1.

Introduction

The aim of the chapter is to introduce the basics of discourse analysis and language teaching with a
focus on its historical overview, how we could briefly define written and spoken discourses. Later in
the chapter, we discuss how important discourse analysis is in granting students an access to
communicative competence before presenting dimensions of discourse analysis in the classroom.

Before looking at the scope and history of discourse analysis, we could focus on an example to
understand the language and context of language use. Consider the first interview (for a job) in
history. The candidate for the job must have been asked some questions to make sure the employee
could see if the candidate was a good match for the company. However, it might not have been as
easy as it sounds. Imagine the type and formality of language in this interview and compare it to what
we may have in today’s world. Now, focus on the following statement “I have approximately 10 years
of experience in sales and marketing”, which might be an answer to a potential job interview
question in which the candidate is asked to talk about his previous experiences. Nevertheless, how
does it sound if the same sentence could be uttered in a casual conversation between very old friends
who did not see each other for over fifteen years? Although the sentence stays the same, the
function and meaning change depending on the context of language use since language is essentially
"a type of communicative action” (Flowerdew, 2013, p. 2).

2. Scope and a brief historical overview of discourse analysis Often defined as the ability to
exchange information, language is

a unique ability only in humans. Animals, on the other hand, can also communicate with each other;
however, only human language allows creating an infinite variety of utterances with a finite set of
words and rules. From this perspective, language is no t just a way of communication, but also it is a
vehicle to convey meaning which differs according to a specific context. The same utterance might
have a different impact on the listener depending on where, when and how it is uttered. For example,
the sentence “You know where the door is” can imply different meanings when you are directing the
mechanic to repair your broken door, or when you are asking somebody to leave your place in a kind
manner. In other words, what makes the same expression to be interpreted in different ways is the
context where the communication takes place. So, discourse analysis can be defined as the study of
spoken or written language in relation to its social context with reference to where, when, how and
to whom it is uttered (McCarthy, 1991).

In a broader sense Brown and Yule (1983) define discourse analysis as the analysis of language in use
and suggest that language should be studied in an attempt to understand the purposes or functions,
rather than restricting it to the description of linguistic forms only. According to McCar thy (1991),
discourse analysis is the analysis of patterns in which language is structured with reference to
different domains in which people’s utterances might be interpreted in different ways depending on
their contexts such as medical discourse or political discourse.

Johnstone (2002) describes the study of discourse analysis as a useful work in answering questions
which focus on human life and communication, and claims that: “Anyone who wants to understand
human beings has to understand discourse, so that potential uses of discourse analysis are almost
innumerable” (Johnstone, 2002, p, 9). According to her, there are six aspects that shape the discourse
as shown below:

• Discourse is shaped by the world, discourse and discourse shapes the world.

• Discourse is shaped by language, and discourse shapes language.

• Discourse is shaped by participants, and discourse shapes participants.

• Discourse is shaped by prior discourse, and discourse shapes the possibilities of future discourse.

• Discourse is shaped by its medium, and discourse shapes the possibilities of its medium.

• Discourse is shaped by purpose, and discourse shapes possible purposes.

What is context?

Since, discourse analysis focuses on the study of the relationship between language and the contexts
in which the language is produced, defining the notion of “context” might be useful for a better
understanding of both concepts. According to Brown and Yule (1983) context is the environment or
the circumstances or in which language is used. In other words, context can be defined as a
communicative situation of verbal and written interaction which is crucial for the interpretation of the
language used (Van Dijk, 2009). Although it is not easy to fully define the term context, the conditions
under which discourse is being produced, circulated and interpreted can be considered a broad
definition (Blommaert, 2005). To completely understand the discourse of a written or a spoken
language, we need to understand it in its “context.” (Van Dijk, 1985). However, the context in win i he
language is used has often been ignored and taken as a variable of the social environment where the
language is used (Van Dijk, 1997). The users of the language are supposed to produce discourse that
is appropriate in the context. Therefore, context constitutes a reference both for the language
producers and the recipients for a proper mutual understanding (Flowerdew, 2013)

3. A brief history of discourse analysis

The history of discourse analysis can be traced back to the ancient Greeks in the forms of classical
rhetoric, the art of good speaking about

2000 years ago (Van Dijk, 1985). However, rhetoric lost its importance and had to wait until the early
20th century when structural analysis of language was born. Later in the 1960s and 70s, discourse
analysis

began to develop parallel with other social disciplines such as semiotics, sociolinguistics,
anthropology, and pragmatics. Nevertheless, it was Zellig Harris (1952) who first analyzed the
sentence structure with reference to

the links between the text and its social situation, which is today generally considered as the initial
form of discourse analysis although different

from the modern means of discourse analysis. Dell Hymes, in the 1960s, developed the study of
speech from a sociological perspective introduced

by his book “Language in Culture and Society”. Hymes’ framework for studying the language
covered not only the field of anthropology but also the socio-cultural aspects of language which
today is called sociolinguistics. In the 1970s Michael Foucault’s contributions dominated the work on

discourse analysis within the context of social studies after publishing

the book The Archaeology of Language. Rather than focusing on the meaning of a given
discourse," Foucault built the theoretical basis of his theory on the relationship between
language and power. According to Foucault (1972), discourse can be defined more ideologically
as ‘practices which systematically form the objects of which they speak’. Kendall and Wickham
(1999) summarized Foucault’s discourse analysis as a body of statements that are organized in
a regular and systematic way, how those statements are created, what can be said (written)
and what cannot, how spaces in which new statements can be made are created, and making
practices material and discursive at the same time. Foucault interpreted knowledge with social
practices, forms of subjectivity and power relations, regarded today as a political approach to
discourse analysis. Foucault’s work has inspired more studies as a particular way of talking
about and understanding the world in a different sense.

4. Written and Spoken discourses

In an introductory section of such a book, we may need to define

written and spoken discourses briefly (See Chapter 4 for a detailed comparison) and talk about some
of the differences between them. Flowerdew (2013) highlights that in Systemic Functional Linguistics,
there are some contextual parameters with which the textual meaning can be realized by the t
icipants. The first one refers to ‘the field of discourse’

related to the purpose of the communication. ‘The tenor of discourse’ is what is referred to as the
relationship between the participants of the texts. The last one, ‘the mode of discourse’ refers to how
the communication takes place within the discourse. The last one is substantially important for this
section since the textual meanings are closely related to the mode of the text. The mode can be
illustrated by how the language in the text is organized and presented. To give you an example, the
mode of a research article is written andformal, thus it requires a completely different organization
and presentation of language when compared with the narrative with the mode of spoken discourse.
We should also keep in mind that there is also another mode as a result of the combination of the
written and spoken modes such as lectures. In line with this discussion, we could argue that the mode
of the text will have an impact on -and sometimes restrictive towards- how the language is organized
and functions.

Relying on Biber s (1988) discussions, Paltridge (2006) presents seven issues with respect to these
two major modes of texts, i.e., written and spoken. These are respectively, (1) Grammatical intricacy;
(2) Lexical density; (3) Nominalization; (4) Explicitness; (5) Contextualization; (6) Spontaneity; (7)
Repetition, hesitations, and redundancy. We shall define some of these issues briefly here since
Chapter 4 of this book will be dedicated to a detailed discussion of the differences between these two
major modes.

The first issue highlighted by Paltridge (2006) is the grammatical intricacy or complexity of the
language used in these discourses. As can be expected the spoken discourses generally present
relatively shorter and simple clauses/sentences when compared with those of written discourse. In
other words, the language in written discourse is more structurally complex. As an example, in
written discourses, language users could prefer a wide variety of different structural forms, i.e., the
use passive structures in order not to mention or specify the agent of the action or the use of
embedded clauses, whereas spoken discourses could involve simple sentences coordinated via
particular conjunctions, i.e., and, but, so, because, and so on. Nevertheless, Halliday (1989) claims
that it is not always possible to consider spoken discourse less organized and less grammatically
intricate since some spoken discourses, especially academic ones, may include longer and complex
clauses.

Regarding lexical density -known as the ratio of content words to function words-between written
and spoken discourses, Halliday (1989) argues that the number of content words (e.g., nouns, verbs,
adjectives) in a sentence of a written discourse is higher than the function words such as articles and
prepositions. On the other hand, the ratio of content words over function words in spoken discourse
seems to be less; therefore, the spoken discourses can be less dense than the written discourses.
Another issue related to lexical density could be attributed to the some lexical features of spoken
discourses with more pronoun use, lexical repetitions and use of active verbs.

When we turn to another issue highlighted by Paltridge (2006), spontaneity can be attributed to the
different organization of the spoken discourses in comparison with the written discourses. As we have
mentioned above, Halliday (1989) suggested that we cannot claim spoken discourses are
disorganized. However, the organizations in spoken discourses seem to differ with respect to more
incomplete and reformulated sentences as well as potential overlaps and interruptions during the
interaction, which do not occur in written discourses at all. Consider a TV debate, in which three of
the invited speakers discuss the recent developments in educational technologies. Most probably,
there could be cases of chances in the topic regularly. In addition, the speakers could interrupt one
another, which possibly results in overlaps as well. As an advantage of such a context, the participants
are able to benefit from their gestures, embodied actions, body language and even gazes and
intonations to communicate spontaneously; however, this is not possible in written discourse since
the meaning is only conveyed through textual resources.

We can also mention repetition, hesitations, and redundancy issues here to better illustrate how
spoken discourses could be different from written discourses. Closely in line with the spontaneity
issue discussed above, we know that there are cases of repetition in the spoken discourses as a result
of real-time production of the language. As an example, if we consider a casual conversation between
two best friends talking about their trip to Barcelona last year, we could see examples of repetition. In
such a conversation, it is highly likely that we can find examples of hesitations and pauses which
might well be signaled via some fillers, i.e., well, er, you know, hmm and so on.

In this section, we have attempted to zoom in on some of the major differences between the major
discourses by giving examples and explanations. Nevertheless, we may need to talk about the fact
that we are actually unable to categorize these two discourses via ‘a single absolute view’ (Biber,
1988). To exemplify what we mean here, we can consider some academic genres such as research
articles, academic blogs and conference presentations. Although we could see some instances of
repetition, hesitations and redundancy issues in the conference presentations due to the production
of real-time language, there could be some variations between the written modes of the academic
genres of research articles and academic blogs. We can argue that the research articles would be
more tightly packed and well organized than the academic blogs.

5. Discourse analysis and language teaching

Until recently, language teaching was attributed to teaching/leaming grammatical competence.

Olshtain and Celce-Murcia (2001) stressed that the major task of language teaching was to make
students be familiar with grammatically correct and acceptable sentences and produce them.
However, for more than for tyyears now, there has been an interest in identifying language teaching
via communicative competence. In line with this, rather than linking learning to ‘only’ grammatical
terms, it would be more appropriate to connect it to the extent of the learner’s ability to
communicate through language. Flowerdew (2013, p.7) discussed how communicative competence
was divided into subcomponents such as Grammatical competence (linguistic knowledge and skill
about rules of the language); Sociolinguistic competence (linguistic knowledge and skill about
language appropriateness to the context); Strategic competence (skills with regard to overcoming
communication problems). Nevertheless, with the adaptation of Celce-Murcia’s (2007) model,
Discourse competence was added to show how other competencies merge into one another in order
to create a unified text through “the selection, sequencing and arrangement of words, structures, and
utterances” (p.46) as a result of a dynamic process <'I i e subcomponents.

