Chapter 6

Discourse Grammar
 Grammar from a discourse perspective
Sentence-based perspectives Discourse-based
perspectives

Arguments for discourse grammar:

• Traditional explanations of grammar do not adequately capture
grammatical selection in longer, real-world texts.
• A number of linguistic items show quite different patterns of use when
looked at from a discourse perspective. (e.g. it ,this andthat )
• There are patterns of grammar and vocabulary that combine to tie
meanings in the text together as well as connect the text to the social
context in which it occurs (cohesion / unity of texture).
• Contextual analyses: look at grammatical form in relation to where,
why and how frequently it is used in written and spoken discourse
rather than in isolated sentences.
• A discourse-based grammar makes a strong connection between
form, function and context and aims to place appropriateness and
use at the centre of its descriptions.
• Similarly, form, meaning and use need to be at the basis of all
grammatical descriptions.
• A discourse based grammar acknowledges language choice,
promotes awareness of interpersonal factors in grammatical choice
and can provide insights into areas of grammar that, previously,
lacked a satisfactory explanation.
 The texture of a text
 Hasan ( 1989a, 1989b ) discusses two crucial attributes of texts and
which are important for the analysis of discourse:
unity of structure and unity of texture
Unity of structure refers to patterns which combine together to create
information structure focus
, andflow in a text, including theschematic
structure of the text.
Unity of texture refers to the way in which resources such as patterns of
cohesion create both cohesive and coherent texts.
 Texture results where there are language items that tie meanings
together in the text as well as tie meanings in the text to the social
context in which the text occurs. (e.g.it & that )
Schematic structure:
Also referred to as ‘generic structure’, the typical organizational
patterning of a genre in terms of a sequence of moves or
discoursal acts. This can be seen as a system of conventions or
resources of meaning for generating expected texts.

 Genres are activities that people engage in through the use of

language. Academic lectures and casual conversations are
examples of spoken genres. Newspaper reports and academic
essays are examples of written genres. Instances of a genre
often share a number of features. They may be spoken or
written in typical, and sometimes conventional, ways. They also
often have a common function and purpose (or set of functions
and purposes).
 Hasan ( 1989b : 71) describes texture as being ‘a matter of
meaning relations’.
• The notion of a tie: it connects the meanings of words to each other
as well as to the world outside the text.
• Thus, the basis for cohesion, and in turn texture, is semantic.

Waiter: Where would you like it sir?

Customer: Just a little on the meat thanks.
 Cohesion and discourse
patterns of cohesion in texts: reference ,lexical cohesion ,
conjunction ,
substitution and ellipsis .
Cohesion refers to the relationship between items in a text such as words, phrases and
clauses and other items such as pronouns, nouns and conjunctions. This includes the
relationship between words and pronouns that refer to that wordreference
( items). It
also includes words that commonly co-occur in textscollocation ( ) and the
relationship between words with similar, related and different meaningslexical (
cohesion ). Cohesion also considers semantic relationships between clauses and the
ways this is expressed through the useconjunctions
of . A further aspect of cohesion
is the way in which words such as ‘one’ and ‘do’ are used to substitute for other words
in a substitution
text ( ) and the ways in which words or phrases are left out, or ellipsed,
from aellipsis
text ( unity
). All of this contributes to theof texture of a text and helps
to make the text cohesive.
 Reference
 Reference refers to the situation where the identity of an item can
be retrieved from either within or outside the text.
 The main reference patterns are anaphoric , cataphoric , exophoric
and
homophoric reference.
1) Anaphoric reference:
Anaphoric reference is where a word or phrase refers back to
another
word or phrase used earlier in a text.
 It seems everyone’s read that self-help book: Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo’s
He’s Just Not That Into You . . . First in the US, then all over the world, women
became converts to the book’s tough love message. When it was published
its praises, tearful women called
late last year, Oprah sang it ‘the Bible’, and
it
others declared had changed their lives forever. (Cooper 2005 : S38)

2) Cataphoric reference
It describes an item which refers forward to another word or phrase
which is used later in the text.
It seems everyone’s read that self-help book: Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo’s
He’s Just Not That Into You.
 3) Exophoric reference
It looks outside the text to the situation in which the text occurs for
the
identity of the item being referred to.
Customer: What kind of book would you say this is? Where
would
you put it on your bookshelves? (Monica’s
Story)

