MODULE II.

DISCOURSE AND GRAMMAR

Discourse is undeniably one with the study of grammar. Structuring the individual utterance,
clause and sentence, structuring the larger units of discourse and creating textual coherence are
ultimately inseparable.
This module takes as a basic premise that without a command of the rich and variable
resources of the grammar offered by the English language, the construction of natural and
sophisticated discourse is impossible. Although the study of grammar includes a wide ocean of
complexities, this learning material would only include the study of grammatical links and theme and
rheme, all of which are deemed important in learning discourse.
At the end of the module, you must be able to produce written outputs that would sum up
your knowledge of the application of grammar to discourse.
Time Allotment: 6 hours (2 weeks)

A Knowledge Aims

At the end of the module, you are expected to do the following with 80 percent accuracy:
1. Define grammatical terms relevant to discourse
2. Tell how grammatical aspects are used for discourse analysis of a text/speech
3. Analyse discourse based on its grammatical features
4. Compose an essay or an application letter with application of the learned lessons
5. Reflect on the importance of the study of grammar in understanding context of speech/text

B Knowledge Activation

Read the text below. What does the first word in the first sentence (“it”).
“It has often been compared to New Orleans's Mardi Gras as an outdoor
celebration. Certainly New York's Mulberry Street and surrounding blocks have been as
crowded over the last few days as Royal and Bourbon Streets in the French Quarter are
for the Mardi Gras. More than three million people are estimated to have celebrated the
61st annual Feast of the San Gennaro down in Greenwich Village since it began on
Thursday.”

The revelation of what the pronoun “it” pertains to has only been done in the last sentence (“it”
referring to “the Feast of the San Gennaro”). This is unlike the common structure where the noun
referred comes before the pronoun is used (such as “The feast began on Thursday. It has always
been compared to New Orlean’s Mardi Gras.”) This phenomenon particularly focuses on pronoun-
antecedent link.

Understanding what the word refers to, linking one word with the other text parts, is one of the
special grammatical concern to discourse analysts.

The study of context of a particular text can really be better understood with the study of
grammar.
 C Knowledge Acquisition

 GRAMMATICAL LINKS
Spoken and written discourses display grammatical connections between individual clauses
and utterances. For our purposes, these grammatical links can be classified under three broad
types (reference, ellipsis/substitution and conjunction).

1. REFERENCE
Reference items in English include pronouns (e.g: he, she, it, them, they, etc.),
demonstratives (this, that, these, those), the article the and items like such a. The opening lines of
a famous English novel, Jude the Obscure, by Thomas Hardy, show different types of reference at
work:

(1) The schoolmaster was leaving the village, and everybody seemed sorry.
The miller at Cresscombe lent him the small white tilted cart and horse to carry
his goods to the city of his destination, about twenty miles off, such a vehicle
proving of quite sufficient size for the departing teacher's effects.

The italicised items refer. For the text to be coherent, we assume that him in 'lent him the
small white tilted cart' is the schoolmaster introduced earlier; likewise, his destination is the
schoolmaster's. Referents for him and his can be
confirmed by looking back in the text; this is called
anaphoric reference. Such a also links back to the
cart in the previous sentence. The novel opens with
the schoolmaster leaving the village. Which
schoolmaster? Which village? On the previous page
of the novel, the two words At Marygreen stand
alone, so we reasonably assume that Marygreen is
the name of the village, and that the character is (or
has been) schoolmaster of that village. We are using
more than just the text here to establish referents;
the author expects us to share a world with him independent of the text, with typical villages and
their populations (everybody), their schoolmasters and millers. References to assumed, shared
worlds outside of the text are exophoric references. Because they are not text-internal, they are
not truly cohesive, but because they are an equally important part of the reader/listener's active role
in creating coherence, they will be included in our general discussion of factors which contribute to
'textuality', that is, the feeling that something is a text, and not just a random collection of sentences.
Now consider this example of reference with the pronoun they:

(2)They pressed round him in ragged fashion to take their money. Andy, Dave,
Phil, Stephen, Bob.
(Graham Swift, The Sweet Shop Owner, Penguin Books Limited, 1983)

In this particular text, neither anaphoric nor exophoric reference supplies the identity of they;
we have to read on, and are given their identities in the second sentence. Where referents are
withheld in this way, we can talk of cataphoric reference. This is a classic device for engaging the
reader's attention; referents can be withheld for quite long stretches of text.

