

Different linguists seek to define context from different point of view in order to
answer questions encountered in their own fields, and to support their own ideas and
theories.

7
 H. G. Widdowson, when focusing his study on language meaning, thought
“context” as “those aspects of the circumstance of actual language use which are taken
as relevant to meaning.” He further pointed out, “in other words, context is a
schematic construct... the achievement of pragmatic meaning is a matter of matching
up the linguistic elements of the code with the schematic elements of the context.”
(H.G. Widdowson, 2007)

When Guy Cook (1989) was studying the relationship between discourse and
literature, he took “context” into consideration as well. In his definition, context is just
a form of knowledge the world and the term “context” can be used in a broad and
narrow sense. In the narrow sense, it refers to (knowledge of) factors outside the text
under consideration. In the broad sense, it refers to (knowledge of) these factors and to
(knowledge of) other parts of the text under consideration, sometimes referred to as
“co-text”.

When studying reference and inference, George Yule also took “context” into
account. He provided us with a somewhat general definition, “Context is the physical
environment in which a word is used.” (George Yule, 2000)

Although they are viewed from different perspectives for different purposes,
these definitions have an important point in common: context is the environment in
which a discourse occurs.

1.3.2 Classifications of context

A. Linguistic context
Linguistic context refers to the context within the discourse, that is,
the relationship between the words, phrases, sentences and even paragraphs. Take the
word “bachelor” as an example. We can‟t understand the exact meaning of the

8
sentence “He is a bachelor.” without the linguistic context to make clear the exact
meaning of this word.
Linguistic context can be explored from three aspects: deictic, co-text, and
collocation.
In a language event, the participants must know where they are in space
and time, and these features relate directly to the deictic context, by which we refer to
the deictic expressions like the time expressions now, then, etc., the spatial
expressions here, there, etc., and the person expressions I, you, etc... Deictic
expressions help to establish deictic roles which derive from the fact that in normal
language behavior the speaker addresses his utterance to another person and may refer
to himself, to a certain place, or to a time. Deictic relates to a word, the determination
of whose referent is dependent on the context in which it is said or written
(Wikipedia). In the sentence I want him to come here now, the words I, here,
him, and now are deictic because the determination of their referents depends on
who says that sentence, and where, when, and of whom it is said.
In recent years, some linguists began to pay attention to the previous
discourse co-ordinate. Lewis (1993) introduces this co-ordinate to take account of the
aforementioned sentences. It is the case that any sentence other than the first in a
fragment of discourse, will have the whole of its interpretation forcibly constrained by
the preceding text, not just those phrases which obviously and specifically refer to the
preceding text. The interpretations of the words which occur in discourse are
constrained by their co-text. Take the word “key”, for example, to know whether it is
a key to a door
a key on a keyboard
or
a key to solve the problem
In actual truth, what we were referring to is not context of a word but rather its co-text.
Put another way, the surrounding situation in which a word is used its context whereas
9
the surrounding words is its co-text. To make it clear, co-text is the linguistic
environment of a word whereas context is the non-verbal environment in which a
word is used (Halliday, 1994).

Firth (1957) argued for the recognition of the importance of syntagmatic

relations, between, e.g., bite and teeth, bark and dog, blond and hair, called
collocation. Collocation is not simply a matter of association of ideas. Although milk
is white, we should not often say white milk, while the expression white paint is
common enough. In other words, collocation is the way in which some words are
often used together, or a particular combination of words used in this way (Longman
dictionary)

B. Situational Context
Situational context, or context of situation, refers to the environment, time
and place, etc. in which the discourse occurs, and also the relationship between the
participants. This theory is traditionally approached through the concept of register,
which helps to clarify the interrelationship of language with context by handling it
under three basic headings: field, tenor, and mode.
Field of discourse is defined as “the total event, in which the text is
functioning, together with the purposive activity of the speaker or writer; it thus
includes the subject-matter as one element in it” (Halliday,1994). The field describes
activities and processes that are happening at the time of speech: what is happening,
to whom, where and when, why it is happening, and so on…
The mode of discourse describes the way the language is being used
in the speech interaction, including the medium (spoken, written, written to be spoken,
etc.) as well as the rhetorical mode (expository, instructive, persuasive, etc.). This
variable determines the role and function of language in a particular situation. When
analyzing the mode of a text, the main question is „What is achieved by the use of
10
language in this context?‟ For example, a fairy tale (in written form) may have a
narrative or entertaining function. A spoken conversation can be argumentative (in a
discussion).