4) Homophoric reference
It is where the identity of the item can be retrieved by reference to
cultural knowledge,
First in the in over
US, then all general, ratherwomen
the world, than the specific
became context
converts to of
thethe
text.
book’s tough-love message.
5) Comparative reference
With comparative reference , ‘the identity of the presumed item is
retrieved
not because it has already been mentioned or will be mentioned in the
text,
but because an item with which it is being compared has been
mentioned’.
When it was published late last year, Oprah sang its praises, tearful women called
it ‘the Bible’, andothers declared it had changed their lives forever.
The book assumes all men are confident, or that if they really like a girl, they’ll
overcome their shyness. Theopposite is true. (Cooper 2005 : S38)

6) Bridging reference
A bridging reference is where an item refers to something that has to be
inferentially derived from the text or situation; that is, something that
has
to be presumed indirectly.
e.g.
I walked into the room. The windows looked out to the bay.
(bridging reference / indirect
anaphora)

Stuart agrees. ‘I was hopeless’, he says with a laugh. ‘I’m just not one ofthose
blokes that finds approaching women easy.’ (Cooper 2005 : S38)

 Each of these forms of reference makes a contribution to the texture of

a
text and the ways in which we interpret the text as we read it.
 Lexical cohesion
 Lexical cohesion refers to relationships in meaning between
lexical items in a text (in particular, content words).
 The main kinds of lexical cohesion are repetition , synonymy ,
antonymy hyponymy
, meronomy
, andcollocation .

1) Repetition
• Repetition refers to words that are repeated in a text. This includes
words which are inflected for tense or number and words which are
derived from particular items.
 Jen Abydeera, 27, and Stuart Gilby, 22, . . . are convinced they wouldn’t be a couple
if Jen had done things the [He’s Just Not That Into You] way when they first met. ‘
Stu was quiet and shy, while I was more confident and forward,’ says Jen. ‘He was
more reluctant than I was to ask questions or to initiate a date. I would be the one
to say to him: “When do you want to go out, then? ”’

2) Synonymy
• Synonymy refers to words which are similar in meaning.
(e.g. ‘date ’ and ‘go out ’ in the above example; ‘blokes ’ and ‘men ’ in the
following example:)

‘I’m just not one of those blokes that finds approaching women easy. The book
assumes allmen are confident, or that if they really like a girl, they’ll overcome their
shyness. The opposite is true.’
 3) Antonymy
• Antonymy describes opposite or contrastive meanings.
(e.g. ‘shy ’ and ‘forward ’ in the earlier text; ‘women ’ and ‘men ’, ‘real
players ’
and ‘boofheads ’ in the following text:)

Andy Stern, 28, a builder, says he’s worried the book will drivewomen towards
dodgymen . ‘Onlyreal players do full-on charm,’ he says. ‘The rest of us are
boofheads . We often do nothing at all, and just hope girls notice that we like
them.’
4) Hyponymy and meronymy
• Halliday ( 1990 ) describes two kinds of lexical taxonomies that
typically occur in texts:superordination andcomposition .
a. superordination
These are words which are in a ‘kind of’ relationship with each
other.
e.g. He’s Just Not That Into You is a ‘kind of’ self-help book.
[HYPO
NOMY]
b. composition
These are words that are in a ‘whole-part’ relationship with each
other.
e.g. Jen and Stuart are ‘part of’ the lexical item ‘couple’
[MERON
YMY]
 Hyponymy
It refers to classes of lexical items where the relationship between them
is
one of ‘general-specific’, ‘an example of’ or in a ‘class to member’ type
relationship. (see Figure 6.1)

 Meronymy
It is where lexical items are in a ‘whole to part’ relationship with each
other. (see Figure 6.2)

 In each kind of relationship, an understanding of one item in the

taxonomy may depend on an understanding of other items and on the
organization and relationship between the items in the taxonomy.
 5) Collocation
• Collocation describes associations between vocabulary items which
have a tendency to co-occur.
a. combinations of adjectives and nouns (e.g. ‘real-estate agent ’,
the
‘right direction ’ and ‘Aussie men ’)
b. the relationship between verbs and nouns (e.g. ‘love ’ and ‘book ’
and ‘waste ’ and ‘time ’)

c. items which typically co-occur (e.g. ‘men ’ & ‘women ’; ‘love ’ &
hate
‘ ’)
Sarah Hughes, 21, areal-estate agent , agrees that Aussie men need more help than
most when it comes to romance. ‘They’re useless! They need a good push in the
right direction .loved
I book and its message about not
the wasting your time – but if
a man’s shy there’s no way it’ll happen unless you do the asking.’ (Cooper 2005 : S38)
 Collocation is not something that is restricted to a single text but is part
of
textual knowledge in general. A writer and speaker of a language draws
on
this knowledge of collocations as he/she writes and speaks.