20 • Dr. Bora Demir, Dr. Erdem Akba$

When we consider the limited number of opportunities of EFL learners to be exposed to English and
its systematicity, it could be very hard for them to acquire discourse patterns of the target language
and they may rely on what strategies they have in their first language. Unfortunately, most of the
time what is transferred from their LI into their foreign language could be inappropriate, which can
create difficulties, and even failures, in written or spoken communication. Olshtain and Celce-Murcia
(2001) stated that “it would be ill-advised to teach language via the communicative approach without
relying heavily on discourse analysis” (p.707) since they clearly support the idea that language
leaming/acquisition could only be possible if the learners are provided with various contexts to
process how language functions communicatively. Thus, if we accept language

as a tool for communication, the language classes, teaching materials and activities should be
equipped with the adaptation of discourse and discourse analysis for the sake of promoting
communication. By bringing functions and meaning transmitted within real context, it is possible to
create a teaching/learning atmosphere to boost L2 language awareness. Thus, integrating discourse
analysis could be simply relevant to teaching and learning of the target language. Yet, the question
might be related to how to integrate discourse analysis into teaching and learning.

Cots (1996) proposes an adaptation of a dialogue through which the language teacher might aim to
reflect upon a grammatical structure (i.e., use of copula, auxiliary verbs, and so on). As an example,
the interactional routines could be well-exemplified via videos and dialogues in which the participants
could accomplish a few of the adjacency pairs (i.e., A: Excuse me sir; B. Yes, please?). Since the role of
context is highly significant with respect to making appropriate and relevant choices of grammar,
through discourse-oriented grammar teaching, the teachers could be more successful to make the
learners aware of a number of grammatical choices for a given context Olshtain and Celce-Murcia
(2001) suggest that most of the grammatical choices in English (i.e., the use of sentence position
adverbs, active voice or passive voice, and modality) are context-shaped; thus, the appropriate
selection and context-sensitive production might

be related to “a much larger process in which semantic, pragmatic and discourse appropriateness is
judged” (p.714). Therefore, the knowledge of discourse features of different grammatical forms could
only be achieved with the help of discourse integration into language classrooms.

Another significant aspect of language teaching that requires a discourse perspective can be the
teaching/learning of vocabulary. As is widely-accepted, the meaning of words/phrases could be more
comprehensible if they are presented th, h discourse. Hence, the context-shaped meanings of these
vocabulary items become easy to grasp for the learners. To give you an example, we can consider the
synonymous pairs of‘ill’ and ‘sick’ (see Chapter 12 for the activity). Although their basic dictionary
meanings signal that they have close meanings, apparently, even with the help of concordancing in
COCA, we are able to identify relatively discrete meanings and uses when they are examined in the
contextual frame. This already indicates that the teaching/learning of vocabulary out of context is not
helpful; therefore, the teaching materials and activities should include contextualized examples of the
target words and the learners could be asked to practice the semantically discrete uses of these
items. For the teaching/learning of some particular words such as person deixis, demonstrative
pronouns, Olshtain and Celce-Murcia (2001) highlight that the interpretation is feasible with the
examination of prior discourse rather than presenting them with non-contextualized examples.
As McCarthy (1991) stated, the integration of discourse and discourse analysis simply paves the way
for the observations of grammatical regularities, how the texts are structured and the language
functions within contextual frames. Throughout this book, in almost all of the chapters, you will be
able to see many examples of how discourse and discourse analysis can be integrated into language
teaching via a number of practical activities and suggestions. To give you a taste of what it looks like,
the following section is reserved for a discussion on how to integrate discourse analysis into the
classroom.

6. Dimensions of discourse analysis in the classroom

As already discussed in the previous section, using discourse analysis in language teaching can be an
alternative way of teaching all aspects of language including linguistic skills, communicative
competence, culture etc. However, integrating discourse based activities in language teaching
requires teachers to have a different point of view for teaching a foreign language (Cots, 1996). The
ultimate goal of bringing discourse based activities should be developing the learners’ communicative
competence in the target language. According to Hymes (1972), a learner‘s capacity to communicate
in the target language involves not only the knowledge of grammar but also the ability to use the
linguistic knowledge of a foreign language in various communicative situations. Therefore, designing
activities by using authentic materials enables language learners to practice the original use of the
target language. By presenting original situations, language teachers can enrich their curriculum by
the use of discourse approaches. One of the key challenges for language learners in EFL contexts is
the limited exposure and experience with the target language. Hence, language tea. i , s should be in
an attempt to incorporate discourse structures into their teaching practices to offer their students a
variety of authentic language use. The following are examples for a discourse based language
teaching activity aimed at developing the learners’ communicative competence in English. Both
activities were developed as examples for prospective language teachers to give ideas about possible
uses of discourse analysis in their classrooms.

7. Conclusion

As the introductory chapter of this book, this chapter tried to define discourse analysis and its scope
for language teaching. As discussed in the first part, human communication is based on some
semantic codes that are embedded in their languages. Hence, interpreting a text requires the
knowledge of specific details such as the speakers, the listeners, the place, and the aim of the
language produced. In other words, understanding what is meant by an utterance relies on other
contextual cues rather than only grammatical competence and/or linguistic competence. In this
sense, all the above mentioned factors constitute the notion of context’ as the core term for
discourse analysis. Therefore, whether spoken or written, the language produced under any
circumstances is meaningful when it is discussed within its unique social setting along with its
linguistic representations.

This chapter also aimed at underlying the importance of discourse analysis for language learning
contexts. It is generally believed that knowing a language requires grammatical, sociolinguistics, and
strategic competencies in the target language. However, we believe that a foreign language can be
fully utilized, either written or spoken, by understanding the dynamic structure of discourse
competence.

Since EFL learners have limited chances of exposure to the target language, it is not always relatively
easy for them to have access to acquire discourse patterns of the English language. As a result of this,
EFL learners are often likely to fail in written or spoken communication. Therefore, foreign language
teachers should try to find ways to demonstrate the use of the target language in more authentic
contexts. By integrating discourse structures into their teaching practices, language teachers would
enable their learners to practice the target language in a more effective way.

Therefore, designing activities by using authentic materials enables language learners to practice the
original use of the target language. By presenting original situations, language teachers can enrich
their curriculum by the use of discourse approaches. One of the key challenges for language learners
in EFL contexts is the limited exposure and experience with the target language. Hence, language
teachers should make an attempt to incorporate discourse structures into their teaching practices to
offer their students a variety of authentic language use. This teaching approach will in turn help the
language teachers to enrich their teaching practices and to present more interesting instruction for
their students as well.

To conclude, integrating discourse analysis into language teaching could be useful in creating a more
motivating classroom setting in which the learners will have the awareness of the target language and
will acknowledge the genuine pleasure of learning a foreign language. Hence, language teachers
should be in an attempt to design authentic materials and use the original language to boost their
students’ foreign language skills.

Ch2

1. Introduction

There are several basic concepts in discourse analysis. These concepts include (a) background
information (schemata), (b) register, (c) coherence, (d) cohesion, (e) lexis, (f) theme and rheme, (g)
stress, rhythm, intonation, and tone, (h) turn-taking, and (i) speech acts. These basic concepts can
help to understand discourse analysis better because they can provide the theoretical background
necessary to understand how discourse analysis works and is made in written and spoken texts.

1.1. Background Knowledge (Schemata)

Think of a child who has not seen any animals before. When this child sees a dog for the first time,
he/she learns that it is an animal, barks, and has four legs and one tail. This learning creates his/her
knowledge about animals. When he/she sees another animal such as a cat with four legs and one tail,
he/she associates this new knowledge with the existing knowledge related to dogs in his/her mind by
activating the existing knowledge. He/ she understands that the cat is an animal like a dog with four
legs and one tail. Yet, when the cat meows, he/she can understand that cats and dogs are different
animals because dogs bark, and cats meow. Therefore, this new learning becomes a different, but
related part of his/her knowledge about animals.

In the example above, the new learning is constructed on the previous learning. That is, the
knowledge of the child related to dogs serves as back ground knowledge for when he/she learns
about cats. The existing knowl edge related to dogs in the child’s memory is a “schema” which is
defined as information or knowledge that is stored or exists in a person’s memory (Baker & Ellece,
2011; Yule, 2010). Its plural form is schemas or schemata.

Schemas or schemata are significant to learn because they serve as background knowledge (Brown &
Yule, 1988) that people use to relate to newly learned information (Carrell, 1983). When new learning
is related to the existing knowledge in people’s memories, they can understand new learning (Cook,
1997), and it becomes a part of their schemas or schemata (Carrell, 1983). Therefore, schemas or
schemata help people to interpret and make assumptions about what they see, hear, experience, and
read (Baker & Ellece, 2011; Brown & Yule, 1988; Cook, 1997; Yule, 2010). To illustrate, think of a five-
year-old child who likes to watch cartoons. One of his favorite cartoons is Popeye the Sailor Man. He
watches this cartoon in Turkish, so he has the schemata for Temel Reis, Kabasakal, and Safinaz. When
he reads the following paragraph about the original characters, he comes across their original English
names for the first time. He/she may not understand who is who.

Popeye the Sailor Man is a famous cartoon, and millions of children like to watch it. There are three
main characters in the cartoon. The first main character is Popeye. He is a sailor and struggles with
the other male main character. His name is Bluto. He is bigger than Popeye and has a long beard.
Popeye and Bluto struggle with each other for Olive Oyl because both of them are in love with her,
but Olive Oyl likes Popeye.

However, as the second paragraph below indicates, he/she rewrites the paragraph by changing
Popeye, Bluto, and Olive Oyl with Temel Reis, Ka- basakal, and Safinaz, so he/she relates the new
names to what they have already known about these characters.

Temel Reis is a famous cartoon, and millions of children like to watch it There are three main
characters in the cartoon. The first main character is Temel Reis. He is a sailor and struggles with the
other male main character. His name is Kabasakal. He is bigger than Temel Reis and has a long beard.
Temel Reis and Kabasakal struggle with each other for Safinaz because both of them are in love with
her, but Safinaz lilces Temel Reis.

By doing so, his new learning (i.e. learning the names of the characters in English) becomes a part of
his existing schemata, so he can understand the text in English better.

1.2. Register

Specific situations and contexts require the use of language that is rel evant to those conditions. This
includes the use of specific sentence struc tures and of specific vocabulary as the example emails
below show. Using language relevant to specific contexts and situations is known as “register” (Baker
& Ellece, 2011; Ghadessy, 1994; Johnstone, 2008; Yule, 2010). Regis ters are not limited to formal and
informal emails. Registers can be found in different aspects of life such as law, medicine, science,
technology, and the classroom. Language use varies according to the features of these as pects of life.
The emails below illustrate the register.

1.3. Coherence

That a text is semantically meaningful and makes sense to readers is called “coherence” (Baker &
Ellece, 2011; Widdowson, 2007; Yule, 2010). Coherence is an important aspect of writing and
speaking because it helps writers and speakers to convey their messages to their readers and
listeners in a meaningful way so that they can comprehend the messages of writ ers and speakers.
The examples below illustrate how coherence works in a paragraph.