Tenor of discourse describes the people that take part in an event as

well as their relationships and statuses. “The tenor refers to the type of role interaction,
the set of relevant social relations, permanent and temporary, among the participants
involved” (Halliday, 1994). There might be a specific hierarchy between the
interlocutors, e.g. when the head of a business talks to an employee, or they may have
only a temporary relationship, e.g. when a person asks an unknown pedestrian for the
time.

All three variables (field, mode, tenor) taken together enable people to
characterize the situational context specifically, and, thus, to recreate part of the
language that is being used (Halliday, 1994). Halliday provides the following example
to explain the significance of collective information about the three parameters: “For
instance, if we specify a field such as „personal interaction, at the end of the day, with
the aim of inducing contentment through recounting of familiar events‟, with mode
„spoken monologue, imaginative narrative, extempore‟ and tenor „intimate, mother
and three-year-old child‟, we can reconstruct a great deal of this kind of bedtime story
[…].” (Halliday, 1994)

These three elements make possible for the speaker/writer to orient himself
in the context of situation. The translator must try and maintain the situational and
cultural context by finding the corresponding three components in the target language.
Field: the translator will have to take decisions about what terminology to use, to
what extent the writer‟s context is familiar to the target language reader, the type of
grammatical structures to adopt (active/passive);
Tenor: this variable will allow the translator to frame the right choice of register
(formal/informal, modern/archaic, technical/non-technical);

11
 Mode: it‟s the way the text should be organized (where the information focus lies,
what is given and what new information is provided, etc.)

C. Cultural Context
Cultural context refers to the culture, customs and background of epoch in
language communities in which the speakers participate. Language is a social
phenomenon, and it is closely tied up with the social structure and value system of
society. Therefore, language cannot avoid being influenced by all these factors like
social role, social status, sex and age, etc.
Social roles are culture-specific functions, institutionalized in a society and
recognized by its members. By social status, we mean the relative social standing of
the participants. Each participant in the language event must know, or make
assumptions about his or her status in relation to the other, and in many situations,
status will also be an important factor in the determination of who should initiate the
conversation. Sex and age are often determinants of, or interact with, social status. The
terms of address employed by a person of one sex speaking to an older person, may
differ from those which would be employed in otherwise similar situations by people
of the same sex or of the same age.

1.3.3 The role of context

As we can see, context plays a very important role in discourse analysis. Let‟s
try to generalize its role as follows.
A. Eliminating ambiguity
Ambiguity refers to a word, phrase, sentence or group of sentences with
more than one possible interpretation or meaning. There are two kinds of ambiguities:
lexical ambiguity and structural ambiguity. Lexical ambiguity is mostly caused by
homonymy and polysemy. For example, these four words, right, rite, write and wright,
are all pronounced as [rait], but they are quite different from each other. Let‟s also

12
have a look at the following sentence: They passed the port at midnight. This sentence
is lexically ambiguous. However, it would normally be clear in a given context which
can indicate the meaning of the word “port”, meaning either harbor or a kind of
fortified wine.
Structural ambiguity arises from the grammatical analysis of a sentence or a
phrase. For example, the phrase young men and women can be analyzed as either
“young /men and women/” (i.e. both are young) or “/young men/ and women” (i.e.
only the men are young). Let us also examine the following sentence: I like Bill more
than Mary. This sentence can mean “I like Bill more than Mary does.” or “I like Bill
more than I like Mary.” In such examples, a given context can indicate what the
sentence exactly means.