 Expectancy relations
It’s a kind of semantic/lexical relationship, related to collocation. This
occurs
where there is a predictable relationship between a verb and either the
subject or the object of the verb.
These relations link:
a. nominal elements with verbal elements (e.g. love/book, waste/time)
b. an action with a participant (e.g. ask/guy)
c. an event with its location (e.g. dating/sites)
d. individual lexical items and the composite nominal group that they form (e.g.
art/classes, life/drawing, online/dating)
Art classes
You can do just about anything in the name of art. Tryasking acute guy to sit as
your model, and if he still doesn’t take the hint, you can literally draw him a picture.
life-drawing class at the ArtHouse Hotel.
Take a free
Online dating
Hand out as many kisses as you like – virtual ones, that is.Dating sites are all
about being proactive and choosing your best match.
(Sun-Herald, 6 February 2005, p. S38)
 Lexical bundles
Lexical bundles are multi-word combinations, such as ‘as a result of’ , ‘on the
other hand’ , ‘if you look at’ and ‘as can be seen’ that occur in genres such as
university textbooks, academic essays, theses and dissertations and
research articles as well as spoken genres such as academic lectures and
conversation.
• For Byrd and Coxhead ( 2010 ):
 lexical bundles as three or more words that occur in fixed or semi-
fixed
combinations ‘that are repeated without change for a set number of
times in a particular corpus’.
 They need to occur widely in the texts that make up the corpus,
rather
than just be characteristic of a particular speaker or writer.
 a software program is used in the process for identifying lexical
bundles
in a corpus (Frequency of Occurrence).
• Biber et al’s study (1999) into the use of lexical bundles in university
teaching and textbooks:

 They found that these items can serve a range of functions in the
discourse:
- express stance such as certainty, possibility and probability as in (I
don’t
know if) and (I don’t think so) .
- express speaker attitude towards actions as in (I want you to) and
I(’m not
going to) .
- express desire ( I don’t want to ), obligation ( you have to do ) and
intention ( what we’re going to ).
- have a discourse organizing focus as in (What I want to do) and (If
we
look at).
 - to single out something as especially important as in (something like that)
and (As shown in Figure 4.4).
- can be multi-functional in that they can be both directives and topic
introducers, as in (take a look at ) and a time, place and textual
reference, as in (the beginning of the and at the end of)

 Lexical bundles are most often not complete grammatical structures, nor
are they idiomatic; yet they function as basic building blocks of discourse.

 The use of lexical bundles varies across genres and disciplines.

 Their use ‘helps to identify competent language ability among individuals

and to signal membership of a particular academic community’.
Conjunction
 Conjunction refers to words, such as ‘and’, ‘however’, ‘finally’ and ‘in
conclusion’ that join phrases, clauses or sections of a text in such a way
that they express the ‘logical-semantic’ relationship between them.
 They are important part of discourse knowledge that both speakers and
writers, and readers and listeners, draw on as they both produce and
interpret spoken and written discourse.

Categories:
1. Additive: ‘and’, ‘or’, ‘moreover’, ‘in addition’ and ‘alternatively’
(in positive and contrastive sense)
2. Comparative: ‘whereas’, ‘but’, ‘on the other hand’, ‘likewise’ and ‘equally’
(in positive and negative sense)
 3. Temporal: ‘while’, ‘when’, ‘after’, ‘meanwhile’, then’, ‘finally’ and ‘at the
same time’.
4. Consequential: ‘so that’, ‘because’, ‘since’, ‘thus’, ‘if’, ‘therefore’, ‘in
conclusion’ and ‘in this way’. (see table
6.1/p. 124)
When it was published late last year, Oprah sang its praises, tearful women called it
‘the Bible’, and others declared it had changed their lives forever.But now the initial
fuss has subsided, women are examining the book’s philosophy a little more closely
and
– many don’t like what they see.
‘When a guy is really into you’ says Behrendt . . . ‘he lets you know it. He calls, he
shows up, he wants to meet your friends. Why would you think we would be as
incapable as something as simple as picking up the phone and asking you out?’
Because , of course, the dating game is a clumsy dance of blunders and
misunderstandings. And sometimes, romantically challenged men really do need a
helping hand from women.
Other terms used by different authors for ‘conjunctions’:
• Vande Kopple ( 1985 ), talks about text connectives , which are used to indicate how
parts of the text are connected to each other.
• Crismore, Markkanen and Steffensen ( 1993 ) discuss textual markers which help to
organize discourse.
• Hyland ( 2005b ) adds the category of frame markers to the discussion.