Yesterday was an interesting day for me. Jessica visited her uncle. It was sunny. A lot of people went
on a picnic. Suddenly, it started to rain. Adrian helped the old man to carry his luggage. The police
caught the thief. Children shouted at each other. Everybody got in their cars and left the park. Jessica
called me.

When the paragraph above is read, readers may not understand it very easily because it is not
meaningful. That is, it does not make sense. The sentences are not connected with each other. The
sentences are written without following an order. Therefore, this paragraph is not logically con
structed.

My close friend, Jessica called me yesterday and suggested going on a picnic because the weather
was sunny. I accepted her invitation, and we went on a picnic in the central park. When we arrived,
we saw that a lot of people were also picnicking in the park. While we were to, it suddenly started to
rain heavily, so everybody, including us, had to get in our cars and leave the park.

Unlike the first paragraph, the second paragraph is meaningful be cause readers can understand the
connotation of it, and, and every sen tence in the paragraph is logically connected. It makes sense
when it is read. Therefore, the second paragraph is coherent.

1.4. Cohesion

A paragraph makes sense syntactically to its readers if it has cohesion. That is, the parts of a
paragraph should be linked with each other through devices such as pronouns and conjunctions. This
is called “cohesion” (Baker & Ellece, 2011; Widdowson, 2007; Yule, 2010). The paragraphs
below are examples of a paragraph with and without cohesion.

Text 1.

Gobekli Tepe is in $anliurfa, Turkey. The oldest temple is in the world. The history is claimed to date
back to 11.600 BC. Hunter and gatherer tribes constructed. Hunter and gatherer tribes are considered
as primitive people. People could not construct complex buildings as Gobekli Tepe. The signs of a
developed civilization are seen. T-shaped columns could be built, and animal shapes were carved on
those columns. People are surprised. Many want to visit.

When the paragraph above is read, it is obvious that the parts of the paragraph are not linked with
each other through using devices such as pronouns and conjunctions. That is, the parts of the
paragraph lack the necessary connections to each other, which affects the meaningfulness of the
paragraph negatively to some extent. Thus, this paragraph does not have cohesion.

Text 2.

Gobekli Tepe is in §anliurfa, Turkey. It is considered to be the oldest temple in the world because its
history is claimed to date back to 11.600 BC. Besides this, hunter and gatherer tribes constructed it,
although hunter and gatherer tribes are considered as primitive people who could not construct
buildings as complex as those in Gobekli Tepe. The signs of a developed civilization are seen in it since
T-shaped columns were built and animal shapes had been curved on those columns by a developed
civilization. Due to these reasons, people are surprised, so they want to visit it.

Unlike the first form of the paragraph, the parts in the second para graph are linked with each other
through (a) subject pronouns such as it and they, (b) conjunctions such as because, yet, and since, (c)
relative pronouns such as who, and (d) repetition such as a developed civilization. The connectedness
of the parts in the second paragraph contributes to its meaningfulness. Therefore, this paragraph has
cohesion.

1.5. Lexis

Vocabulary is an important part of language learning because it en ables speakers and writers to
convey their messages and readers and lis teners to comprehend those messages. The vocabulary of
a language in cludes single words such as read and building, collocations including do homework and
take a risk, and idiomatic and formulaic expressions such as break a leg and miss the boat. All of these
components of vocabulary within a language constitute the lexis of the language. That is, lexis is “all
of the words in a language, the entire vocabulary of a language” (Barcroft, Sunderman, & Schmitt,
2011, p. 571).

1.6. Theme and rheme

Theme shows what the topic is in a sentence, while rheme is the rest of the sentence and indicates
how a speaker/writer develops a theme and what he/she says about the theme (Baker & Ellece,
2011; Halliday, 1994; Widdowson, 2007). In the sentence, “Adrian became very happy because of the
surprise birthday party,” the topic of the sentence is Adrian, and the rest of the sentence (becoming
happy due to the surprise birthday par ty) informs readers/listeners about how the topic is
developed. In another sentence “Suzan really liked the book she read,” Suzan is the topic of the
sentence, and the rest of the sentence (really liking the book she read) in dicates how the topic is
developed. In these sample sentences, Adrian and Suzan are used as the topics or themes of these
sentences, while becoming happy due to the surprise birthday party and really liking the book she
read act as the “rhemes” of the sentences which show how speakers/writers develop themes and
what they say about themes.

1.7. Tense, aspect, and modality

Verbs explain actions or states and are significant to understand tense, aspect, and modality. Time is
the central concept in determining the tense of an action or a state because tense is defined as
expressing time or time re lations linguistically or grammatically (Baker & Ellece, 2011; Huddleston,

1988). Time starts with the present moment, and the place of an action or a state in time determines
the tense of the action or state (Baker & Ellece,

2011). To illustrate:

1. I visited Rome in 2019. The tense of this action (my visiting Rome) is past tense because its time
expression (2019) refers to a point that is be fore now considering the year we are in.

2. I visit my uncle in Italy every year. The tense of this action (my gen erally visiting my uncle in Italy) is
present tense since its time expression refers to a time period which covers before now, now, and
after now con sidering the year we are in. Also, the time expression (every year) shows that this
action is repeated regularly.

Aspect can be considered as a grammatical category related to verbs and refers to “the way we look
at an action or state in terms of the passing of time” (Leech, 1997, p. 53). The passing of time can
refer to the duration and completeness of the action or state. The following examples can help to
illustrate this explanation.

Modality expresses verbs in terms of several points such as the pos sibility and necessity of the
actions or states that verbs express (Baker & Ellece, 2011; Huddleston, 1988). For instance, in the
sentence “I may not join you,” the modal verb “may” adds the meaning of possibility to the action
that the verb (join) expresses. In another sentence “You should call your uncle before it is too late,”
the modal verb “should” adds the meaning of necessity to the action which the verb (call) expresses.

1.8. Stress, rhythm, intonation, and tone

To “pronounce some syllables with more force than others” (Leech, 1997) is called stress. Stress
makes the syllable pronounced with more force noticeable (Ota, 2016). For example, in the word
“important,” the stressed syllable is -por. When it is pronounced, it sounds louder than -im and -tant.
In addition to syllables, words can be stressed or unstressed in sentences. This is related to the
rhythm in a language because “rhythm is carried out by a succession of beats, occurring at more or
less regular intervals” (Halliday, 1994). That is, rhythm in a language depends on how the stressed
and unstressed words are used in a sentence.
According to Ota (2016), intonation is related to the use of pitch in speaking. That is, intonation is
“the way your voice moves up and down in speaking” (Leech, 1997, p. 216). That the voice of a
person goes up and down in a sentence may affect the meaning of that sentence. For example, a
listener can understand that the speaker is not sure about the information given in the tag question
“he was at home, wasn’t he?” if the intonation of the speaker rises in the tag question. Yet, if the
speaker uses a falling in tonation in the tag question, the listener can understand that the speaker
knows the answer of the tag question and asks the listener to confirm the answer. The volume of the
speaker’s voice (the loudness or quietness of the speaker’s voice) is known as the tone of the
speaker’s voice.

1.9. Turn-taking

Arthur: You did not come to school. Why didn’t you come to school yesterday? Jason: I could not
wake up in the morning.

Arthur: Did you go to bed late? Jason: Yes.

Arthur: Why did you sleep late?

Jason: I have an important project that I have to finish and submit today. I stayed up late last night to
complete it. I forgot to set the alarm, so I could not wake up.

Arthur: I see. I hope you could finish your project. Jason: Yes, I could.

When the dialogue between Arthur and Jason is examined, it is ap parent that Arthur starts the
conversation, Jason waits to start his part of the conversation until Arthur completes his sentences,
and Arthur waits to start his part of the conversation till Jason finishes his sentences. The dialogue
illustrates that Arthur and Jason speak several times in turns. Speaking at one time in turns is named
“turn-taking” (Baker & Ellece, 2011). Turn-taking exists in the sample conversation between Arthur
and Jason, organizes the conversation (Baker & Ellece, 2011), and makes the conversation work (Yule,
2010).

1.10. Speech Acts

When a person speaks in a language, he/she performs an action with his/her statements. Such
actions include apologizing, thanking, request ing, and warning. Performing actions in saying
something is called “speech acts” (Cutting, 2002; Yule, 1996, 2010). For example, when a person says
“Be careful. You may fall!” he/she warns another person about a possible danger. When he/she says
“Could you please give me your pencil?” he/she requests another person to do something for
him/her. In the first example, the speech act the speaker performs is warning, while it is requesting in
the second example.

There are three tvpes of speech acts (Yule, 1996): locutionary, illo cutionary, and perlocutionarv
speech acts. Locutionary act is the act of producing a meaningful utterance or a sentence,
illocutionary7 act is the communicative purpose of the produced utterance, and perlocutionary act is
the effect of the communicative purpose of the produced utterance on a listener (Yule, 1996). To
illustrate, when a teacher say7s “the classroom is very cold," he/she produces a meaningful utterance
related to the cold ness in the classroom, which is an example of a locutionary act. Yet, he/she may
have a communicative purpose in this utterance. This communicative purpose can be that someone
in the classroom should close the windows, which is an example of an illocutionary7 act. After the
students hear this utterance, the students sitting near the windows close the windows as a result of
the communicative purpose of the utterance of the teacher, which is an example of a perlocutionary
act

2. Conclusion

This chapter gives information about (a) schemata, (b) register, (c) coherence, (d) cohesion, (e) lexis,
(f) theme and rheme, (g) tense, aspect, and modality, (h) stress, rhythm, intonation, and tone, (i)
turn-taking, and (j) speech acts as the basic concepts in discourse analysis. Understanding these basic
concepts is significant to understand the role of discourse anal ysis in teaching a foreign language in
terms of speaking, reading, writing, listening, grammar, and vocabulary.

CH3

INTRODUCTION

As Discourse Analysis (DA) deals with language in use, the notion of text can be regarded as one of
the core elements of it. In terms of DA stud ies, a text provides a kind of a language framework which
presents lin guistic structures in an organized way. In the scope of linguistics, defining the terra text is
a complicated issue since a wide spectrum of definitions have been offered by different researchers
so far. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, some linguists viewed text as abstract and concrete on the
sentence level. On the other hand, particularly text linguists were later prompted to include semantic
and pragmatic concerns in terms of explaining abstract and isolated sentences (de Beaugrande,
2011). However, differentiating the notion of text and “discourse” has always been a difficult issue in
lin guistics as two terms have remained as overlapping concepts. Although no clear-cut distinction
between “text” and “discourse” has been suggested so far, it would be enlightening to examine their
similar and distinct aspects more closely. In this sense, this chapter firstly aims to clarify the terminol
ogy related to the notion of “text” by presenting various definitions sug gested in the literature. This
chapter highlights the relationship between the notions of text, discourse, and context, which are
indeed significant components of Discourse Analysis.