B. Indicating Referents
To avoid repetition, we usually use such words like I, you, he, this, that, etc.
to replace some noun phrases, or words like do, can, should, etc. to replace verb
phrases, or then, there, etc. to replace adverbial phrase of time and place. Therefore,
context is of great importance in understanding the referents of such words. The
following dialogue is written by the well-known linguist, Firth (1957):
-- Do you think he will?
-- I don’t know. He might.
-- I suppose he ought to, but perhaps he feels he can’t.
-- Well, his brothers have. They perhaps think he needn’t.
-- Perhaps eventually he will. I think he should, and I very much hope he will.
Without context, we can hardly guess what the speakers are talking about since
there are too many auxiliary verbs and modal verbs such as will, might, have, can‟t,
etc. used in the dialogue. In fact, these auxiliary and modal verbs replace the verb
phrase, “join the army”.
From this typical example, we can see the important role of context.
13
 C. Detecting conversational implicature
The term conversational implicature is used by Grice (1989) to account for
what a speaker can imply, suggest, or mean, as distinct from what the speaker literally
says and it is deduced on the basis of the conversational meaning of words together
with the context, under the guidance of the Cooperative Principle and its four maxims,
i.e., Quantity, Quality, Relation and Manner. Grice also found that when people
communicate with each other, they do not always adhere to the four maxims. The
violation of a maxim may result in the speaker conveying, in addition to the literal
meaning of his utterance, an additional meaning, which is conversational implicature.
Let us look at the following example:
(The husband has just finished supper and wanted to watch TV, leaving his wife alone
to clear the table and wash dishes.)
Wife: Shouldn’t you help me do some housework?
Husband: I have worked for nine hours.
Superficially, the husband‟s answer has nothing to do with the wife‟s question. He
violates the maxim of relevance. Actually, we must assume that the husband is
adhering to the Cooperative Principle and means something more than the literal
meaning. The additional meaning, namely, conversational implicature, is that he has
worked for a whole day, so he is too tired to help his wife to do any housework.

Once the analysis of intended meaning goes beyond the literal meaning of an
utterance, a vast number of issues have to be considered. In discourse analysis,
conversational implicature is pragmatic and is partially derived from the
conversational or literal meaning of an utterance, produced in a specific context,
which is shared by the speaker and the hearer, and depends on their recognition of the
Cooperative Principle and its maxims. Now let us see another example.
(The boss of a restaurant gives two pennies to a temporary worker who does washing
for him.)
14
 Boss: Here is your pay, boy!
Worker: I have worked for nine hours.
In this conversational fragment, we can find that the second utterance is the same
as the previous example, namely, they have the same literal meaning. Besides, they
both seem to be irrelevant to the utterance of the first speaker and we can also assume
that the maxim of relevance is deliberately violated. Then can we conclude that the
two utterances have the same conversational implicature? No. It is unreasonable for
the worker to tell his boss that he is too tired to work for him, when his boss gives him
the pay that does not match his nine-hour hard work. The real conversational
implicature of his utterance is that the boss should have given him more pay since he
had worked such a long time. We must pay attention to the changed context: the
relationship of two speakers has changed from wife-husband to boss-worker; the status
has changed from equal to superior-inferior; and the pre-linguistic context has changed
from words for a request of doing housework to that for an action of giving pay. The
conversational implicature is changed as the context changes. The perception of a
conversational implicature can not let aside the specific context where the discourse
occurs.

CONCLUSION
We have talked about the definition, classification, and role of context in
discourse analysis from different aspects. However, it is certain that the list can go on
as further study deepens.
In a word, context plays a very important role in discourse analysis. A discourse
and its context are in close relationship: the discourse elaborates its context and the
context helps interpret the meaning of utterances in the discourse. The knowledge of
context is a premise of the analysis of a discourse. When we study and analyze a
discourse, we should bear in mind that no context, no discourse and we should not
neglect the related context of a discourse.
15
1.4 Discourse and language
Whatever the structures we use, and whatever the uses we employ, the end of
language is to engage in discourse, in which all aspects of structure combine to
produce monologues or dialogues in real situations.
1.4.1 The functions of language
Discourse analysis is the analysis of language in use (Brown and Yule 1983). It
also examines how stretches of language become meaningful and unified for their
users (Guy Cook 1989). Discourse analysts also consider the relationship between
language and the contexts in which it is used and are concerned with the description
and analysis of both spoken and written interactions (McCarthy 1991). Its primary
purpose is to provide a deeper understanding and appreciation of texts.