2. ELLIPSIS
Ellipsis is another form of grammatical links. It is the omission of elements normally required
by the grammar which the speaker/writer assumes are obvious from the context and therefore need
not be raised. This is not to say that every utterance which is not fully explicit is elliptical; most
messages require some input from the context to make sense of them. Ellipsis is distinguished by
the structure having some 'missing' element. If two people have to stack and label a pile of items
and one says to the other 'you label and I'll stack’, the fact that label and stack are usually transitive
verbs requiring an object in the surface structure is suspended because the context 'supplies' the
object. Another way of saying this is, of course, that structures are only fully realised when they need
to be, and that ellipsis is a speaker choice made on a pragmatic (realistic or actual) assessment of
the situation; not a compulsory feature when two clauses are joined together.

We shall concentrate here on the type of ellipsis where the 'missing' element is retrievable
verbatim from the surrounding text, rather in the way that anaphoric and cataphoric references are,
as opposed to exophoric references. For example:

(1) The children will carry the small boxes, the adults the large ones.
where 'will carry' is supplied from the first clause to the second. This type of main-
verb ellipsis is anaphoric; in English we would not expect:
(2) *The children the small boxes, the adults will carry the large ones.

English has broadly three types of ellipsis: nominal, verbal and clausal.
Nominal ellipsis often involves omission of a noun headword:
(3)Nelly liked the green tiles; myself I preferred the blue.
(Instead of completing the second clause with “the blue tile”, “tile” was omitted in this
elliptical structure because it is already understood.)
Ellipsis within the verbal group may cause greater problems. Two very common types of
verbal-group ellipsis are what Thomas (1987) calls echoing and auxiliary contrasting. Echoing
repeats an element from the verbal group:
(4) A: Will anyone be waiting?
B: Jim will, I should think.
(The helping verb “will” is still repeated although the main verb “waiting” was omitted the
line of B.)

Contrasting is when the auxiliary changes:

(5) A: Has she remarried?
B: No, but she will one day, I'm sure.
Thomas also makes the point that in English, varying degrees of ellipsis are possible within
the same verbal group:
(6)

With clausal ellipsis in English, individual clause elements may be omitted; especially
common are subject-pronoun omissions ('doesn't matter', 'hope so', 'sorry, can't help you', etc.).
Whole stretches of clausal components may also be omitted:
(7) He said he would take early retirement as soon as he could and he has.

For this type of sentence, many languages will require at the very least some kind of
substitute for the main verb and an object pronoun such as to produce a form roughly equivalent to
'He said he would take early retirement as soon as he could and he has done it.' Ellipsis not only
creates difficulties in learning what structural omissions are permissible, but also does not seem to
be readily used even by proficient learners in situations where native speakers naturally resort to it.
Other aspects of ellipsis that are difficult to learn occur in the area where ellipsis overlaps
with what is often treated under the grammar of coordination.
(e.g. 'goats' milk and (goats') cheese',
'he fired and (he) missed the target'
3. SUBSTITUTION

Substitution (or the replacement of a word or phrase with a filler word such as "one", "so",
or "do" in order to avoid repetition.) is similar to ellipsis, in that, in English, it operates either at
nominal, verbal or clausal level. The items commonly used for substitution in English are:
One(s) : I offered him a seat. He said he didn't want one.
(Instead of saying the word “seat” again, the substitute “one” is used.)
Do : Did Mary take that letter? She might have done.
So/not : Do you need a lift? If so, wait for me; if not, I'll see you there.
Same : She chose the roast duck; I chose the same.
Many common, everyday substitutions tend to be learnt idiomatically (e.g. responses such
as 'I think/hope so').