Ln everyday life, it is possible for people to encounter different text types in certain contexts during
the day. A person can start a day by read ing or listening to news, or reading and writing e-mails.
Throughout the day, one can prepare a shopping list, listen to a song, have a casual conver sation
with a friend, and maybe end the day by reading a novel, or watch ing a movie, etc. People actually
carry out communicative tasks by means of using spoken or written discourse while engaging in these
text types. In this sense, Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), which was developed as a theory and a
methodology, aims to identify how people use language in daily life and how distinct forms of usage
influence the structure of lan guage (Figueiredo, 2010). According to SFL, other important text
varieties are genre and register which respond to context of culture and context of situation,
respectively. In view of that, it is important to examine different text types that are used in different
contexts for communicative purposes as every text has a distinct feature in terms of content, form
and function. Thus, exposing learners to different language organizations through dis tinct texts/
genres would enrich the language teaching process.

This chapter will also focus on the classification of different text types according to their features and
purposes. Additionally, readers will be pro vided with sample activities depending on how texts can
be used in lan guage classrooms.

1. The Notion of Text

A text is defined as “a finite ordered set of textually complicated par tial signs of various sorts and
functions” (Hartmann (1968, p. 220), “co herent sequence of sentences” (Isenberg, 1970, p.l), “any
passage, spoken or written, of whatever length, that does form a unified whole” (Halliday & Hasan,
1976), “the verbal record of a communicative act” (Brown & Yule, 1983, p. 6) ,”a naturally occurring
manifestation of language, i.e. as a com municative language event in a context” (Beaugrande &
Dressier, 1986, p. 33), “an actual use of language, as distinct from a sentence which is an abstract unit
of linguistic analysis” (Widdowson, 2007, p.4), and “anything which involves a recognized language
system (not just writing but speech also)” (Baker & Ellege, 2011, p. 150).

Taking these definitions into consideration, it is apparent that a text is one of the true representations
of spoken or written language. It is also notable that the main subject of text includes connected
language forms which could be examined as a whole. For this reason, isolated sentences cannot be
considered as a text. Accordingly, Halliday & Hasan (1985, p. 10) define the text as ‘language that is
functional’ which works in a certain context in contrast to any separated words or sentences. In
addition, they view text as both product and process by expressing that:

“The text is a product in the sense that it is an output, something that can be recorded and studied,
having a certain construction that can be represented in systematic terms. It is a process in the sense
of a continuous process of se mantic choice, a movement through the network of meaning potential,
with each set of choices constituting the environment for a further set” (Halliday & Hasan, 1985, p.
10).

Here, we can talk about a dynamic relationship between text pro ducers and text receivers. This
process can be regarded as interactive and communicative. The message, which is conveyed in a
spoken or written form, is accepted and interpreted by the text receiver, building a bridge of
communication between speakers/ writers and listeners/readers. In daily life, people use a variety of
language structures such as e-mails, advertise ments, news, menus, warning notices, conversations or
songs. Actually, all these language organizations have specific communicative functions. These
functions can be represented by either a spoken text (for example, a telephone conversation, a song,
a lecture, a shopping transaction, etc.) or a written text (for example, personal letter, shopping list,
scientific article, magazine, etc.). Hence, the text is not barely a part of linguistics, rather a case of
human action, interaction, communication and cognition (Xod- jaeva & Kizi, 2020). As each text
recipient has a diverse background, so cial and cultural beliefs and worldview, a text is identified in
relation to its 52 • Dr. Sinem DONDAR

purpose. At this point, the text recipients interpretation becomes different from the others. Thus, a
text gains communicative value when the message it tries to transmit begins to make sense to its
recipient.

2. Text and Discourse

Text and discourse are broad terms which are used interchangeably in linguistics. As identifying these
two notions has been fuzzy, linguists have defined “text” and “discourse” from different perspectives.
In this sense, Crystal (1987) highlights that:

“Discourse analysis focuses on the structure of naturally occurring spoken language, as found in such
'discourses’ as conversations, interviews, com mentaries, and speeches. Text analysis focuses on the
structure of written lan guage, as found in such ‘texts’ as essays, notices, road signs, and chapters.
But this distinction is not clear-cut, and there have been many other uses of these labels. In
particular, ‘discourse’ and ‘text’ can be used in a much broader sense to include all language units
with a definable communicative function, whether spoken or written. Some scholars talk about
‘spoken or written dis course’; others about ‘spoken or written text’” (Crystal, 1987, p.116).
It is apparent that some linguists consider the two terms as the same, whereas some others
differentiate them. For instance, according to Harris (1952), both text and discourse refer to the
language that is produced. Ac cordingly, Stubbs (1983) does not distinguish “text” and “discourse”
either and states that while discourse is related with length a text can be very short (cited in
Widdowson, 2004).

On the other hand, for some linguists the terms should be contem plated in isolation. As expressed by
Fairclough (1992, 2003), the notion of discourse is used as both spoken and written language within
the frame work of linguistics. Apart from giving importance to the characteristics of higher level
structures, the term ‘discourse’ highlights communication between speaker and listener or between
writer and reader. In this sense, speech and writing, as well as the situational context of language use
is produced and interpreted as a process. Here, the term ‘text’ refers to the process of text
production in terms of written or spoken ‘product’, and ‘discourse’ refers to language usage in
different social situations such as ‘newspaper discourse’, ‘classroom discourse’, ‘advertising discourse’,
etc. The notion of “text” can also be viewed from a wider perspective since shopping lists and
newspaper articles are considered as ‘texts’ with re gard to written and printed texts. In this respect,
television programmes, web-pages, transcripts of oral conversations and interviews are also con
sidered as ‘texts’. On the other hand, ‘discourse’ can be used as a general and abstract term which is
actually a specific language use in a social envi ronment that is strongly linked with other
components.

Widdowson (2007) also views “text and “discourse” as distinct terms. According to him, no matter
how easy or difficult, every text is the product of a language use which is aimed to refer to something
for some intention. In this respect, texts are produced to receive a message, to state thoughts and
beliefs, to provide clarification, or to make people do something, etc. On the other hand, this
communicative intention can be regarded as dis course which highlights the text and activates its
production at first. How ever, text recipients have to make interpretations of the text as a discourse
which are meaningful to them. This means that texts do not possess mean ing but intercede through
discourses. Therefore, discourse can be used “to refer both to what a text producer meant by a text
and what a text means to the receiver” (Widdowson, 2007, p.7).

In view of the expressions made by different scholars, it is essential to consider that texts require to
mediate with discourses in order to provide communication. Although what is said can be textualized,
different inter pretations may appear according to the intentions of readers or listeners. For this
reason, a text gains communicative value when it meets discourse. Hence, it would be appropriate to
study these terms in relation to each other.

3. Text and Context

In its simple form, context refers to “the ‘environment’, or ‘circum stances’ in which language is used”
(Brown & Yule: 1983, p. 25). Here, the ‘environment or circumstances’ actually determines the way
readers or lis teners interpret the text. Thus, discourse obviously relies on text and con text (Cornish,
2009). This means that without recognizing the context sur rounding the text, it is difficult to identify
the meaning of the text producer (Martin, 2001). So, discourse is identified as ‘language plus context’
in its simplest form. At this point, the context is the element which is implied during language use,
which involves experiences, assumptions and beliefs of people, and changes according to the
relationships between interlocu tors while constructing social practices in the real world (Woods,
2006).

The context is created by the text to the extent that the text is created by the context (Halliday &
Hasan, 1985). Therefore, meaning emerges from the friction between the two. In this respect, how
language functions in context is at the core of recognizing the relationship between what is expressed
and what is comprehended in spoken and written texts (Paltridge, 2006). Hence, the context of the
situation is significant in terms of identifying the meaning of the utterances of a specific text
producer. According to Halliday (1999), the notion of context involves three layers: context of culture,
context of sit uation and co-text. Context of culture and context of situation are compo nents outside
of the language. On the other hand, co-text, also considered as a linguistic context, is related with
elements inside the language. As the relationship between language and context is strongly
interdependent, the choice of language is determined by context (Hu, 2010).

In the light of these expressions, it is clearly seen that the notions of text, context and discourse have
interwoven relationships in terms of iden tifying language in use. Cornish (2009) displays this
relationship as fol lows:

Text

The connected sequence of verbal signs and non verbal signals in terms of which discourse is co-
constructed by the discourse partners in the act of communication.

Context

The context (the domain of reference of a given text, the context, the genre of speech event in
progress, the discourse constructed upstream, the socio cultural environment assumed by the text,
and the specific utterance situation at hand) is subject to a continuous process of construction and
revision as the discourse unfolds. It is by invoking an appropriate context that the addressee or reader
may create discourse on the basis of the connected sequence of textual cues that is text.

Discourse

The product of the hierarchical, situated sequence of utterance, indexical, propositional and
illocutionary acts carried out in pursuit of some communicative goal, and integrated within a given
context.

According to this relationship, text enables one to build the related language construction in which it
finds a place in a certain domain, that is context, and then discourse develops by conveying a
communicative purpose in this context. Van Dijk (2008) also theorizes and identifies the relation
between ‘text’ and ‘context’ by considering ‘discourse’ within the framework of the context. He puts
forward that contexts not only constitute the situational environment in terms of discourse, but they
are also forms of communicative events. Therefore, discourse can be assumed as action within
contexts in which participants’ continuing actions are reflected indexically.

4. Text Types

As discussed earlier, texts are the organizational language patterns used for both spoken or written
purposes. So, every text producer has an intention while producing text in order to reach their
recipients. The text producer’s intention can be best transmitted clearly by selecting conven tional
text types. In this sense, text types have developed as messages that are designed for being used in
particular communicative environments (Sager, 1997).

The term text type is defined as “a conceptual framework which en ables us to classify texts in terms
of communicative intentions serving an overall rhetorical purpose” (Hatim & Mason 1990, p. 140).
Linguists have categorised various textual surface forms in relation to particular dis course types and
purposes (Newmark, 1988; de Beaugrande & Dressier, 1981; Hatim & Mason, 1990). Of those
classifications, Werlich (1976) de veloped a classification in which cognitive factors that extend across
ex ternal language functions and analyses of communicative environment or purpose are involved
(Esser, 2014). The categorisation involved five types in relation to cognitive and rhetoric features of
texts: description, narra tion, exposition, argumentation and instruction.

As Table 2 shows, texts belonging to the same type share the common linguistic patterns. In this
context, different text types take on a distinct identity. For example, narrative texts are more engaged
in real-world or fictional events and time. In this sense, language is expressed by either present or
past tense depending on the time of the information. It is un doubtedly that a text from a newspaper,
which is about an accident that happened yesterday, will include past tense sentences. On the other
hand, as instructive texts focus on giving information about how to carry out a task through
instructions, instructive statements are given step by step or chronological order which are actually
conveyed through the use of pres ent tense. Thus, it is evident that text types determine the linguistic
struc ture and rhetorical organization of a specific text.

