Chapter published in:
The Construction of Discourse as Verbal Interaction
Edited by María de los Ángeles Gómez González and J. Lachlan Mackenzie
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 296] 2018
► pp. 13–44

The encoding and signalling of discourse relations in argumentative discourse

Evidence across production formats

| University of Augsburg, Germany

This chapter examines the role of production format in the linguistic realization of discourse relations in the argumentative discourse genre of commentary, distinguishing between implicitly realized discourse relations, encoded in coherence strands and lexical coherence, and overtly realized discourse relations, encoded in coherence strands and additionally signalled with discourse connectives, metadiscursive comments and non-congruently configurated theme zones. The production format comprises single-authored commentaries, monadically edited commentaries and dyadically edited commentaries. The edited texts stem from a discourse-editing task: the source text was stripped of almost all adverbials yet retained the original argumentative sequential organization and default configuration of events. The study is methodologically compositional across functional approaches to discourse grammar, discourse semantics, and discourse pragmatics. The analysis confirms that Contrast is realized overtly by default, Continuation and Explanation tend to be realized overtly in edited texts and Elaboration is realized more frequently overtly in single-authored texts.

Keywords: context, discourse coherence, discourse common ground, discourse relation, overt realization, production format
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Discourse: Quantity and quality
    • 2.1Discourse unit
    • 2.2Discursive glue
  • 3.Discourse relations and their linguistic realizations
  • 4.Method
    • 4.1Data
    • 4.2Procedure
    • 4.3Results
  • 5.Discussion
    • 5.1Continuation
    • 5.2Contrast
    • 5.3Explanation
    • 5.4Elaboration
    • 5.5Comment
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 20 September 2018
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.296.02fet
References
Aijmer, Karin
1997 “I think – An English Modal Particle.” In Modality in Germanic Languages. Historical and Comparative Perspectives, ed. by Toril Swan, and Olaf Jansen, 1–47. Berlin: De Gruyter.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Asher, Nicolas, and Alex Lascarides
2003 Logics of Conversation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bublitz, Wolfram, Uta Lenk, and Eija Ventola
(eds) 1999 Coherence in Spoken and Written Discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Chafe, Wallace
1994 Discourse, Consciousness, and Time. Chicago: Chicago University Press.Google Scholar
De Beaugrande, Robert, and Wolfgang Dressler
1981 Einführung in die Textlinguistik. Tübingen: Niemeyer.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Doherty, Monika
2003 “Discourse Relators and the Beginnings of Sentences in English and German.” Languages in Contrast 3: 223–251.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Fetzer, Anita
2000 “Negotiating Validity Claims in Political Interviews.” Text 20 (4): 1–46.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2007 “Reformulation and Common Grounds.” In Lexical Markers of Common Grounds, ed. by Anita Fetzer, and Kerstin Fischer, 157–179. London: Elsevier.Google Scholar
2008 “Theme Zones in English Media Discourse: Forms and Functions.” Journal of Pragmatics 40 (9): 1543–1568.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2011 “ ‘Here is the difference, here is the passion, here is the chance to be part of a great change’: Strategic Context Importation in Political Discourse.” In Context and Contexts: Parts Meet Whole?, ed. by Anita Fetzer, and Etsuko Oishi, 115–146. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossrefGoogle 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.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2013 “Structuring of Discourse.” In Pragmatics of Speech Actions, ed. by Marina Sbisà, and Ken Turner, 685–711. Berlin: De Gruyter.CrossrefGoogle 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.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Gernsbacher, Morton-Ann, and Talmy Givón
(eds) 1995 Coherence in Spontaneous Text. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Givón, Talmy
1993 English Grammar: A Function-Based Introduction. 2 vols. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Grice, Herbert Paul
1975 “Logic and Conversation.” In Syntax and Semantics, vol. 3, ed. by Peter Cole, and Jerry L. Morgan, 41–58. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Gruber, Helmut, and Gisela Redeker
(eds) 2014 The Pragmatics of Discourse Coherence. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Halliday, M. A. K.
1994 An Introduction to Functional Grammar. London: Arnold.Google Scholar
Halliday, M. A. K., and Ruqaiya Hasan
1976 Cohesion in English. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Hengeveld, Kees, and J. Lachlan Mackenzie
2008 Functional Discourse Grammar: A Typologically-Based Theory of Language Structure. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Heritage, John
1984 Garfinkel and Ethnomethodology. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Hofmockel, Carolin, Anita Fetzer, and Robert M. Maier
2017 “Discourse Relations: Genre-Specific Degrees of Overtness in Argumentative and Narrative Discourse.” Argument & Computation 8(2): 131–151.Google Scholar
Kamp, Hans, and Uwe Reyle
1993 From Discourse to Logic: Introduction to Modeltheoretic Semantics of Natural Language, Formal Logic and Discourse Representation Theory. Dordrecht: Kluwer.Google Scholar
Kecskes, Istvan
2014 Intercultural Pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Levinson, Stephen C.
1979 “Activity Types and Language.” Linguistics 17: 365–399.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Linell, Per
1998 Approaching Dialogue. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Mackenzie, J. Lachlan, and María de los Ángeles Gómez-González
(eds) 2004 A New Architecture for Functional Grammar. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossrefGoogle 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.Google 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.Google Scholar
Roulet, Eddy
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
Sanders, Ted
1998 “Semantic and Pragmatic Sources of Coherence: On the Categorization of Coherence Relations in Context.” Discourse Processes 24: 119–147.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Sarangi, Srikant
2000 “Activity Types, Discourse Types and Interactional Hybridity: The Case of Genetic Counseling.” In Discourse and Social Life, ed. by Srikant Sarangi, and Malcolm Coulthard, 1–27. Harlow: Longman.Google Scholar
Searle, John
2010 Making the Social World: The Structure of Human Civilization. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossrefGoogle 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.Google Scholar
2018 “ ‘Well would you believe it, I have failed the exam again’: Discourse Relations in English and German Personal Narratives.” Pragmatics in Society 9(1): 26–52.Google Scholar
Taboada, Maite
2006 “Discourse Markers as Signals (or not) of Rhetorical Relations.” Journal of Pragmatics 38: 567–592.CrossrefGoogle 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.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Traugott, Elizabeth Closs
1988 Approaches to Grammaticalization. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Widdowson, Henry
2004 Text, Context, and Pretext: Critical Issues in Discourse Analysis. Oxford: Blackwell.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 1 other publications

Jančaříková, Renata, Renata Povolná, Olga Dontcheva-Navratilová, Světlana Hanušová & Martin Němec
2020. AN ACADEMIC WRITING NEEDS ANALYSIS OF CZECH UNIVERSITY GRADUATE STUDENTS. Discourse and Interaction 13:1 ► pp. 42 ff. Crossref logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 31 march 2022. 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.