4. CONJUNCTION AS DISCOURSE MARKERS

A conjunction does not set off a search backward or

forward for its referent, but it does presuppose a textual
sequence, and signals a relationship between segments of the
discourse.
When we look at a lot of natural spoken data, we find the
basic conjunctions and, but, so and then much in evidence, and
used not just to link individual utterances within turns, but often
at the beginning of turns, linking one speaker's turn with another
speaker's, or linking back to an earlier turn of the current
speaker, or else marking a shift in topic or sub-topic (often with
but). In this sense, the conjunctions are better thought of as
discourse markers, in that they organise and 'manage' quite
extended stretches of discourse.
Discourse markers (words like 'however', 'although' and 'nevertheless') are referred to more
commonly as 'linking words' and 'linking phrases', or 'sentence connectors'. They may be described
as the 'glue' that binds together a piece of writing, making the different parts of the text 'stick
together'. They are used less frequently in speech, unless the speech is very formal.
When we communicate, we mark how upcoming words or phrases relate to
previous discourse (i.e., spoken or written language used in a social context). These discourse
markers ease comprehension by providing a preview of what’s coming up next; they are essential
for making a conversation sound natural and fluid, as opposed to robotic and stilted.
Discourse markers connect utterances by succinctly and explicitly relating what has just been
said to what is about to be said through notions such as:

Relationship Examples
addition above all, also, along with, and, as well as, additionally, besides, further,
furthermore, in addition, last but not least, moreover, not only… but also, too,
what’s more
assessment amazingly, astonishingly, hopefully, ideally, importantly, incredibly, inevitably,
ironically, justifiably, oddly, predictably, refreshingly, regrettably, sadly,
strikingly, surprisingly, (un)fortunately, (un)reasonably, (un)remarkably
comparison also, equally, in comparison, in the same way, like, likewise, similarly, too
concession admittedly, after all, all the same, anyhow, anyway, at any rate, besides, in
any case, in any event, nevertheless, still, though, yet
contrast although, but, by comparison, conversely, however, on the contrary, on the
other hand, unlike
disclaimer be advised, FYI, for your information, (just) so you know, (just) so you’re
aware,
example as an example, as an illustration, e.g., for example, for instance
inferential in that case, otherwise, then
purpose because of this, for that reason, so that, to this end
 i.e., in other words, in plain English, namely, specifically, strictly speaking, that
reformulation
is, that is to say
replacement alternately, in lieu of, in place of, instead, on second thought, or, rather
result as a result, consequently, for some reason or other, somehow, then,
therefore, thus, since, so
sequential Ordinal enumeration: first, second, third…
order Cardinal enumeration: one, two, three…
Alphabetical enumeration: a, b, c…
Sequential relations: for starters, to begin with, next, then, finally, last, lastly,
to conclude...
summary all in all, in brief, in closing, in conclusion, in general, in short, in sum, in
summary, to conclude, to sum up, to summarize, on the whole
time after a while, after that, afterward, at the same time, in the meantime, later,
meanwhile, previously, simultaneously, subsequently
topic changers as an aside, by the way, incidentally, in passing, (just) to update you, now, on
a different note, parenthetically, speaking of which, while we’re on the subject
uncertainty arguably, conceivably, indeed, evidently, likely, perhaps, possibly,
presumably, seemingly, supposedly
veracity absolutely, actually, as a matter of fact, assuredly, certainly, decidedly,
definitely, doubtless, genuinely, in actuality, in reality, in truth, incontestably,
incontrovertibly, indisputably, indubitably, literally, obviously, officially, really,
strictly speaking, surely, to be sure, undeniably, undoubtedly, without a doubt

 THEME AND RHEME

English is what is often called an 'SVO' language, in that the
declarative clause requires a verb at its centre, a subject before it and Short Review:
any object after it. This is simply a labelling device which enables Subject (S) – is the topic
comparisons to be made with declarative realizations in different talked about in the
languages, some of which will be 'VSO' or 'SOV' languages. This pattern sentence
is often recast in English, not least in interrogative structures, where the Verb (V) – is an action word
verbal group is split by the subject ('Does she like cats?'), and in cases (transitive or intransitive) or
where the object is brought forward: a word that signifies as
state of being (verb “be”)
(1) The Guardian, Joyce reads. Object (O) – completes a
OSV Object-fronted transitive verb; answers the
There are in English a variety of ways in which the basic clause question “what” or “who”
elements of subject, verb, complement/object, adverbial (SVOA/SVCA) Adverbial (A) – refers to the
can be rearranged by putting different elements at the beginning of the words, phrases or clauses
clause, as illustrated in (1) to (7). These ways of bringing different modifying verbs,
elements to the front are called fronting devices. adjectives, other adverbs,
or a whole sentence
(2) Sometimes Joyce reads The Guardian. Complement (C) – refers to
ASVO Adverbial-fronted the noun or pronoun that
refers to the subject (as in
(3) It's The Guardian Joyce reads. subjective complement) or
It + be + C/O + SV object (as in objective
It - theme or cleft (The Guardian here seems to operate complement) of a sentence
simultaneously
as complement of is and as object of reads)

