Written discourse

Act structures are ordered sequences of actions performed through speech. For example, the first parts of adjacency pairs like questions, greetings, and compliments constrain the interpretation of the following utterance (and the role of its speaker). An accusation presents the accused with the act choices of confession, denial, or counter-accusation. An accepted bet will eventually recast one participant as the winner and the other as the loser (and maybe debtor). Speech acts have still other consequences for participants and their relationship. Almost all speech acts – commands, questions, requests, hints, compliments, warnings, promises, denials – allow people to exert different degrees of responsibility and control that create feelings of distance or solidarity, power or equality between speaker and hearer.
Information state
The information state is the distribution of knowledge among people inter-acting with one another. Speakers take into account their listeners’ informational needs as they construct their utterances: what common knowledge can the speaker assume? How does he/she present brand new information?
Often we can see changes in the information state by looking at the nuts and bolts of repairs, like Ceil’s repairs in example (3) that filled in information that Anne didn’t have. But we can also find speakers accommodating to their hearers’ knowledge by looking at the choice of words, and their arrangement, in sentences that don’t undergo repair. For example, speakers in conversation mix together old information (which they believe their addressees know or can figure out) with new information (which they believe their addressees don’t know and can’t figure out). The utterances in (8a–c) all introduce new referents into a conversation:

0. 
   a. there’s a school in my mother’s neighborhood like that
   

1. 
   they have those big three-story houses on Chestnut Street
   

2. 
   y’know that guy down the street? who’s remodeling his house?
   

Syntactic subjects – the italicized forms at the beginning of the sentences in (8) – rarely introduce new referents to a conversation. The minimal information conveyed by simple and uninformative initial clauses (like there is, they have and y’know) puts the focus on the new information at the end of the sentence.

Idea structure
Idea structure concerns the organization of information within a sentence and the organization of propositions in a text: how bits of information are linked together within, and across, sentences. Different genres typically have different idea structures. Recall the problem-solution organization of the advice column and hair conditioner label. Recall also Jack’s narrative in example (4). Once Jack got started on his story, each clause presented an event in the order in which it was presumed to have occurred. A narrative has an idea structure with a linear organization based on temporal progression. The email entries below show two other genres – a list (9) and an explanation (10).

0. 
   Okay, here’s the grocery list. Don’t forget the fruit – we need apples, pears, if they’re ripe enough, bananas. And we also need some milk and eggs. And if you can find something good for dessert, like some chocolate chip cookies or small pastries, that would be great!
   

0. 
   I don’t really think we should go out tonight. For one thing, it’s sup-posed to snow. And I’m really tired. I just finished work and would rather just watch a movie on TV or something. So is that okay with you?
   

The idea structure of the list in (9) reflects semantic relationships among the items to be bought at the food store. Fruit is a superordinate set that includes apples, pears, and bananas. Milk and eggs are items that both require refrigeration in the dairy section of stores. And dessert includes cookies and pastries. The idea structure of the explanation in (10), however, is based on the relationship between a conclusion (not to go out) and the events (or states) that justify that conclusion (weather, physical state, time, alternative activity).

Linking together planes of discourse
Although we have been discussing each plane of discourse separately, we need to remember that every utterance is simultaneously part of – and has meaning on – different planes of discourse. We can get a clearer picture of these relationships by taking a look at the discourse in (11), an excerpt from an interaction between a librarian and a patron at the reference desk of a public library.

(11) (a)
Patron:

There used to be a monthly report that comes from S-Securities Exchange Commission. . .

(b)
on insiders’ transactions,

(c) Librarian:

Uh huh

(d) Patron:

and many years ago you used to carry it,

(e)
and I haven’t seen it in a long time.

Part of the librarian’s job is to help patrons find material in the library. After opening this speech situation (e.g. with eye contact or excuse me), patrons typically use the speech act “request” to get help. Although the patron doesn’t say anything like “Can you give me. . .” or “Do you have. . .”, her utterance still performs the speech act of a request. We know this (as do librarians and library patrons) because the participation framework (the identities and roles of librarians and patrons) helps us recognize that an utterance that sounds as if it is asserting the existence of a report (There used to be a monthly report (a)) is also performing a request.