Brown and Yule (1983) suggest that language has two main functions:
interactional and transactional. The interactional function is concerned with the
maintenance of social relationships - for example, if two people pass in the street
and say …
A: Hi, all right?
B: Yeah, fine thanks.
... the function of the exchange is purely interactional - it serves only as an
acknowledgement of the relationship, and the answer is conventional - it may not
even actually be true.
Transactional discourse, on the other hand, is concerned with the transmission
of information. If at the greengrocers I say … A: Two pounds of cherry tomatoes.
... it is important that I transmit, and the greengrocer understands, the information
accurately : so that for instance I don't end up with three kilos of plum tomatoes. If
the greengrocer has any doubts he might ask for further information
A: Two pounds of cherry tomatoes.
B: These ones, or the ones next to the potatoes?

16
 A: The ones next to the potatoes
B: That's £5
Most language is, of course, not wholly transactional or interactional but a mix
of both, and for this reason Brown and Yule (1983) suggest that exchanges are
generally better described as primarily transactional or interactional. Social chat
will contain some information. For example, I'm telling you about my last holiday -
but it remains primarily interactional in terms of its function. It doesn't really
matter if you don't retain the details. And transactional exchanges will often be
interspersed with elements which are there to serve an interactional function.
Compare the exchange above with:
A : Good morning. Can I have two pounds of cherry tomatoes.
B : Would you like these ones, or the ones next to the potatoes?
A: The ones next to the potatoes please.
B: Here you are. That's £5 please.
A: Thank you.
None of the underlined elements are essential for the transmission of
information, even though the exchange remains primarily transactional. They serve
an interactional function.
In daily life, people tend to use the interactional to make their relationship more
friendly. The people rarely to use the transactional view because the relationship is
more important rather than the message itself.

1.4.2 Spoken and written language

A. The difference between spoken and written language

Halliday (1985) suggests that written language is used for action (public signs,
product labels, television and radio guides) for information (newspapers, magazines)
17
for entertainment (comic strips, fiction books). However, the differences between
spoken and written modes are not absolute. This means that some spoken texts will be
more like written texts than others, while some written texts will be more like spoken
texts than others.
Ex: (1a) Go in and make yourself at home.
(1b) Someone went in and made himself at home.
(1a) is more like spoken language than (1b), even though (1a) can be used in
written language and (1b) can be spoken.

Obviously, there are many differences that can be noted between written and
spoken language. Sometimes speaking in a way that things would normally be written,
or writing in a way that people speak can lead to language sounding strange, unnatural
or inappropriate.

When speaking people tend to include contractions such as I‟ll or don‟t that tend
not to be appropriate in formal written language. There are also many slang words that
are popped into spoken language, that depending on the context are not strictly correct
in written language. There are other language conventions that are constantly broken
in spoken language, which are more strictly adhered to in written language. Examples
of this include beginning sentences with “but” or “because” and ending sentences with
prepositions.

Some grammar tends to be used almost exclusively and not in speech. An example
of this would be past perfect grammar. This is typically used to narrate something and
therefore is rarely used in spoken English. For example: „He had been thinking of
taking a summer house in Tuscany for some years before he met Valeria.‟ It is
possible to use this grammar construction in spoken English, but it is rarely done so.

Since spoken language is much more dynamic and immediate, there is much less
precision in it. You will often hear native English speakers make grammar slips that
18
they would never make in written language. Mistakes such as „How much apples are
left?‟ occur when speakers are forming sentences and changing ideas rapidly.

Since written texts can be revised and thought out more thoroughly than spoken
language, they can present communicative ideas in a precise, well-ordered and
presented in a more sophisticated way engaging higher level vocabulary and ideas
than is often presented in spoken language.