(4) What Joyce reads is The Guardian.

Wh- + SV + be + C/O Wh-pseudo-cleft
(5) She reads The Guardian, Joyce.
S (pronoun) V O S(noun) Right-displaced subject

(6) Joyce, she reads The Guardian.

S(noun) S(pronoun) V O Left-displaced subject

Structures such as (5) and (6) are far from infrequent in spoken data, but are often, for no
obvious reason, not presented in books claiming to describe grammatical options for the learner.
Other variations of word order are also present in data, though some types may be rarer (e.g.
complement-fronting: 'rich they may be, but I don't think they're happy').
If we look again at our examples from the point of view of how the information in them is
presented, we can see how different options enable us to focus on or highlight certain elements: (1)
seems to be saying something 'about' The Guardian rather than 'about' Joyce; (6) and (7) seem to
be telling us something 'about' Joyce. This 'aboutness' is the sort of notion discourse analysts are
concerned with, for it is a speaker/writer choice made independently of the propositional content of
the message; the speaker/writer decides how to 'stage' the information, where to start, so to speak,
in presenting the message.
In English, what we decide to bring to the front of the clause (by whatever means) is a signal
of what is to be understood as the framework within which what we want to say is to be understood.
The rest of the clause can then be seen as transmitting 'what we want to say within this framework'.
Items brought to front-place in this way we shall call the themes (or topics) of their clauses. The
relationship of the theme to the rest of the sentence is viewed as part of communicative dynamism,
that is the assessment of the extent to which each element contributes to the development of the
communication.

We now turn to the relationship between these in-clause structures and the construction of
text. There are clearly restrictions on where and when these devices may be used when they occur
in real discourse. Both (8) and (9) sound odd:

(7) Q: What time did you leave the building?

A: What I did at five thirty was leave the building.

(8) Dear Joan,

Me, I'm sitting here at my desk writing to you. What's outside my
window is a big lawn surrounded by trees and it's a flower bed that's in
the middle of the lawn. When it was full of daffodils and tulips was in the
spring. Here you'd love it. It's you who must come and stay sometime;
what we've got is plenty of room.
Love, Sally

(7) is peculiar because 'leaving the building' is already 'given' in the question; it is therefore
odd that it should be 'announced' again in the answer. (8) contains a string of grammatically well-
formed sentences but it is highly unlikely that such a jumble of low-frequency clause patterns would
occur in one small piece of text. Moreover, it sounds as if the postcard writer is answering questions
nobody has actually ever asked, such as 'Isn't it a pond that's in the middle of the lawn?' 'No, it's a
flower bed that's...', or else implicit contrasts are being suggested without any apparent motivation:
'here you'd love it', as opposed to 'somewhere where you might hate it'. Let us try getting rid of all
the fronting devices and rewriting our postcard with subjects initial in every clause:

(9) Dear Joan,

I'm sitting here at my desk writing to you. A big lawn surrounded
by trees is outside my window and a flower bed is in the middle of the
 lawn. It was full of daffodils and tulips in the spring. You'd love it here.
You must come and stay sometime; we've got plenty of room.
Love, Sally

We probably now feel that the text is bland, a sort of flat landscape in which each bit of
information is doled out without any overall sense of direction or organisation, and with equal weight
given to all the elements of the message. Language teachers might recognise in this boring version
some of the characteristics of low-level learners' early attempts at letter- or essay-writing, hampered
by impoverished grammatical resources, or the lack of confidence to transfer features from first
language. What is missing from our postcard are strategic decisions to 'stage' the information and
to put it into a discourse framework with the foregrounding of certain elements, such as is found in
natural discourse. A third version, with discriminating use of fronting, seems more natural:

