1. Damascus University
Department of
English
MAL 2010
Discourse Topic and the
Representation of Discourse Content
Presented by Muhammad Al-
Moqdad
Supervised by: Dr. M. Mouzahem

2. Introduction
• Uses of the term topic:
– Sentential topic
– Discourse topic
• Characteristics of topic:
– Topic information
– Presupposition pools
– Sentential topic and the presupposition pool
• Relevance and speaking topically
1/1/2012 2

3. Discourse fragments and the
notion ‘topic’
• The data studied in discourse analysis is a
fragment of discourse, and the discourse
analyst has always to decide where the
fragment begins and ends => in order to
decide what constitutes a satisfactory unit
for analysis
1/1/2012 3

4. Ways for identifying the
boundaries
• Explicit ways: • Implicit ways:
– Formulaic expressions – The analyst is forced
Once upon an time . . . to depend on intuitive
And the lived happily notions about where
ever after. one part of
conversation ends and
• These markers help another begins.
the analyst decide
• Speaker-change: it
where the beginning
does not necessarily
of a coherent
terminate a coherent
fragment of discourse
fragment of
occurs.
conversation
1/1/2012 4

5. Intuitive notion of topic
• By appealing to the intuitive notion of topic
the analyst can decide which point of
speaker-change among the many could be
treated as the end of one chunk of the
conversation.
• The chunk of conversation in discourse
then can be treated as a unit of some kind
because it is on a particular topic.
1/1/2012 5

6. Intuitive notion of topic
• The notion of topic is intuitively a satisfactory
way of describing the unifying principle which
makes one stretch of discourse ‘about’ sth &
the next stretch ‘about’ sth else.
• Yet, what is the basis for the identification of
topic?
– Topic is the most frequently used, unexplained,
term in the analysis of discourse
1/1/2012 6

7. Uses of the term topic: Sentential
topic
• Grammarians’ topic
• Hockett: distinction between topic and
comment: sentential topic may coincide with
the grammatical subject
Ex. John / ran away
• Dahl & Sgall et al: transformational generative
grammar: topicalisation
• Givon: in the development of a language,
sentential subjects are derived from
grammatical topics.
1/1/2012 7

8. We are concerned with what is
being talked about!
• This type of topic is unlikely to identifiable
as one part of a sentence.
• Morgan: it is not sentences that have
topics, but speakers
1/1/2012 8

9. Uses of the term topic: discourse
topic
• Keenan & Schieffelin
• It is not expressible in a simple NP.
• Discourse topic is a proposition about
which some claim is made or elicited =>
represents in any fragment of
conversational discourse the topic of the
whole fragment
• Their experiments treated topic as
equivalent to title
1/1/2012 9

10. Topic as Title
• For any text, there is a single correct
expression which is the ‘topic’.
• But it should not be too difficult to imagine
several different titles for a passage, each of
which could equally facilitate comprehension.
• So, in any text there is a number of different
way of expressing the topic => represent
different judgement of what is being written or
talked about in a text.
1/1/2012 10

11. It is not as simple as this!
• The difficulty of determining a single phrase
or sentence as the topic of a piece of one
There is no such thing as the printed
text is increased when fragments of
correct expression of the topic for any
conversational discourse are considered.
fragment of discourse.
• In Thereconversation, what is being talked
any will be always a set of possible
about will be judged differently at different
expressions of the topic.
points and the participants themselves may
Tyler: the topic can only be one possible
not have identical views of what each is
paraphrase of a sequence of utterances
talking about.
1/1/2012 11

12. Reasons why Discourse analysts
study this notion ‘Topic’
• It is the central organising principle for a
lot of discourse
• It enables the analyst to explain why
several sentences or utterances should be
considered together as a set of some kind,
separate from another set.
• It provides a means of distinguishing
fragments of discourse which are felt to be
good, coherent.
1/1/2012 12

13. Characterisation of the topic:
Topic framework
• The analyst can determine what aspect of
the context are explicitly reflected in the
text as the formal record of the utterance
• Activated features of context: aspects
which are directly reflected in the text
which need to be called upon to interpret
the text
• They constitute the contextual framework
within which the topic is constituted
1/1/2012 13

14. Topic framework
• Aspects of the speakers assumptions about
his hearer’s knowledge must be considered
in relation to the elements which the speaker
does make explicit in his contribution.
• Any consideration of topic involves asking
why the speaker what he said in a particular
discourse situation. Coulthard, Sacks: there
is a constant analysis in conversation of what
is said in terms of why that now and to me.
1/1/2012 14

15. Topic framework
• Certain elements which constrain the topic
can be determined before the discourse
begins; they are part of the context of a
speech event.
• In relation to contextual features to a
particular speech event, however, we are
particularly interested in only those
activated features of context pertaining to
the fragment of discourse being studied.
1/1/2012 15

16. Topic framework
• The topic framework consists of elements
derivable from the physical context and from
the discourse domain of any discourse
fragment.
• These elements are a means of making
explicit some of the assumptions a speaker
can make about his hearer’s knowledge – we
are talking about the total knowledge which
the speaker believes he shares with his/her
hearer.
1/1/2012 16

17. Presupposition pools
• Venneman proposes: for a discourse, there is
a presupposition pool which contains
information constituted from general
knowledge, from the situative context of the
discourse, and from the completed part of the
discourse itself.
• Within the presupposition pool for any
discourse, there is a set of discourse subjects
and each discourse is, in a sense, about its
discourse subjects.
1/1/2012 17

18. Presupposition pools
• The number of the discourse subjects in a
presupposition pool shared by participants in
a discourse, particularly participants who
know each other well, is potentially large.
• Selecting the discourse subjects must have
to do with their relevance to the particular
discourse fragment under consideration.
• This relevance must be those to which
reference is made in the text of the discourse.
1/1/2012 18

19. Sentential topic & the
presupposition pool
• Presupposition pool shared by participants
restricts the analyst investigation to
describing the relationship between pairs
of sentences.
1/1/2012 19

20. Relevance and speaking
topically
• Topic framework represents the area of
overlap in the knowledge which has been
activated and is shared by the participants
at a particular point in a discourse.
• Once these have been identified, the
analyst has some basis for making
judgements of the relevance with regard to
conversational contributions.
1/1/2012 20

21. Relevance and speaking
topically
• This technical term is derived from the
conversational maxim proposed by Grice
1975:
• They have to do with: relevance of
conversational contributions.
• But they are relevant to what?!
– Make your contribution relevant in terms of
the existing topic framework.
1/1/2012 21

22. Relevance and speaking
topically
• We can capture this by the expression
‘speaking topically’
• It is an obvious feature of casual
conversation in which each participant
contributes equally and there is no fixed
direction for the conversation to go.
• Speaking on a topic: the participants are
concentrating their talk on one particular
entity, individual or issue.
1/1/2012 22

23. Relevance and speaking
topically
• In practice any conversational fragment
will exhibit patterns of talk in which both
speaking topically and speaking on topic
are present.
• Both forms are based on the existing topic
framework, but the distinction derives from
what each individual speaker treats as the
salient element in the existing topic
framework.
1/1/2012 23

24. Conclusion:
• We have tried to list the connexions existing
across contributions in this discourse
fragment to emphasise the ways in which
speakers make what they’re talking about fit
into the framework which represents what we
(as discourse participants) are talking about
in conversational discourse.
• For the analyst, these connexions can signal
the coherence relations which make each
contribution relevant to the discourse as a
whole.
1/1/2012 24

25. Thanks for
1/1/2012 25