Frame markers:
They are items which sequence the material in a text (such as ‘first’ and ‘next’),
items which label the stages of text (such as ‘in conclusion’ and ‘finally’), items
which announce the goal of the discourse (such as ‘my aim here is to. . .’) and
items which announce a change in topic (such as ‘well’ and ‘now’).
Frame markers, along with conjunction and other markers of this kind, lead the
reader of a text to ‘preferred interpretations’ of the text as well as help form
convincing and coherent texts ‘by relating individual propositions to each
other and to other texts’
(Hyland 1998a :
442).
 Substitution and ellipsis
 With substitution , a substitute form is used for another language item,
phrase or group. (A pro-form used for a previously mentioned element)
• substituting an item for a noun (nominal)
Try reading this book. That one ’s not very good.
• substituting an item for a verb (verbal)
A: Has he had dinner yet?
B: He must have done . There’s no food in the fridge.
• substituting an item for a clause (clausal)
A: That’s great to hear you’re still happy.
B: Oh yes very muchso .
 With ellipsis, some essential element is omitted from the text and can be
recovered by referring to a preceding element in the text.
 Ellipsis may involve the omission of a noun or noun group, a verb or verbal
group or a clause.

Announcer: Gary, what did you want to say to Allison tonight?

Caller: [I want to say] that I’m very sorry for the fight we had the
other
night.
Announcer: What was that over?
Caller: [It was over] something rather silly actually
Announcer: They usually are, aren’t they?
Caller: Yeah [they usually are silly] and [I want to say] that I love her
very much and [I want to say that] we’ll have to stick it
through,
you know?
 Ellipsis:
The omission from a clause of one or more words that are
nevertheless understood in the context of the remaining elements. It’s
a process that links clauses together.
(e.g.One day a farmer from the village went to the wise man and
said in a frantic tone, … etc ).

What about
(a) A man came into the pub and bought a pint of beer.
(b) A man came into the pub and a man bought a pint of shandy. ??
More examples on ellipsis:

- The first train and the second train have arrived.

- John can play the guitar, and Mary can play the violin.
- Fred took a picture of you, and Susan took a picture of
me.
- He has done it before, which means he will do it again.
- Who has been hiding the truth? Billy has been hiding the truth.

Q: Are there any differences between reference, ellipsis and

substitution?
 Patterns of cohesion: A sample analysis
lexical cohesion and reference chains
Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on
the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows,
the only way of coming downstairs, but sometimes he feels that there
really is another way, if only he could stop bumping for a moment and
think of it. And then he feels perhaps there isn’t. Anyhow, here he is at
the bottom, and ready to be introduced to you. Winnie-the-Pooh.
When I first heard his name, I said, just as you are going to say, ‘But I
thought he was a boy?’
(Milne 1988 : 1)
FromWinnie the Pooh by A. A. Milne. Text ©
 Theme and rheme
 The relationship between theme and rheme contributes to the
texture of a text (through its contribution to thefocus andflow of
information in a text).
 Why is it important to have an understanding of this relationship?

Theme is the starting point of a clause; that is, what the clause is ‘about’. The
remainder of the clause is therheme . Thus, in the sentence ‘Hiragana represents
the 46 basic sounds of the Japanese language’, the theme is ‘Hiragana’. The rest
of the sentence is the rheme; that is, what the sentence has to say about
Hiragana. In this instance ‘Hiragana’ istopical
a theme . Conjunctions such and as
but
or when they occur at the beginning of a clause are an exampletextual
of
theme . An item that expresses a point of view on the content of the clause such
of as
course interpersonal
is an theme .
 Theme
Theme is ‘the element which serves as the point of departure of the
message’ (Halliday 1985: 38). It also introduces ‘information
prominence’ into the clause.
 The rheme is what the clause has to say about the theme.
Examples: see tables 6.2 & 6.3 p. 129

