Cover not available
Part of
Implicitness: From lexis to discourse
Edited by Piotr Cap and Marta Dynel
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 276] 2017
► pp. 235–258

Chapter 11
The dynamics of discourse

Quantity meets quality

 | University of Augsburg
This chapter argues for a dynamic perspective on discourse, delimiting discourse from context on the one hand, and from arbitrarily concatenated discourse units on the other. Addressing the question of granularity in an explicit manner, it argues for a relational conception of the constitutive parts of discourse, analogously to the functional-grammar-based differentiation between clausal and extra-clausal constituents. The former present propositional meaning contributing to local and not-so-local argument and storyline, and the latter encode procedural meaning, in particular metadiscursive linkages. A relational conception of discourse unit comprises ordinary discursive units, e.g. single and complex clauses and utterances, or speech acts, conversational contributions, but also larger units, e.g. paragraph / episode or opening, closing and topical sections, or speech act complexes. Metadiscursive units comprise prototypical extra-clausal constituents, e.g. comment clauses and discourse markers. The delimiting frame of discourse genre does not only constrain the structuring of discourse as regards the patterned linearization of discourse units, but also the degrees of implicitness/overtness for the linguistic realization of discourse units and the signalling of discourse relations and other coherence strands.
Keywords: context, discourse, discourse pragmatics, discourse unit, discourse relations, parts-whole perspective
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Discourse unit: Relational and doubly contextual
  • 3.Discourse relations: Dovetailed and multiply discursive
  • 4.Pragmatic discourse and discourse pragmatics
  • 5.Discourse pragmatics in action
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Author queries
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 30 June 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.276.11fet
References (52)
References
Asher, Nicolas and Alex Lascarides. 2003. Logics of Conversation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Austin, John L. 1976. How to do Things with Words. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bach, Kent. 1992. “Communicative Intentions, Plan Recognition, and Pragmatics: Comments on Thomason and Littman and Allen.” In Intentions in Communication, ed. by Philip Cohen, Jerry Morgan, and Martha E. Pollack, 389–400. Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Brown, Penelope, and Stephen Levinson. 1987. Politeness. Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bublitz, Wolfram, Uta Lenk, and Eija Ventola (eds). 1999. Coherence in Spoken and Written Discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Carston, Robyn. 2002. Thoughts and Utterances. The Pragmatics of Explicit Communication. Oxford: Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chafe, Wallace. 1994. Discourse, Consciousness and Time. Chicago: Chicago University Press.Google Scholar
Clark, Billy. 2013. Relevance Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cohen, Philip, Jerry Morgan and Martha E. Pollack (eds). 1992. Intentions in Communication. Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Coupland, Justin, Nik Coupland, and Jeffrey D. Robinson.1992. ‘“How Are You?”: Negotiating Phatic Communion.” Language in Society 21: 207–230. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
de Beaugrande, Robert, and Wolfgang Dressler. 1981. Einführung in die Textlinguistik. Tübingen: Niemeyer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fetzer, Anita. 2000. “Negotiating Validity Claims in Political Interviews.” Text 20: 1–46. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2004. Recontextualizing Context: Grammaticality Meets Appropriateness. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2006. ‘“Minister, We Will See How the Public Judges You’. Media References in Political Interviews.” Journal of Pragmatics 38: 180–195. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2007a. “Context, Contexts and Appropriateness.” In Context and Appropriateness: Micro Meets Macro, ed. by Anita Fetzer, 3–27. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2007b. ‘“If I May Say So’: Indexing Appropriateness in Dialogue.” In Context and Appropriateness: Micro Meets Macro, ed. by Anita Fetzer, 115–146. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2012. “Reformulation and Common Grounds.” In Lexical Markers of Common Grounds, ed. by Anita Fetzer and Kerstin Fischer, 157-179. London: Elsevier.Google Scholar
. 2012. “Contexts in Interaction: Relating Pragmatic Wastebaskets.” In What is a Context? Linguistic Approaches and Challenges, ed. by Rita Finkbeiner, Jörg Meibauer, and Petra Schumacher, 105–127. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2013. “The Pragmatics of Discourse.” Topics in Linguistics 11: 5–12.Google Scholar