Conversely spoken language can sometimes be more communicative as it allows

for clarification and additional information in a way that a written document does not.
Often it is the case that the tone, intention or meaning of a written piece of language
may be unclear. In spoken language you communicate with more than the words you
use: tone and body language add a significant amount of information to the language
receiver. Clear examples of this relate to usage of email, which is often written in
conversational language, but without the extra language cues that accompany spoken
language the writer‟s intention can be misinterpreted.

SUMMARY
1. Spoken language is generally less formal than written language.
2. Spoken language tends to be less precise than written language.
3. Written language is often more articulate and sophisticated than spoken language.
4. Spoken language can be more communicative than written language due to extra
cues such as body language and tone.

The analysis of written and spoken language is known as discourse

analysis. (McCarthy Michael, 1991)
Discourse analysis concerned with whole texts rather than sentences or
clauses. It is divided into:

19
 o Spoken discourse analysis: the study of conversations, dialogues, spoken
monologues, etc.
o Written discourse analysis: the study of written texts, such as essays, news,
political speeches, etc.

Paltridge (2012) examined the differences between speech and writing by the
use of some examples and relying on Biber (1988) classified them into eight important
aspects, namely grammatical intricacy, lexical density, nominalization, explicitness,
contextualization, spontaneity, repetition- hesitation and redundancy, and continuum
view, among which grammatical intricacy and lexical density are at the top.

B. Grammar in spoken and written language

In spite of some similarities, there are also remarkable differences
between spoken and written grammar. Actually, in grammar books, the
concentration is on written grammar, and students are usually taught this rather
than spoken grammar. It should be recognized that normally, when people
speak, they often do not pay much attention to the words, sentences, structures
or conjunctions. As a result, grammar in spoken language is usually not strict; it
is more flexible than in writing.
Linguistically, written language tends to consist of clauses that are
internally complex, whereas with spoken language the complexity exists in the ways
in which clauses are joined together.

(1a) Like Vincent d’Indy, a disciple of Ceasar Frank, Chausson shares with
them a dreamy, even idle poetry, sumptuous but precise orchestration, and an enemy
that is intimate rather than powerful, ascetic rather than importunate.

20
 (1b) This morning Associate Professor Dean Wolfe will talk about the science of
music at half-past eleven, and we’ll hear some fascinating things such as musicians
playing music backwards – but most of it will be played forwards!

The written text, (1a), seems to have more information packed into it.
This text contains only one main clause, in contrast with the spoken text,(1b), in which
there are several clauses chained together in an additive fashion.

If the speaker above had had the opportunity to present the same
content in written form, he may have produced as follows:

(1c) This morning at half-past eleven, Associate Professor Dean Wolfe will
present a program titled “The science of music”, in which the listeners will experience
a number of fascinating things, including music played backwards – although most
will be played forwards!

Regarding to discourse analysis, Brian Paltridge (2012) emphasizes

that written discourse is more structurally complex and more elaborate than spoken
discourse. In other words, sentences in spoken discourse are short and simple, whereas
they are longer and more complex in written discourse. In addition, spoken discourse
is more fragmented. It contains more simple sentences and coordination words (and,
but, so, because, etc.)

Halliday (1985) argues that spoken discourse is NOT less organized.

He claims that spoken discourse has its own kind of complexity. In spoken discourse,
clauses are long and spread out. So, spoken discourse can be grammatically intricate
as well.

21
 C. Lexical density in spoken and written language

Lexical density is “the kind of complexity that is typical of written

language” (Halliday, 1985, p.62).
Lexical density is a measure of how much information there is in a
particular piece of language. Lexical words (content words) are words which carry
information. Texts which have a high proportion of lexical items compared to function
words (grammatical items) are said to have a high lexical density. Written texts are
likely to have a higher lexical density than spoken texts which tend to have more
grammatical items than content. In other words, lexical density concerns a
proportional relation regarding the ratio of content words over grammatical words
within a given clause. More precisely, lexical words are simply nouns, adjectives,
verbs, and adverbs (Biber, 1988). Nouns tell us the subject, adjectives tell us more
about the subject, verbs tell us what they do, and adverbs tell us how they do it. Other
kinds of words such as articles (a, the), prepositions (on, at, in), conjunctions (and, or,
but), and so forth are more grammatical in nature and, by themselves, give little or no
information about what a text is about. These non-lexical words are also
called function words. Auxiliary verbs, such as "to be" (am, are, is, was, were,
being), "do" (did, does, doing), "have" (had, has, having) and so forth, are also
considered non-lexical as they do not provide additional meaning.