Interpersonal theme
Interpersonal theme refers to an item that comes before the rheme
which indicates the relationship between participants in the text, or the
position or point of view that is being taken in the clause.
Example: see table 6.4/ p. 130
 An interpersonal theme can express:
- probability (e.g. perhaps),
- usuality (e.g. sometimes),
- typicality (e.g. generally),
- obviousness (e.g. surely),
- express opinion (e.g. to my mind),
- admission (e.g. frankly),
- persuasion (e.g. believe me),
- entreaty (e.g. kindly),
- presumption (e.g. no doubt),
- desirability (e.g. hopefully) or
- prediction (e.g. as expected)
 Patterns of theme and rheme combine in a text to give it a sense ofthematic
development . The theme of a clause, for example, may pick up, or repeat, the
meaning from a preceding theme. This leads to a pattern oftheme reiteration ,
linear theme is where
where the theme of each clause is the same. Zigzag or
the rheme of one clause is picked up in the theme of the next clause. These
multiple theme/split rheme
patterns may also be combined into patterns.

Multiple theme
It occurs when there is more than a single thematic element in the Theme
component of the clause.
Example: see table 6.5/ p. 130 (textual, interpersonal and topical themes
used)
Thematic progression (Method of development of texts)
Thematic progression refers to the way in which the theme of a clause
may pick up, or repeat, a meaning from a preceding theme or rheme.
information flow is created in a text.
This is a key way in which

This is done in different ways:

1. Constant theme: (ortheme reiteration)
In this pattern, ‘Theme 1’ is picked up and repeated at the beginning of
the next clause, signalling that each clause will have something to say
about the theme.
Example: see table 6.6 & figure 6.8 / p. 131
2. Linear theme: (orZigzag theme )
This pattern of thematic progression occurs when the subject matter
in the rheme of one clause is taken up in the theme of a following
clause.
Example: see table 6.7 & figure 6.9 / p. 132

3. Multiple theme/split rheme

In this pattern of progression, a rheme may include a number of
different pieces of information, each of which may be taken up as the
theme in a number of subsequent clauses.
Example: see table 6.8 & figure 6.10 / p. 132&133
Grammatical differences between spoken and
written discourse
1. Grammatical intricacy and spoken and written discourse
Halliday presents the notion of grammatical intricacy (Halliday and
Matthiessen 2004) to account for the way in which the relationship
between clauses in spoken discourse can be much more spread out
and with more complex relations between them than in writing, yet we
still manage to keep track of these relations.

See extract p. 136

2. Lexical density in spoken and written discourse
Lexical density refers to the ratio of content words to grammatical
or function words within a clause.
 According to Halliday, written discourse tends to be more lexically
dense than spoken discourse.
 In spoken discourse content words tend to be spread out over a
number of clauses rather than being tightly packed into individual
clauses which is more typical of written discourse.

IfCasablanca defined true love for ageneration ofincurable romantics , it also

defined theaesthetic possibilities ofcinema for ageneration offilm lovers .
 Yvonne: Who do youthink you are, pushing me around? What afool I was to
fall for aman like you.

3. Nominalization and grammatical metaphor in written and

spoken discourse
 Written texts includes:
1. high level of nominalization (where actions and events
are
presented as nouns rather than
as verbs.
• Halliday (1989b) calls this phenomenon grammatical metaphor:
where a language item is transferred from a more expected
grammatical class to another.
 2. longer noun groups than spoken texts.
(leading to a situation where the information in the text is more
tightly
packed into fewer words and less spread out than in spoken
texts).
See extract p. 137 for examples of features 1 & 2

3. qualifiers following a noun

(typical of much written scientific discourse and adds to the
length of noun groups in written discourse).
See extract p. 138 for examples of feature 3

 In spoken discourse:
low level of nominalization and shorter noun groups
 Ilsa: Can I tell youa story , Rick?
Rick: Has it got a wow finish ?
Ilsa: I don’t know the finish yet.
Rick: Well, go on, tell it. Maybe one will come to you as you go
along.
A continuum of differences between spoken and written
discourse
McCarthy (2001) argues:
 There is no simple, one-dimensional difference between spoken and
written discourse.

 These differences are most usefully seen as being on a scale, or

continuum.

 This idea of a spoken to written scale, or continuum, ‘avoids over-

simplified distinctions between speech and writing but still brings out
key areas in which spoken and written discourse may be
differentiated’.
Biber’s (1988, 1992) corpus-based analyses of differences between
spoken and written texts have found that there is no single absolute
difference between speech and writing in English, but rather
dimensions of variation where linguistic features tend to cluster, all
of which varies for different kinds of texts, or genres.

 Summary
p. 139