summary of discourse as a dialogue book: discourse

1. Mahdieh Kor
Fall 2015

2. Discourse
 Any set of connected sentences
o John likes coffee. Most of all, John
likes cappuccino and lattes. In
contrast, Mary likes espresso. They
argue about coffee a lot.
Dialogue
 Unlike discourse, multiple speakers,
multiple hearers
o John: can I get a cup of tea?
Jane: cream?
John: Hm?
Jane: do you want your coffee black?
John: oh yes, thanks.

3.  5.1 Introduction
 5.2 Dialogue in communicative development
 5.3 Discourse typology: reciprocity
 5.4 Reciprocity, dialogue, and word order
 5.5 Information structure in discourse

4. introduction
 Dialogue is one of the fundamental structuring principles of all discourse, written and
spoken alike.
 Paradoxically, this is as true in discourse which appears to be created by one person
alone (monologue) as in discourse which is created by two or more (dialogue).

5. Dialogue in communicative development
 There is no hard evidence of the originates of language in prehistoric communities,
but it seems reasonable to assume that speech precedes writing and dialogue
precedes monologue.
 Turn-taking and interaction are among the first communicative skills.
 Parents hold ‘conversations’, even with very young babies. They make a dialogue with
their babies and try to interpret their earliest noises as turns.

6. Discourse typology: reciprocity
 Two fundamental types of discourse: reciprocal, non-reciprocal
o Reciprocal: there is at least a potential for interaction, the sender can monitor and adjust to
it or to put it another way, where the receiver can influence the development of what is
being said.
prototype: face-to-face conversation
o Non-reciprocal: sender and receiver may have no opportunity for interaction
prototype: a book by a dead author
o Pay attention: all discourse is more or less reciprocal, because it is based on assumptions
about receivers.

7.  Reciprocal non-reciprocal
o there are many intermediate cases between them.
o Non-reciprocal discourse is unlike.
book writers and people on the television
Although there is a general tendency of speech to be more reciprocal and written to be less, this is by no
means necessarily true. A monarch’s speech at a state opening of parliament, though spoken, is far from the
reciprocal end of the scale, but a scribbled memo from one teacher to another, though written, may trigger off
a series of replies and counter replies, and is thus highly reciprocal.

8. Reciprocity, dialogue, and word order
 Talking about the reciprocity, connecting it to the mechanism of monologues are often
constructed with the receiver in mind.
 A kind of formal connection in monologic discourse is very intimately related to
dialogue with an imagined receiver.
we might even be justified as regarding the end of each sentence as the point at
which the sender assess the effect on a potential receiver, imagines a reply, and adjusts
the next sentence accordingly.

9. word order
 There are many ways of saying the same thing:
• John ate fish and chips.
• It was John who ate fish and chips.
• Fish and chips John ate.
• Fish is what John ate – and chips.
• John, he eats fish and chips.
these are different ways of arranging the same information. Some of them seem odd, but
actual discourse provides a surprising number.

10. Information structure in discourse
 We can divide information into two types: given and new
given information: the sender thinks the receiver already knows.
new information: the sender thinks the receiver doesn’t already know.
 Given information (topic) precedes new information (comment).
given new
Given information:
Previously mentioned in the text
Inferable from the text or content
Shared world knowledge of writer and reader

11.  There was a man called Ernest Hemingway.
given new
 Ernest Hemingway was born in 1899 at Oak Park, a highly respectable suburb of Chicago.
given new
So what was new in one sentence, becomes given in the next precisely, because it has just
been said.
Communication might be defined as the conversion of new information into given information,
and a successful communicator as a person who correctly assesses the state of knowledge of
his or her interlocutor.
If we misjudge and treat what is given as new, we will be boring; in the reverse case when we
assume the new as given, we will be incomprehensible.

12.  The choices we make about the order of the information in discourse reveal our own
assumptions about the world and about the people we are trying to communicate with.
The truth of those assumptions gives unity to our discourse and success to our
communication. Their falsehood puts it in danger of collapse.