With the above in mind, lexical density is simply the percentage of words
in written (or spoken) language which gives us information about what is being
communicated. With regard to writing, lexical density is simply a measure of how
informative a text is. In spoken form, content words have a tendency to be extended
over different clauses. But, they are packed tightly into individual clauses in written
language, that is to say here content words have a higher frequency than grammatical
words (Paltridge, 2012). This means that written language is lexically denser than
spoken form (Halliday, 1985).
22
 Ure (1971) introduces one method to calculate lexical density with the
following formula:

Lexical density (%) = (Number of lexical words/ Total number of words) x 100

In the following example, among the total number of 10 words, there

are seven lexical words; and it therefore has a lexical density of 70%:
Ex: The quick brown fox jumped swiftly over the lazy dog.

Halliday (1985) suggests one more method for measuring lexical density
as follows:

Lexical density = Number of lexical items / Number of clauses

In the following example, there are four lexical items (heat, liquid, change, gas)
distributed between two clauses, which gives the example a lexical density of 2.

Ex: When you heat a liquid, it can change into gas.

GRAMMATICAL METAPHOR
The density of written language is also reinforced by the tendency to create
nouns from verbs.
Spoken Written
Good writers reflect Reflection is a
on what they write. characteristic of good writers.
Halliday (1985) calls this process of turning verbs into nouns grammatical
metaphor.
(Verbs are transformed into “things” and represented as nouns. It is this
transformation which led Halliday to use the term “metaphor’).
23
EXERCISE 1: IDENTIFY THE PERCENTAGE OF LEXICAL DENSITY

Lexical Words Lexical Density

1. He loves going to the cinema. …… %

2. John loves going to the cinema. …… %
3. John Smith loves going to the cinema. …… %
4. John Smith loves going to the cinema everyday. …… %
5. John Smith intensely loves going to the cinema everyday. …… %
6. John Smith intensely loves going to the huge cinema everyday. …… %
7. At this moment with a growing economy, shrinking deficits, …… %
bustling industry, booming energy production we have risen
from recession freer to write our own future than any other nation
on Earth. It's now up to us to choose who we want to be over the
next 15 years and for decades to come.

24
EXERCISE 2:

IDENTIFY THE LEXICAL DENSITY IN THE FOLLOWING TEXTS:

TEXTS LEXICAL
DENSITY
Text 1:
The closest thing I have in common with Don is that I‟m …….
looking for something. If you look at the literature of the early
sixties, it‟s existentialist. People sitting around smoking, thinking
“what am I doing with my life?”
Text 2:
My own personal satisfaction while watching the show was ……..
helped enormously by being asked to write a series of episode by
episode blogs for guardian.co.uk in which I would share a brief
recap and a few talking points with readers. It quickly became a
part of the routine of watching the series for many viewers eager
to share their thoughts.

25
EXERCISE 3:
IDENTIFY THE LEXICAL DENSITY IN THE FOLLOWING SENTENCES.
1. He learns English well so that he can teach well in the future.
2. We call him Jesus.
3. Jack often helps the poor with some seasonal jobs.
4. Because they committed stealing a new car, they were put in prison then.
5. They can food in a factory which exports to many countries.
6. He can study English.
7. They were engineers.
8. They can food in the factory.
9. His will affect their future.
10. He should emphasize the importance of his study.
11. The word should be emphasized in this sentence.
12. Well, I am well today.
13. The boy learns better than his friends do.
14. He does love her more than his friend does.
15. The son is more handsome than his younger brother is.
16. They saw the log with a saw.
17. A sheep greets him baa, baa.
18. The students do an exercise in the class.
19. The doctor has just saved the boy.
20. He was late for the class because he missed the bus.

26