. 2014. “Conceptualizing Discourse.” In Handbooks of Pragmatics. The Pragmatics of Discourse. Vol. 3, ed. by Klaus Schneider, and Anne Barron, 35–61. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fetzer, Anita, and Augustin Speyer. 2012. “Discourse Relations in English and German Discourse: Local and Not-So-Local Constraints.” Intercultural Pragmatics 9: 413–452. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gernsbacher, Morton-Ann, and Talmy Givón (eds). 1995. Coherence in Spontaneous Text. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Givón, Talmy. 1993. English Grammar: A Function-Based Introduction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Grice, Herbert Paul. 1975. “Logic and Conversation.” In Syntax and Semantics. Vol. III, ed. by Peter Cole, and Jerry L. Morgan, 41–58. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Gumperz, John J.1992. “Contextualization and Understanding.” In Rethinking Context: Language as an Interactive Phenomenon, ed. by Alessandro Duranti and Charles Goodwin, 229–252. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Halliday, Michael A.K. 1994. Introduction to Functional Grammar. London: Arnold.Google Scholar
Halliday, Michael, A.K. and Ruqaiya Hasan. 1987. Cohesion in English. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Heritage, John. 1984. Garfinkel and Ethnomethodology. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Horn, Laurence R. 1984. “Toward a New Taxonomy for Pragmatic Inference: Q-based and R-Based Implicature.” In Meaning, Form and Use in Context: Linguistic Applications, ed. by Deborah Schiffrin, 11–42. Washington: Washington University Press.Google Scholar
Levinson, Stephen C. 1979. “Activity Types and Language.” Linguistics 17: 365–399. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1983. Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
. 1995. “Interactional Bias in Human Thinking.” In Social Intelligence and Interaction, ed. by Esther Goody, 221–260. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2000. Presumptive Meanings: The Theory of Generalized Conversational Implicature. Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Maier, Robert M., Carolin Hofmockel and Anita Fetzer. 2016. “The Negotiation of Discourse Relations in Context: Co-Constructing Degrees of Overtness.” Intercultural Pragmatics.13(1): 71-105. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Marmaridou, Sophia. 2000. Pragmatic Meaning and Cognition. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Martin, Jim R., and David Rose. 2008. Genre Relations. Mapping Culture. London: Equinox.Google Scholar
Mey, Jacob. 2001. Pragmatics. An Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
. 2011. “Speech Acts in Context.” In Context and Contexts: Parts Meet Whole?, ed. by Anita Fetzer and Etsuko Oishi, 171–180. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Moeschler, Jacques. 2002. “Speech Act Theory and the Analysis of Conversations.” In Essays in Speech Act Theory, ed. by Daniel Vanderveken, and Susumu Kubo, 239–261. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Oishi, Etsuko and Anita Fetzer. 2016. "Expositives in Discourse". Journal of Pragmatics 96: 49-59.Google Scholar
Roulet, Eddy. 1991. “On the Structure of Conversation as Negotiation.” In (On) Searle on Conversation, ed. by John R. Searle, Herman Parret, and Jef Verschueren, 91–100. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2006. “The Description of Text Relation Markers in the Geneva Model of Discourse Organization.” In Approaches to Discourse Particles, ed. by Kerstin Fischer, 115–132. Oxford: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Sbisà, Marina. 2002a. “Cognition and Narrativity in Speech Act Sequences.” In Rethinking Sequentiality: Linguistics Meets Conversational Interaction, ed. by Anita Fetzer, and Christiane Meierkord, 71–97. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2002b. “Speech Acts in Context.” Language and Communication 22: 421–436. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Speyer, Augustin, and Anita Fetzer. 2014. “The Coding of Discourse Relations in English and German Argumentative Discourse.” In The Pragmatics of Discourse Coherence, ed. by Helmut Gruber, and Gisela Redeker, 87–119. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Searle, John R. 1983. Intentionality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Searle, John. 2010. Making the Social World: The Structure of Human Civilization. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Thibault, Paul J. 2003. “Contextualization and Social Meaning-making Practices.” In Language and Interaction. Discussions with John J. Gumperz, ed. by Susan L. Eerdmans, et al., 41–62. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Van Dijk, Teun. 2008. Discourse and Context. A Sociocognitive Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Widdowson, Henry. 2004. Text, Context, and Pretext. Critical Issues in Discourse Analysis. Oxford: Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wilson, Deidre, and Dan Sperber. 2012. Meaning and Relevance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Yule, George. 1996. The Study of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Cited by (5)

Cited by five other publications

Klumm, Matthias
2024. A corpus-based study of phrasal and clausal temporal adjuncts at the left and right peripheries across genres of written English discourse. Lingua 309 ► pp. 103794 ff. DOI logo
Fetzer, Anita & Augustin Speyer
2019. Discourse relations across genres and contexts. Languages in Contrast 19:2 ► pp. 205 ff. DOI logo
Fetzer, Anita
2018. “Our Chief Political Editor reads between the lines of the Chancellor’s Budget speech”. Internet Pragmatics 1:1 ► pp. 29 ff. DOI logo
Fetzer, Anita
2021. Chapter 2. Computer-mediated discourse in context. In Approaches to Internet Pragmatics [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 318], ► pp. 47 ff. DOI logo
Fetzer, Anita
2022. Doing things with discourse in the mediated political arena. Pragmatics and Society 13:5 ► pp. 769 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 20 september 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.