Notice that the utterance about the existence of the monthly report appears as a long and complex sentence spread over four lines in the transcript ((a), (b), (d), and (e)). These lines reflect different tone units, segments of speech production that are bounded by changes in timing, intonation, and pitch. Because the sentence is spread out over multiple tone units, it ends up bypassing turn-transition places (locations at which the listener is given the option of taking a turn) and allows the patron to complete the speech act (a request) that is pivotal to the speech event and speech situation.

The division of the patron’s long sentence into four tone units also reflects the information state and the recipient design of the utterance for the librarian. The patron pauses after providing two pieces of information about the item she’s looking for: its frequency (a monthly report) and source (that comes from S-Securities Exchange Commission). This pause is an opportunity for the librarian to display her recognition of the requested item and to comply with the request. When that doesn’t happen, the patron continues her description of the report, in (b), (d), and (e), pausing after each new piece of potential identifying information to give the librarian another chance to respond. The pauses at the turn-transition places after (a), (b), (d), and (e) make it easier for the librarian to complete the adjacency pair and respond to the patron’s request at the earliest possible point. The act structure, the participation structure, the exchange structure, the information state, and the idea structure thus reinforce each other to make the production and the interpretation of the request (and its response) clear and efficient.

Chapter summary

Discourse is made up of patterned arrangements of smaller units, such as propositions, speech acts, and conversational turns. But discourse becomes more than the sum of its smaller parts. It becomes a coherent unit through both “bottom up” and “top down” processes. We construct coherence online and bottom-up by building upon our own, and each others’, prior utterances and their various facets of meaning. At the same time, however, our sense of the larger activity in which we are participating – the speech event, speech situation, and genre that we perceive ourselves to be constructing – provides an overall top-down frame for organizing those smaller units of the discourse. For example, turns at talk are negotiated as participants speak, but participants also are aware of larger expectations about how to share the “floor” that are imposed by the speech event (e.g. a discussion) in a speech situation (e.g. a classroom). Thus the very same turn-taking pattern may take on very different meanings depending on whether it is taking place in a classroom, in a courtroom, or during a first date.
The bottom-up and top-down organizations of discourse work in synchrony. The overall frame helps us figure out how to interpret what is being said and done. It also helps us figure out where to place the smaller units in relation to one another. Yet choices that we make about the smaller units – should I take a turn now? should I issue a direct order or make a more subtle hint? – can also alter the general definition of what is “going on” in a situation. The combination and coordination of all the different facets of discourse – the structures that they create and the frames that they reflect – are what gives discourse its coherence, our overall sense of what is going on.
The multifaceted nature of discourse also arises because we try to achieve several goals when we speak to each other, often all at the same time. We verbalize thoughts, introduce new information, repair errors in what we say, take turns at talk, think of others, perform acts, display identities and relationships. We are continuously anticipating what our recipients need (e.g. how much information do they need?) and want (e.g. how polite do they expect me to be?). We achieve these multiple goals when we are speaking by using a range of different units, including sentences, tone units, utterances, and speech acts, whose functional links to one another help tie together different planes of discourse.
Discourse analyses – peering into the small details of moment-by-moment talk – can be very detailed. And such details are in keeping with the assumption that knowledge and meaning are developed, and displayed, through social actions and recurrent practices, both of which depend upon language. Yet for some scholars the scope of dis-course stretches beyond language and its immediate context of use to include what Gee (1999: 17) has called “Discourse” (with a capital D): “socially accepted associations among ways of using language, of thinking, valuing, acting and interacting, in the ‘right’ places and at the ‘right’ times with the ‘right’ objects.” This conception of Discourse reaches way above the sentence and even further beyond the contexts of speech act, speech event, and speech situations. It makes explicit that our communicative competence – our knowledge of how to use language in everyday life – is an integral part of our culture.