(10) Dear Joan,

I'm sitting here at my desk writing to you. Outside my window is a big
lawn surrounded by trees, and in the middle of the lawn is a flower bed. It
was full of daffodils and dips in the spring. You'd love it here. You must
come and stay sometime; we've got plenty of room.
Love, Sally

In any spatial description of this kind, spatial orientation of the reader/listener is important,
and writers/speakers naturally give prominence to this function. The second sentence in (10) does
this by front-placing location adverbials (“outside my window”). The remaining sentences are neutral,
with subjects in initial position.
In spoken narratives and anecdotes, speakers will often front-place key orientational features
for their listeners. These are most obviously time and place markers ('once upon a time', 'one day',
'then, suddenly', 'at the corner', 'not far from here', etc.), but may also be foregrounding of key
participants and information about them felt to be important for the listener. This is particularly
noticeable in left-displaced structures, which are extremely common when a participant is being
made the focus of attention as a main actor in the subsequent discourse, as in these extracts:

(The extracts are from anecdotes about coincidences and from ghost stories.)
(11) And the fellow who rang up from Spain that night, he's coincidence-prone . . .
(12) That couple that we know in Portsmouth, I don't hear of her for months, and
then, . . .

Concentrating on the themes (or topics) of clause does not tell us much about the rest of the
clause, which may be called the rheme or comment of the clause. In fact, when we look at themes
and rhemes together in connected text, we see further patterns emerging. We can divide our
postcard text into themes and rhemes:

Two different options can be seen to be realised here: (a) the rheme of sentence 3 contains
an element (the flower bed) which becomes the theme of sentence 4; (b) the theme of sentence 5
is the same as the theme of sentence 6. These two textual options may be expressed thus:
 We can see these options at work in real texts:
(13) As you will no doubt have been told; we have our own
photographic club and darkroom. The club is called 'Monomanor' and there
is an annual fee of 5 dollars. The money goes towards replacing any
equipment worn out by use, or purchasing new equipment. Monomanor runs
an annual competition with prizes, judging being done and prizes awarded
at the garden party in the summer term. Besides the competition, we also
have talks and/or film shows during the other terms.
(Advertisement for student camera club; author's data)
Extract (13) reflects option (a) quite strongly, where elements of rhemes become themes of
subsequent sentences (relevant items are in italics). The next extract chooses predominantly option
(b):
(14)

Looking back at the camera club text, we see that sentences 2, 3 and 4 are slightly more
complex than was suggested. The rheme of (2) contains two elements (Monomanor and 5 dollars)
which are taken up as themes in the two separate subsequent sentences (3) and (4), giving us the
pattern:

Patterns of sequencing of theme and rheme are tendencies rather than absolutes.
So far, we have concentrated on thematising in clauses, but it should not be forgotten that
sequencing choices of clauses within sentences, and sentences within paragraphs are of the same,
discourse-related type.
 For instance, it has been observed that first sentences often tell us what the whole paragraph
is about, a macro-level front-placing of an element signalling the framework of the message. Such
sentences are often called topic sentences, and are considered important for skills such as skim-
reading. It is often possible, just by reading the first sentence, to state what a paragraph is about
(the paragraph theme), though it is not possible to state what the text is saying about its theme (the
paragraph rheme).

D Knowledge Application

EXERCISE 1: Answer the following items:

1. Define the following terms and give your own sample sentence for each:
a. Anaphoric reference
b. Cataphoric reference
c. Exophoric reference
d. Substitution
e. Ellipsis
f. Conjunction as discourse markers
g. Theme
h. Rheme
2. Why is grammatical links significant in understanding the context of a written text?
3. How do grammatical links aid conversation?
4. Why is understanding theme and rheme important in the study of discourse?

EXERCISE 2: Pick out all the words with references below. Tell to which it refers to and then
determine what type of reference it has. Use the table below for your answers.