4.1. Text Types and Genres

Another related term about text identification, "genre” is also used in linguistic studies. However, in
the literature, these terms are also puzzling to differentiate. So, it would be reasonable to examine
“text types and “genres” independently. As stated by Santini;

“From a theoretical point of view, the inferential model makes a clear-cut sep aration between the
concepts of'text types’ and ‘genres’. Text types are rhetor- ical/discourse patterns dictated by the
purpose of a text. For example, when the purpose of a text producer is to narrate, the narration text
type is used. On the contrary, genres are cultural objects created by a society or a communi ty,
characterised by a set of linguistic and non-linguistic conventions, which can be fulfilled, personalized,
transgressed, colonized, etc., but that are none theless recognized by the members of the society and
community that have created them, raising predictable expectations. For example, what we expect
from a personal blog is diary-form narration of the self, where opinions and comments are freely
expressed, and so on” (2006, p. 309)

As discussed earlier, text types correspond to classification of texts which are grouped in relation to
their similarities from the perspective of their linguistic constructions (Biber, 1988). So, it can be put
forward that text types (also seen in Werlich s classification) are generally designed ac cording to
cognitive aspects, whereas genres are intended to be constructed depending on social purposes. In
this context, a genre is defined as a socially confirmed way of language use about a specific type of
social activity (Fair clough, 1995). Swales also makes a similar definition regarding genre as a class of
communicative events, the members of which share a particular set of communicative purposes
which are recognized by the expert members of the parent discourse community’ (1990, p. 58). In
daily life, many texts are used for a specific intention in a specific environment such as a song, an
email, an advertisement, or an instruction manual, etc. that can be cat egorised as genres (Trosborg,
1997). It is well-known that all these different kinds of genres are used for accomplishing
communicative purposes. According to Anderson & Anderson (1997), text types are mainly divided
into two categories as literary and factual. Each category also includes various text types with
different purposes as shown in the following table:

As seen in Anderson & Anderson’s classification (1997), each text has characteristic features in terms
of generic organizations and grammatical structures. Thus, these features enable us to identify social
functions of the genre belonging to each text type (Lee, 2001). For example, literary texts involve
different genres such as a poem, shor t story, a comedy, or film scripts. On the other hand, factual
text type examples can include genres such as internet websites, debates, recipes, reports, or book
reviews.
Paltridge (1996), also distinguishes genres and text types (based on Hammond, Burns, Joyce,
Brosnan, & Gerot, 1992) as follows:

Genre: Recipe Personal letter Advertisement Police Report Student Essay Formal Letter Formal Letter
News Item Health Brochure Student Assignment Biology Textbook Film Review

Text Type: Procedure Anecdote Description Description Exposition Exposition Problem-Solution

Recount Procedure Recount Report Review

As it is also clear from the above identification, texts with the same communicative purposes can be
examined under the category gen re. Genres such as news item and student assignment can belong
to the same text type; at the same time a genre such as formal letter can be related with two differ
ent text types, namely exposition and problem-solution (Paltridge, 1996). In view of this, genre can be
used to label types of spoken or written discourse. For instance, letters, student essays, textbooks are
classified as written genres; whereas, interviews, conversations, lectures, speeches are included in
spoken genre types which belong to different text types.

Additionally, each genre has a specific linguistic structure according to its communicative purpose.
For example, advertisements generally in volve linguistic forms that are both attractive and
memorable to reach its audience. (Woods, 2006). Hence, conveying intensive messages to draw at
tention and persuade the customers is a general feature of advertisements as a genre. It can be
observed that although other personal pronouns are used, ‘you or your’ are the most common and
striking seen in the lan guage structure of advertisements. Moreover, the use of adjectives, ellipsis,
and imperatives are the most frequently used expressions that are found in this genre type (Cook,
2001).

4.2. Genre, Discourse and Register

Especially, during and since the 1980s, the concept of genre has gained significance and genre
analysis has been used in language studies. In this respect, genre analysis is considered as an element
of discourse analysis. Here, discourse analysis is used as a general term for analysing texts as a
practical way of analysis. On the other hand, genre analysis is particularly efficient for engaging both
spoken and written texts by focusing on the characteristic features of different texts (Dudley- Evans &
St. John, 1998). Hence, different text types can be categorized by considering certain fea tures such as
content, language, purpose, and structure. Furthermore, SFL also emerged for analysing texts and
their contexts of use, which is a meth od and an approach developed by Halliday and his colleagues
(Halliday, 1985; Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004). This view aims to reveal how people use language and
how language is constructed in different usages (Eggins, 1994). Hence, the notion of context is
significant for SFL. According to this view, language is used for accomplishing communicative tasks in
partic ular contexts. Consequently, texts rely on the contexts in which they are used. Thus, both SFL
and genre analysis suggest the opportunity of exam ining texts in their social context in the sense that
properties such as the general function of the text and communication between text receiver and
text producer are linked to meaning of the text (Wallace, 1999).

SFL embraces the terms register and genre for comprehending context in texts. A register is defined
as “a variety of language, corresponding to a variety of situations” (Halliday, 1985, p. 38). At this
point, Halliday & Hasan (1985: 12) suggest that context of situation involves three factors as field,
tenor, and mode:

a. The field of discourse is related to what a text is about and refers to 'what is happening, to the
nature of the social action that is taking place’.
b. The tenor of discourse is about 'the participants, their status, and their roles’.

c. The mode of discourse deals with 'what part the language is playing, what it is that the participants
are expecting the language to do for them in that situation’.

Considering the statements above, the relationship between genre, register, and language can be
visualized as follows:

In this case, the relationship shows that discourse is a way to reflect language in spoken or written
texts. Genre is formed by the effect of con text of culture on language since genre is associated with
culturally-specific intentions (Imtihani, 2010). Register, on the other hand, is affected by social
identity that is shaped in context of the situation.

5. Using Text Types in Language Classrooms

It is well-known that language classrooms become more effective and communicative when language
teachers give opportunities to their stu dents to use the target language more in the classroom. Thus,
discourse analysis is a useful guide for enabling language teachers to conduct their courses by
bringing language-in use activities which is beneficial for en hancing spoken and written language
performance. Hedge (2000) empha sizes that one of the important implications of communicative
language ability for teaching and learning can be accomplished by discourse compe tence as language
learners can realize and produce contextualized written texts in a range of genres, and also deal with
authentic texts. In parallel with this view, Nunan (1999, p. 79) also points out that authentic texts
enable learners to 'experience language as it is used beyond the classroom'. Moreover, he indicates
that using different text types in language class rooms actually makes students practice real
communication successfully outside the classroom.

As every text type involves a variety of language use in different con texts, language learners take the
opportunity of improving their both re ceptive and productive skills. Thus, coping with different text
types and genres enables learners to become familiar with different forms of lan guage use for
specific purposes.

By bringing different texts into language classrooms, various activi ties can be designed by language
teachers in order to enlighten their class rooms. In this sense, language learners' creativity and
imagination can be increased and their language skills can be improved by analyzing both authentic
written and spoken text types given in a specific context.

6. Conclusion

In light of the literature and discussions presented above, it is without a doubt that the term "text" is
the inseparable part of DA studies. However, in the literature, particularly terminology related to
"text" and "discourse , "text types", "genre" and "register" lead to confusion as they are general ly
used interchangeably in some cases. In this sense, this chapter tried to clarify the relationship
between mentioned notions by pointing out their main features.

It is well-known that in traditional classrooms, learners are generally exposed to text materials which
are typically produced by textbook writers and teachers (Nunan, 1999). In this sense, in order to
create communicative language learning environments, real texts can be utilized as a rich source of
materials in foreign language teaching processes. Accordingly, it becomes crucial to make learners
recognize different text types or genres used in ac tual settings. As DA mainly engages in real
language that is used by real people in the real environment, language teachers can equip their
learners with a wide variety of text types, either spoken or written, that are used for communicative
purposes. By dealing with different text types, learners can practise different language forms with
distinct content and functions so that they can improve their language skills in an effective way. What
is more, dealing with real language through distinct text types would boost learners' self-confidence
and motivation as they would realize that they are practic ing real materials used in social contexts.
For this reason, this chapter also suggests certain activities which are assumed to be beneficial for
language teachers to take advantage of DA in their classrooms.

CH4

74 • M. Tugba Yildiz Ekin

1. Introduction and Definition of Key Terms in the chapter

In this chapter we will discuss the two main types of discourse from a general perspective. To do this,
the chapter is based on four main sections. The chapter starts with a brief information about written
discourse and its features to provide a clear definition of written discourse. Then, in the next section
the interpretation of texts will be explained by defining the concepts of cohesion and coherence and
the role played by grammatical and lexical items in achieving coherence. Following this section a brief
introductory section is designed to prepare the readers for textual patterns and text types. In the
second section, spoken discourse will be introduced together with its general features. In addition, a
subsection will be provided for understanding the basic structure of spoken discourse. In the third
section the differences between written and spoken discourse will be listed and explained briefly to
summarise the preceding sections. Finally, grammatical differences between speech and writing will
specifically be clarified, and a brief discussion relat ed to whether there are absolutes in those
differences of spoken and written discourse will be presented. There are activities designed in every
section and subsection for cognitive involvement.

In general, written discourse is defined as the transfer of information by means of written words by
the writer. On the other hand, spoken dis course is described as an ongoing and contextual
interpretation of speakers’ communicative intentions, which inherently involves hearers’ anticipated,
verbal, and non-verbal reactions (Du Bois, 1991). Moreover, there are two concepts which are
frequently mentioned with written and spoken discourse that are cohesion and coherence.
Additionally, for grammatical differences of written and spoken discourse, the concepts of
grammatical intricacy, lex ical density, nominalisation and grammatical metaphor will be explained
briefly and some examples will be provided in the next section.

2. Written discourse

As the concepts of discourse and discourse analysis have already been de fined in the previous
chapters, it will be appropriate to make a clear definition of written discourse. Basically, written
discourse can be defined as transfer ring information through written words. For the success of
written discourse, both the producer (writer) and the receiver (reader) must have the basic skills of
writing and reading. Additionally, written discourse includes the structure, coherence, logical
progression, and variety of language resources, which are grammar and vocabulary, as well as the
range of grammatical structures and vocabulary utilized in your written work, in a written text
(McCarthy, 1991; Paltridge, 2012; Cameron &Panovic, 2014). The following section will briefly
prepare a ground for a better understanding of the concept.

2.1. Features of written discourse

In written discourse, there is no need to contend with people as all speakers may not be talking at
once. In most cases, the writer has time for planning and thinking about what to convey and how to
convey it, and the sentences are often well-formed (McCarthy, 1991) as the writer has time to
formulate the idea, revise, revisit, or edit the text many times and make sure that the message is
conveyed successfully. Similarly, the time factor is available for the reader as well as the writer due to
permanence and visu- ality of written discourse. In short, the text is always there for the reader.
There is a possibility of skimming to get a sense of the whole text before detailed reading by; reading
the parts you think relevant or interesting, and going back and reading the text partially or as a whole
again whenever needed (Cameron & Panovic, 2014). This can be done any time; in an hour, a week or
a year, the text will remain in the book or on your screen without any change (Cameron & Panovic,
2014). In other words, written discourse is a visual representation of language, thus it is possible for
the readers to make different processings; for example, if you read ‘Hi Jimmy’ in a letter or e-mail
from a friend, the two words will be there in your vision at the same time. In longer texts, such as this
chapter, the reader has a chance to read it at his/her own pace or just preview the text to get the
main idea. However, when we read, we do not have the chance to ask for clarification or get feedback
from the writer as the reader is not in the same place and at the same time with the writer of the
text. Therefore, in written discourse, all the related information necessary for the reader needs to be
provided explicitly in the text by the writers.

Another feature of written discourse is that readers have the oppor tunity to read the text not at a
specific pace and in a specific order, so the writers are not obliged to produce it in the same manner.
They can plan what is going to be written extensively in advance, draft and revise the sections of the
text in any order, and edit what they had already written after the first draft of the text. Hence,
writers have chances of removing all their grammatical errors and spelling mistakes, reorganising
conceptual confusions and paragraphs before their texts are presented to their actu al audience while
speakers may not have chances to do such corrections during speech as spoken discourse is transient
(Marlina, 2018).

Since readers are able to process a higher density of information, while composing more carefully and
removing errors and repetitions, writers tend to employ more variety in vocabulary (i.e. lexical
density, which is a concept that will be discussed in the last section of this chapter), and they have a
chance to use different text structures while organising their texts (Cameron &Panovic, 2014). This
has some implications for writers in that they need to illustrate the links between the sentences with
some grammatical regularities in well-formed written texts known as cohesion (McCarthy, 1991).

2.2. Text and interpretation

In general, written texts display links between sentences in terms of grammatical and lexical features
like pronominalisation (reference), ellip sis (the omission of elements as they are retrievable from the
text), con- ^ nc^ons> and reiterations by various semantic relations as suggested by Halliday and
Hasan (1976).

The following is a sample text displaying such cohesive features:

The mid-air walkways saving endangered animals Conservationists have come up with an ingenious
way to help an en

dangered species - the Javan slow loris. They’ve built a network of mid-air walkways to help them
move between treetops, across land that has been cleaied for growing crops. And the farmers who
own the land are keen to cooperate with it because the walkways have another special feature that
makes their lives easier too.
The italicised items are all interpretable in relation to items in previ ous sentences. Cooperate with is
assumed to mean cooperate with conser vationists’; they in the second sentence is interpreted as the
‘conservation ists’; them in the second sentence is interpreted as ‘the endangered species’; their in
the last sentence is understood as the ‘farmers”; because signals a causal relationship in the last
sentence as the farmers’ reason to cooperate is the special feature of walkways. Besides these
features of grammatical cohesion, there are lexical clues too: 'cooperate with’ is a near-synonym of
help, and there are lexical repetitions of help, walkways, and land.

As you might have noticed, we mentioned cohesion in the walkways text, we talked about
interpretation and understanding of items in the text. It is an important process because the cohesive
items operate as a clue or a signal regarding how readers should read the text (McCarthy, 1991).

Therefore, cohesion functions as a guide to coherence, and coherence is something created by the
reader during the reading process. In other words, “Coherence is the feeling that a text hangs
together, that it makes sense, and is not just a jumble of sentences (Neubauer 1983, as cited in Mc
Carthy, 1991, p.7). The sentences ‘Roy loves pasta. He lived in Italy when he was a child.’ are cohesive
(Roy/he), but are only coherent, when we share the association between living in Italy and loving
pasta. Beside this, we can assume a cause-effect relationship between those two sentences. Then, it
can be concluded that cohesion is just a part of coherence for the reader and the writer.

78 • M. Tugba Yildiz Ekin

While interpreting texts, cohesive markers are used to establish links between sentences such as
referring to the same entity by using pronouns. Despite these, reading a text requires more complex
processes. For inter pretation, what we bring to the text as a reader is as important as what the
writers put into their texts. Readers are mentally active in interpretation (De Beaugrande& Dressier,
1981). They are making cognitive links not just noticing semantic links between cohesive items to
create coherence (De Beaugrande& Dressier, 1981).

2.3. Larger patterns in text and text types

As readers proceed in written discourse, they also need to make inter pretations regarding textual
patterns. The reoccurrence of some patterns

in written texts can serve us to activate our cultural knowledge and sche mata regarding the topic of
the text. Also, functional relationships between text units are displayed through these recurrences.
Here, text units are considered as phrases, clauses, sentences, or paragraphs and called as tex tual
segments in written discourse. To exemplify the segments coinciding with sentences, the following
two sentences from a news report on a ships departure can be given:

A fully autonomous ship will attempt a ground-breaking journey across the Atlantic Ocean without a
crew later this month. The Mayflower 400 will travel 3,500 miles (5,630km) from Plymouth in the UK
to Massachusetts in the US, conducting scientific experiments during its journey.

May 17, 2021, BBC News Technology

Link: https://www.bbc.com/news/av/technology-57088748

The most appropriate interpretation for this text is that there is a re lationship between the second
sentence and the first one since the second provides a reason for the first sentence. Both segments
display a phenome non-reason relationship with each other. Therefore, reading a text is simi lar to a
dialogue with the writer in which the reader and text or the writer may have a chance to detect
difficulties readers have in text processing. Additionally, there are other relationships such as cause-
consequence, problem-solution, claim-counterclaim, and comparison-contrast which often include
clues or signals that help readers interpret the relations be tween segments of discourse.

For example, in the text below taken from a news article on the Olym pic Games which is going to be
held in Japan during the Covid-19 pandem

ic the third sentence indicates the consequence of the first two sentences.

We acknowledge that there’s uncertainty on the situation with the pandemic during the Games, so
we need to be very flexible,” said Seiko Hashimoto, president of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic organizing
committee.

Any “abrupt change in the situation,” including the declaration of a new state of emergency over the
period when the Games are taking place, would prompt a reconsideration, she said. In such a
scenario, “all the op tions, including no spectator games, will be examined by the stakeholders.”

June 21, 2021, The Washington Post

Link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/olym-
pics-spectators-venues-tokyo/2021/06/21/60e8a462-dll9-lleb-a224-bd59bd22197c_story.html

Similarly, the following text can be interpreted as an indication of a problem-solution relationship in

that the first three sentences state and ex plain the origin of the problem, and the fourth sentence
provides a solution for the problem of time evaporation during the Covid-19 pandemic period.

For many of us, the past year and a half further dismantled what little sepa ration existed between
work and home. Our sense of time became warped. Dinners and drinks with friends turned into lag-
filled video calls. We were always at home.

But now, as more of us are fully vaccinated and reentering society in clothes that don’t quite fit
anymore, we have an opportunity to reset our daily calendars — and rebalance our lives.

June, 15, 2021, The Washington Post

Link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2021/06/15/a-bet- ter-week-newsletter-time-

management-productivity/

Another relationship between segments of discourse mentioned above is comparison-contrast. The

example text below illustrates a comparison - contrast relationship between the second and the third
sentence regarding the degree of happiness of single and married ladies.

80 • M. Tugba Yildiz Ekin

Single ladies - the secret to happiness may never be putting a ring on it Women who are never
married and don’t have children are the most

content and outlive their married counterparts, according to Paul Dolan, a behavioral science
professor at the London School of Economics.Dolan, a best-selling author whose most recent book,
“Happy Ever After: Escaping the Myths of the Perfect Life,” analyzed data from the American Time
Use Survey (ATUS), found that married people said they were happier over all, but only when their
partner was within earshot. “Married people are happier than other population subgroups, but only
when their spouse is in the room when they’re asked how happy they are. When the spouse is not
present: f—g miserable,” Dolan said at the Hay Festival in Wales on Sunday, according to The
Guardian. “We do have some good longitudinal data following the same people over time, but I am
going to do a massive disservice to that science and just say: if you’re a man, you should probably get
married; if you’re a woman, don’t bother.”

May 28, 2019 New York Post

Link: https://nypost.com/2019/05/28/unmarried-wom- en-are-the-healthiest-and-the-happiest-

professor/

In this section, we have defined the features of written discourse and how readers interpret written
texts to make sense out of them. Additional ly, the relationships between the clauses and sentences
of written discourse are briefly mentioned in terms of illustrating textual patterns. More details on
the written discourse will be provided in Chapter 5 of this book.

3. Spoken discourse

The other type of discourse that we shall study is spoken discourse. It is defined as continuous and
contextual interpretation of speakers com municative intentions, which inherently involves hearers
anticipated, ver bal, and non-verbal reactions, as well (Cameron &Panovic, 2014 , Weigle, 2014;
Marlina, 2018). In other words, spoken discourse is created through a joint effort including the active
cooperation of all the participants. How ever, how these two parties communicate successfully must
be considered and understood clearly. To do this, the next section will provide brief in formation
about the features of spoken discourse.

3.1. Features of spoken discourse

To begin with, Biber and Conrad (2001) stated that ‘the spoken and written modes provide strikingly
different potentials’ (p. 190). Therefore, speakers and writers may employ different processes with
the language. When we speak, we use our aural skills to convey and comprehend our messages.
Spoken discourse is not permanent, it is transient in nature and develops in real-time as its basic
elements are sounds, so it is difficult for the parties to process information. Therefore, the speakers
are likely to prefer to use simple words and short sentences to negotiate meaning (Pal- tridge, 2012).
Another feature of spoken discourse is that it is produced or processed in real time with limited
opportunities for organisation (Camer on & Panovic, 2014). This requires both the speakers and the
hearers to put much effort to communicate in social settings. It is similar even when you are listening
to a recording. Suppose that you have heard someone saying ‘What’s up?’ In this case, you will
always hear the question ‘what’s’ before the word ‘up’, as the utterance is produced in real time.
Besides, a positive feature of spoken discourse is that it often provides opportunities for in teraction
and feedback as it is immediate and real time; speakers and hear ers ‘typically share a spatiotemporal
context’ (Cameron &Panovic, 2014, p. 22). When you are listening to a speech on a specific topic or
involved in a conversation on that speech topic, it would be possible for you to ask for clarification or
additional information as well as sharing your opin ions. Additionally, although spoken words cannot
be unsaid and spoken discourse involves hesitation, repetition, fillers, and incomplete utterances,
speakers may make corrections while they are speaking (Marlina, 2018).

In spoken discourse or face-to-face interaction, as mentioned earlier, speakers and hearers get help
from shared context to make interpretation of deictic expressions like this, that, here, there, then,
now, tomorrow, last year, and pronouns that are used for referring to people and objects such as you,
them, etc. Their actual meaning is determined according to the context they are in.

Consider the following example from a conversation between two people at the bus-stop:
‘Just think, if he hadn’t fallen out of there that day, I wouldn’t have found that...’ If the hearer of the
sentence does not share the information about the speaker’s place, time, or referring to a ‘he’ who
has never been negotiat ed, the utterance will not make any sense to the hearer. Also, backchannel
responses, namely listener’s response tokens such as OK, hmm, yeah and so on can signal attention
or understanding in spoken discourse together with prosodic and paralinguistic cues such as stress,
pitch variation, tone of voice, laughter, and facial expressions (Cameron 8<Panovic, 2014; Otoo,
2018).

82- M. Tugba Yildiz Ekin

3.2. Speech and its structure

In spoken discourse, there are also other elements such as the rise, fall and the rhythm of the
speaking voice. These elements make the speech or ganized, divided up into units or chunks of
information. These units of in formation can be categorized as acts, moves, exchanges, and
transactions, and they occur within frames. Sinclair and Coulthard (1975) call these as framing moves.
The utterances between two framing moves together in a sequence are defined as transactions. For
example, a conversation in a store between a salesperson and a customer will be a complete whole. It
will begin with a common start and end, which can be observed in various settings like telephone
calls when closing the conversation, a job interview or a question-answer sequence in a classroom
after the teacher provides feedback like right’, ‘well now’ or ‘okay’ (McCarthy, 1991).

Exchanges are the units that are combinations of moves. They gen erally include questions, answers
and comments, or giving information, response and comments, which is a three-part exchange.
Consider the examples below;

1. A: What’s the time dear? B: Errrrn.... 8:35. A: Thanks...

2. A: Jane’s coming next week. B: Oh yeah.

A: Yeah....