Words with Reference What it Refers to Type of Reference

His career started when he was still seven years old. Such early star may have
brought George Santos to become a famous wildlife journalist. “My father was a wildlife
journalist, and I always went along with him to help.”
As a wildlife journalist, George writes articles about wildlife, especially that of
the Amazon and the jungles of India. He also takes his own pictures to go with the
articles.
“I began by taking pictures, mostly birds. When I was seven, one of my pictures won a
photography contest. I continued taking pictures and sold a few to magazine and book
publishers.
“I realized that my photographs would be much easier to sell if I had a story to
go with them. So I studied journalism in college to improve my writing skills.”

EXERCISE 3. Identify examples of ellipsis and discourse markers in these extracts. Use the table
below for your answers.

1. Most students start each term with an award cheque. But by the time accommodation and food
are paid for, books are bought, trips taken home and a bit of social life lived, it usually looks pretty
emaciated.
2. 'You like watching children . . . ?' her tone seemed to say: 'You're like a child yourself.'
'Yes. Don't you?' His cheek was full of cheese sandwich. She didn't answer; only looked at
the swings with anxiety.
'I sometimes wish,' he said, trying hard to empty his mouth, 'I could join in myself.'
 'But you wouldn't?
'Why not?’
He saw the sudden challenge in her eyes. And was that a smile somewhere in that held-
aloft face?
'Well, if you feel that way . . . ?'
' - why don't you?'
'Why don't I?'

EXERCISE 4: Which pattern(s) of theme and rheme sequencing are predominant in these
extracts? Pick out sample sentences from the text to map out themes and rhemes (similar to the
theme-rheme diagrams in this discussion).
 E Knowledge Assessment

Instructions: Make a written output of any one of the following. Make sure you highlight the use of
the grammatical component/features of discourse. Ensure as well that your use of these
components of grammar are appropriately used based on the lessons you learned. Be guided by
the rubrics below.
1. An essay with four to five paragraphs (use appropriate grammatical links; do underline
these links); OR
2. An application letter (use appropriate variety of the use of theme-and-rheme structures)

RUBRICS FOR OUTPUT

4
3 1
5 (Very 2
Criteria (Satisfactor (Needs
(Excellent) Satisfactory (Good)
y) Improvement)
)
Less than 50
90 percent of 75 percent of 50 percent of
Indicated percent of the
Appropriatene the indicated the indicated the indicated
grammatical indicated
ss of Usage of grammatical grammatical grammatical
components grammatical
Grammar components components components
used components
(40%) used used used
appropriately used
appropriately appropriately appropriately
appropriately
 Essay
Essay
presents Essay
presents Essay
valuable presents
topics good presents
topic good enough
enough topic good enough Essay and
developed topic
Content and partly topic but is letter with
well/ Letter developed
Organization of developed/ disorganized/ underdevelope
focuses on well/ Letter
Outputs (40%) Letter Letter d content and
formal mostly formal
somehow somehow disorganized
application and
formal and formal but is
and developed
partly disorganized
developed well
developed
well
90 percent of 75 percent of 50 percent of Less than 50
All other
other other other percent of
mechanical
mechanical mechanical mechanical other
consideration
consideration consideration consideration mechanical
s aside from
s aside from s aside from s aside from considerations
grammar
grammar grammar grammar aside from
(handwriting,
Mechanics (handwriting, (handwriting, (handwriting, grammar
indention,
(20%) indention, indention, indention, (handwriting,
margin,
margin, margin, margin, indention,
blocking for
blocking for blocking for blocking for margin,
the letter,
the letter, the letter, the letter, blocking for
etc.) are
etc.) are etc.) are etc.) are the letter, etc.)
correctly
correctly correctly correctly are correctly
done
done done done done
*NOTE: Your rate for the outputs will suffer upon submission of an output which is NOT
ORIGINAL/COPIED.

F Knowledge Reaction

INSTRUCTIONS: Complete the table below on your reflection regarding the lessons in this
module.

I also learned that

In this module, the grammar is an
I will continue To learn this, I will
lesson I learned the important
learning about… seek help from…
most about is… consideration in
discourse because…

REFERENCES

Gee, J.P. and Hanford, M. (2012). The Routeledge Handbook of Discourse Analysis. New York:
Taylor and Francis Group.

MacCarthy, M.A. (2000) Discourse Analysis for Language Teachers. UK: Cambridge University
Press