As mentioned earlier, the three parts are moves of these exchanges (Sinclair &Coulthard, 1975). The
first move of the first example is a ques tion, whereas the first move of the second is giving
information. The second moves are answers and a comment, respectively. The third moves function
as feedback to the previous move. Sinclair and Coulthard (1975) define the first moves in the two
exchanges as opening move, the second as answering move and the last as follow-up move. Then,
Sinclair and Brazil (1982, as cited in McCarthy, 1991) revise the labelling as initiation, response and
follow-up.

It can be concluded that spoken discourse has a structure depending on the types of speech-acts
performed and the functions of the parts of the moves produced by speakers and hearers (McCarthy,
1991). We shall look more closely at these kinds of conversational analysis in Chapter 6 and observe
regular patterns that may be indicators of the use of basic norms or principles of spoken discourse.

As you can assume, most of the statements that were made in this section refer to as usual or general
and what speakers or hearers can do in conversations in the discussion of features of spoken
discourse. Then, we briefly examined the basic units in speech to build a background for ana lysing
spoken discourse. The following section will illustrate the differenc es between written and spoken
discourse to provide a clear understanding of these two basic concepts.

4. Written vs. spoken discourse

In the previous section, we mentioned Biber and Conrad’s (2001) em phasis on the difference
between spoken and written discourses. To draw a complete picture, Table 1 illustrates the
differences between written and spoken discourses.

To begin with, spoken discourse is aural in that sounds are used, while written discourse is visual, and
communication is performed by means of marks that can be seen on papers, screens, etc. As a result
of this differ ence, writers and readers have the advantage of time for the production and processing
of messages. Sounds are lost in space as they are transient: thus, immediate processing is required.
This is so even in cases where parties use technology to communicate as you watch or listen to a
video or a recorded speech again and again. However, you will have to process it in real time. In
contrast, in written discourse different processing options are possible since it is visual and the words
are in your vision altogether.

For instance, you can do many things with this chapter which you may not do with a lecture
presentation on the same topic. As a reader, you can skim, preview, and read the text again and
again. However, with written texts, readers cannot ask questions to the writer to clarify information
or check comprehension. In spoken discourse, speakers and hearers have the chance to ask for
clarification or extra information and give/receive feedback.

Therefore, as writers, we have to provide explicitly and precisely all the relevant information
necessary for readers within a text. As Cameron and Panovic (2014) puts, ‘even in synchronous forms
of digital communication involving rapid exchanges between people who are both online at the same
time, like instant messaging, contributions are typed in their entirety first, and only then sent to be
read by the intended recipient...’ (p. 23). Receivers do not have the opportunity to read before they
are sent by the composer. Additionally, writers can do editing which is an important difference be
tween written and spoken discourse. Redundancy, false starts, errors and clarifying obscurities are
mostly inevitable in spoken discourse.

Another difference between speech and writing is that, in face-to-face in teraction we mostly rely on
shared context and knowledge while making in terpretations of the utterances, i.e. linguistic,
paralinguistic and non-linguistic features help us to make sense, but written discourse is highly
dependent on the linguistic context to make the text cohesive and coherent to the readers.

5. Grammatical differences between written and spoken discourse

Apart from the general differences explained above, there are also some grammatical differences
between spoken and written discourse which represent a continuum of differences between the two
modes.

Grammatical intricacy

Written discourse is considered to be more structurally complex and elaborate than spoken discourse.
However, Halliday (1989, 2009), claims that spoken language is also organised as written language.
Spoken dis course is also complex in its own nature. In spoken discourse, grammatical intricacy is high
regarding the relationship between clauses which is more complex and spread out (Halliday &
Matthiessen, 2004).

Consider the following example by a famous actor, Ryan Gosling, on a television talk show hosted by
Jimmy Fallon, that involves many spread out and long clauses. The famous actor is talking about his
hilarious and remarkable experience in a Turkish bath. In the extract below the utter ances of the
host, Jimmy Fallen, are given in parentheses.
Well, okay, so... have you ever been to the a... Turkish bath? The Ruse didn’t like that. (No we didn't
have we no I don’t know I haven’t been to a Turkish but I heard about it...) Okay, so-... I had-... Well
my friends told me if you're in New York, you have to go to the Turkish bath, you know... So-... the-...
okay I had some fantasy about it being something like, you know,… (p.86)

Lexical density

Written discourse possesses more lexical density than spoken dis course (Halliday & Matthiessen,
2004). Paltridge (2012) defines lexical density as the ratio of content words to grammatical or
function words within a clause’ (p. 134). Content words are nouns and verbs and func tion words are
prepositions, pronouns and articles. In written discourse, content words are observed together
whereas they are spread out. The fol lowing extract taken from an article by Christine Byrne (2021) on
sugar detox shows the high lexical density which is a typical feature of written discourse. There are
thirteen content words in the first sentence, fourteen in the second one and twenty in the third one.
The content words in this extract are in italics. There are many more content words than grammati cal
words in this extract:

There’s an unspoken rule in nutrition (and life in general): Ifit sounds too good (or easyfio be true, it
probably is—and that definitely goes for diet advice, as we\\.Information about sugar detoxes
abounds on the Web—specifically on health and wellness websites—claiming that just nixing that
one ingredi ent can drastically overhaul your diet. Influencers take you along for the ride during their
sugar detoxes, andthen show you their before-and-after photos once they’re completely off the stuff
(and have seen their sought-after results),

March 5, 2021

https://www.health.com/nutrition/what-happens-when-you-stop-eat- ing-sugar

Nominalization and grammatical metaphor

Similar to lexical density, nominalisation is also at high levels in writ ten discourse. Actions and events
are stated in nouns rather than in verbs. Halliday (1989) defines this concept as ‘grammatical
metaphor’. Longer noun groups are more common in written discourse than spoken lan guage.
Therefore, ‘the information in the text is more tightly packed into fewer words and less spread out
than in spoken texts’ (Paltridge, 2012, p. 137). In addition, Thompson (2004) describes the concept of
grammatical metaphor “as expressing a meaning by using a lexico-grammatical form which originally
evolved to express a different type of meaning.” (p. 223). There are two types of grammatical
metaphors, namely experiential and interpersonal. An experiential metaphor is where something that
would normally (or congruently) be expressed by a verb is expressed by a noun such as using the
noun ‘criticism’ instead of the verb ‘criticise’. For an in terpersonal metaphor, an item such as ‘maybe’
congruently becomes a modal item like the noun probability (Thompson, 2004).

To conclude, it is not appropriate to put the differences between spoken and written discourses into a
simple, uni-dimensional manner(McCarthy, 2001). The differences can be considered within a scale
from texts that are more interpersonal such as casual conversations, to texts that are more for mal
such as written public notices. There are also scales of implicitness and explicitness or real time to
lapsed time for spoken and written discourses. Also, fragments in some texts such as in casual talks
and online chats can be observed in written discourse whereas prepared academic lectures and
published academic writing can be more structured and organised.
This kind of a scale avoids over-simplified distinctions between spo ken and written discourse,
however, it bears important points in which spoken and written discourse might be distinguished
(McCarthy 2001; Paltridge, 2012).

In addition, Biber’s (1992) study on differences between speech and writing in English confirmed a
dimensional variation for different kinds of texts or genres in spoken and written discourses, namely
‘multidimension al constructs’ with features common in other spoken and written genres. As
McCarthy (2001) mentions, spoken and written discourse can be sim ilar in some cases since some
forms associated with spoken language can also be found in written language such as informal letters,
emails, text messages, and advertising.

6. Conclusion

This chapter focused on written and spoken discourses from a gen eral perspective. We started with
providing brief information on written discourse and its features. Then, how we interpret texts are
discussed by mentioning the concepts of cohesion and coherence in addition to the place of
grammatical and lexical items in coherence. Also, textual patterns and text types have been
introduced. The second section was about spoken discourse and its general features and its basic
structures. Next, differenc es between written and spoken discourse have been explained briefly as a
summary. As a final step, grammatical differences between the two modes of discourse and a
discussion related to whether there are precise differ ences between spoken and written discourse or
not.

CH 5

1. Introduction

This chapter has intended to focus on written discourse analysis and how we can use it in language
learning and teaching. First, I should note that understanding the disciplines involves understanding
the discourses. In each discipline, written discourse is considered a rich source of infor mation about
social practices (Hyland, 2007). Thus, being familiar with written discourse analysis can help us when
we are learning and teaching a language.

Written discourse analysis is a qualitative method and interpretive method of analyzing texts in
relation to their social context. Thus, with some aspects, including interpretation, written discourse
analysis is dif ferent from systematic methods like content analysis (Luo, 2020), given that a written
discourse refers to a specific context to reach target readers. The writer fulfills its aim(s) with the
structure and lexis used. Moreover, if we are aware of the vocabulary, grammar and context, this
develops our comprehension. CelceMurcia and Olshtain (2000) report that we can clas sify written
discourse according to its register (use of formal/informal or general/technical vocabulary) or gender
(a specific purpose, context and audience are handled).

We can see several dimensions while defining discourse analysis in light of the literature, as
elucidated in Chapter 1 by Akbas and Demir (2021) in this book. In this chapter, to contextualize the
analyses provided, written discourse analysis is defined as “the study of language in use” (Ka plan,
1966; Brown & Yule, 1983, p. 1; Gee & Handford, 2013, p. 1). In other words, the analysis of written
discourse means the analysis of language in use —“as a source of information about people’s
attitudes, beliefs, experi ences and practices” (Cameron & Panovic, 2014, p. 5) with the highlight that
contextual meaning of language is at the heart of the written discourse analysis and affected by the
genre, register and mode of expression. All in all, written discourse analysis can provide you with
valuable insight into types of activities or genres analysis as prospective teachers of English.

2. Written Discourse Analysis and the Construction of Social Reality

Drawing on Cameron and Panovic (2014, p. 6), a discourse analyst would want to look both at the
content of the letters in the written texts and also at the way the writers have chosen to formulate
their accounts lin guistically. Writers’ concerns, attitudes and feelings are both evidenced by what
they have written and also we can argue how it is written. In written discourse analysis, you may have
several aims as prospective teachers of English. For example, we can:

• analyze these two texts using content analysis and a coding sys tem can be devised to tag to look at
the content of the texts and identify recurring themes and propositions and we can argue how the
texts are written,

• look at the way the writers have chosen to formulate their accounts linguistically, such as being
attentive to grammatical devices and use of tense and also how the sequence of words and sentences
provide a function (Mihas, P., & Odum Institute, 2019),

• focus on concerns, attitudes and feelings, examining what they have written,

• examine cohesion and coherence.

There are various approaches to discourse analysis, such as different approaches to the grammar and
vocabulary, and also ideas, issues and themes as they are expressed in the writing (Paul, 2011). Firstly,
in dis course analysis, the meanings we give language and the actions we perform while we are using
language in specific contexts can be examined. Second, as Gee and Handford (2013) noted, discourse
analysis is also sometimes defined as the study of language above the sentence level, of the ways
sen tences combine to create meaning, coherence and accomplish purposes. However, it is notable
that even a single sentence or utterance can be ana lyzed as a “communication” or as an “action.”
Hence, in analyzing written text, our analysis may focus on many characteristics, such as the
European Youth Portal on the formal website of the European Union, newspapers, research articles,
motivation letters, brochures, advertisements, websites, forums, social media posts and comments.

Because in discourse analysis, we focus on language occurrences, in written discourse analysis, we

can use a collection of methods and ap proaches for studying language in action, looking at texts in
relation to the social contexts. All discourse analysis has both a social and a linguistic dimension
(Cameron & Panovic, 2014). Thus, written discourse analysis provides valuable insights into the types
of activities or genres we read (Mihas & Odum Institute, 2019).

As Grabe (1984) highlighted, written discourse should be studied as a process that does not simply
mean the development of observational anal yses and case studies. Grabe (1984) noted that for
written discourse anal ysis, we should define:

• the nature of the written texts,

• the text as a product: the nature of text construction,

• the text as process: observation, analysis and synthesis,

• the complex interdependency of product and process and

• the text as an instrument of technology.

To conduct a written discourse analysis, we can have formal texts (e.g., academic texts, students’
essay writing, presentations and lectures) and in formal written texts (e.g., informal speech between
friends, writing a story about our volunteering experience or a diary entry.

3. How to conduct a written discourse analysis?

In written discourse analysis, we can seek common ground between the writers and the readers as
the recipients. Analysts would look at the logical relations these stories “invoke and assumptions
regarding the recip ients’ level of interest and willingness to read” (Mihas & Odum Institute, 2019, p.
2). We can also consider the field, tenor and mode of discourse.

The following five steps can be used to conduct written discourse analysis (Luo, 2020) as shown in
Figure 1.

Figure 1. Steps to conduct written discourse analysis

A language teaching model has been proposed in the literature, which can integrate written discourse
into its processes (Celce-Murcia & Olshtain, 2000):

1) prior knowledge (what we know about the topic)

2) discourse knowledge (knowledge of structure, syntax, and rhetoric) and

3) socio-cultural knowledge (our personal and cultural characteris tics) interact in knowledge-driven
(top-down) or data-driven (bottom-up) in learning processes.

In this chapter, the European Youth Portal will be used to conduct a written discourse analysis. The
European Youth Portal offers European and country-level information about opportunities and
initiatives that are of interest to young people who are living, learning and working in Eu rope. Hence,
we can examine the website of the European Union regarding the stories of European youth about
volunteering at the European and in ternational levels and analyze. The example below to analyze as
a written discourse in this chapter is taken from the official website of the Europe an Union, including
two written texts from the European Youth Portal. One sample analysis, which is below, and one
analysis activity to perform, which is at the end of this chapter.

To illustrate, please examine the first written discourse below. The text contains a proposition
(i.e„ the content of a sentence based on the meaning of a simple statement). For example, the first
written text titled “Youth Cli mate Pact Challenge: Join in!” could be rendered as the European Union
aims to pay attention to climate change. However, a closer look at linguistic strategies may suggest
that something more complicated may also be going on, such as calling for urgent active participation
without borders to tackle climate change because of its alarming nature.

After reading the texts below, ask yourself... Research questions to brainstorm:

Are the texts below coherent and cohesive to you? Why? What discursive strategies are evident in
these texts? Analysis of Written Discourse 1

The first target written discourse has been presented in Table 1 below for you to read, which can be
categorized as an informal register.

Page 101

Reason for Choosing this Text

Climate change is currently a growing concern that should be urgent ly addressed worldwide. The
European Climate Pact is an EU-wide initia tive that calls for everyone and every organization to
participate actively in climate action and build a greener Europe (https://ec.europa.eu/clima/
policies/eu-climate-action/pact_en). Thus, this text titled Youth Climate Pact Challenge: Join in!
seems to be a current call to raise awareness and be active to fight against climate change hand in
hand worldwide.

General Features of the Text in Light of its Genre

An alarming issue, climate change, has been reminded with a call to collaborate to tackle. The
embracing and friendly language is noticeable in this text.

In the first paragraph, the first sentence starts with a question to at tract the target audience’s
attention, the youth: “Are you between 15 and 30 years old?,” which was followed by a relieving and
inviting tone of the statement, “No matter your background or what you’ve already done to support
the environment, the #EUCli matePact is looking for you!”

In the second paragraph, the Climate Pact is introduced with its aim: “a more sustainable Europe for
us all” and the target group “everyone is welcome to join the movement, especially young people like
you!”

Then, an invitation was made with a concise question, “What will hap pen on 29 June?” Maybe
because of the COVID-19 pandemic or maybe to reach everyone without borders, the writer(s) noted
that “The Climate Pact Day of Action will be hosted in digital format” because it seems that their aim
is to raise awareness about this Pact and promote being active wher ever we are living to deal with
climate change. We also have four working groups to choose from according to what we prefer to
join:

• Support for Young Climate Pact Ambassadors

• Stepping up individual climate action

• Stepping up youth involvement in climate policy

• Education for climate action

Further information has been provided on how to register and the deadline, and how we can access
the programme with the explanation that the event is online and questions can be asked using an
online tool: sli.do tool. Another invitation statement was made “use the hashtag #MyWorl-
dOurPlanet when talking about the EU Climate Pact on social media!” to reach a wider audience. The
text has a concluding sentence with a link if we want to read more detailed information.

j 02 • Dr. Neslihan Onder-Ozdcmir

The findings suggest that this text is coherent and cohesive and that it embraces each sentence and
part throughout the discourse (Celce-Murcia & Olshtain, 2000).

3. Textual Patterns

As the report under subsection General Features of the Text in Light of its Genre above suggests,
there are logical connections between opinions on climate change, dividing the text into pieces of
information and draw ing attention to the salient themes and meaning using lexical choices (see
Hyland, 2008), problem/solution, general/specific, question/answer and through signaling devices,
such as specific lexical choices. Sample analyses are provided below.
General/Specific Pattern

Illis common text pattern moves the reader from general to specific information (Table 2).

Discourse Analysis and Language Teaching • 103

4. Coding Techniques in Written Discourse Analysis Discourse analysis can involve coding data (see
Table 4). Coding refers to

“applying condensed topics to textual units and later analyzing these topics for larger patterns”
(Mihas, P., & Odum Institute, 2019, p. 5). Codes can be at dif ferent levels of specificity and generality
(Cohen, Manion, & Morrison, 2002).

5. Genre Analysis

As highlighted in light of the literature above with sample analysis, dis course analysis is a collection
of methods looking at texts in relation to the social contexts in which they are used. This subsection
will focus on genre analysis, which is a more specific form of discourse analysis that focuses on any
element of recurrent language use, such as grammar (Hyland, 2013, p. 1). Genre analysis is a useful
tool to help understand the written discourse.

While conducting genre analysis, we will have 'moves’ and ‘steps’. The term move refers to a text
segment made up of a bundle of linguistic fea tures (e.g., lexical meaning and propositional meaning)
“which give the segment a uniform orientation and signal the content of discourse unit in it (Nwogu,
1997, p. 202). Swales (1990) defined moves with a focus on communicative purposes of the texts,
which are divided into steps. Thus, steps are the division of information that aims to realize the
communica tive purposes realized by the moves (Bhatia, 1993).

The third target written discourse for genre analysis has been present ed in Tables 5 and 6 below,
which can be categorized as a formal register. Researchers have a consensus that shared
communicative purposes are significant because they affect the internal structures of a text.

We will conduct genre analysis to offer a largely qualitative interpre tive analysis of the generic
patterns of a foreword written for an interna tional conference Metadiscourse across Genres
Conference (MAG 2017) in Table 5 and also undergraduate medical students’ abstract for a National
Undergraduate Medical Students’ Congress in Table 6.

106 • Dr. Neslihan Onder-Ozdemir

6. Metadiscourse Analysis

Metadiscourse is broadly defined as ‘discourse about discourse’. When we write, we usually write at
two levels: The first level contains proposition al content that provides us with information about the
subject of the text; the second level is metadiscourse that guides readers to read, understand and
interpret the texts (Kopple, 1985). Researchers focus on two primary models of metadiscourse with
some modifications: (1) interactive meta discourse (see Crismore, Markkanen & Steffensen, 1993;
Hyland, 2004), and (2) reflexive metadiscourse (see Adel, 2006), in which reflexivity is the central
concern.

Hyland s (2005, p. 49) taxonomy was used in the metadiscourse anal ysis here (see Table 7), in which
metadiscourse has two types of classifica tion: interactive and interactional resources. According to
Hyland (2004), interactive resources allow the writer to help the reader correctly interpret the text
through managing information flow and interactional resources allow the author to communicate an
authoritative and credible persona using the interaction of the text and reader.
Metadiscourse analysis for three categories, including transitions, hedges and attitude markers, can
be seen in example Table 8 below. Given that this text is on writing a successful motivation letter,
attitude markers are the most frequent function of metadiscourse, which are italicized and
underlined. As for transitions, “but” has been used twice and “therefore” has been used once. We
have one hedge, which is “probably”.

Written discourse to analyze: “From Luxembourg to Italy” From Luxembourg to Italy

Sixtine, Luxembourg

All in all, my European Solidarity Corps volunteering taught me a lot. New skills, new languages... but
also a different culture, a different way of seeing the world. It came at a time in my life where I really
needed it, and it was exactly what I needed!

This time last year, I was getting ready to leave Luxembourg and my office job to go and live in Italy
for ten months, as part of the European

108 •

Solidarity Corps.

At the time, I was rethinking my professional future, and unsure which direction to take. So when a
friend mentioned the European Soli darity Corps volunteering opportunities, I decided that, if I was
going to be thinking deeply about my future, I might as well do so while doing something productive,
learning a new language, and meeting new people!

I was drawn to InCo Molfetta because the project description seemed the most interesting, the most
varied, and also the one most likely to teach me new skills that I would be able to use later.

Arriving in South Italy from Luxembourg was quite a shock - and not only because of the
temperature! Going from low twenties to high thirties was definitely a shock to the system! But the
cultural difference also hit me hard, and it took me some time to adapt The siesta for example took
me by surprise, the fact that nothing was open during the afternoon and that we weren’t working
during that time either. The more laid-back attitude, the loose relationship with time and deadlines...
all of that took some getting used to, especially since I was coming from a strict office job!

But Puglia wasted no time driving me in. The people are welcoming and kind, and very, very patient
with foreigners struggling to learn Ital ian! Very few of the people in Molfetta speak English, and while
my native French language helped me understand them somewhat, I did have to ask them to repeat
themselves quite a bit at the beginning! Thankfully, the ESC programme included language courses,
both online and, as organised by my organisation, in real life, as evening classes in a local school.

Puglia is also a gorgeous region, full of beautiful spots, great food and a rich history! While
circumstances prevented me from visiting it as much as I would have liked, those trips have only been
postponed - I’m definitely coming back at some point!

Working as part of the InCo team was a fantastic experience - we were doing a lot of different things
to promote European Mobility to young people: organising presentations in schools, holding
international eve nings where locals could come and interact with the (many!) volunteers, a tandem
project pairing locals wanting to learn other languages with vol unteers wanting to learn Italian... We
also hosted youth exchanges with participants from up to six different countries, helped organise the
signing of a Twinning Cities agreement, coordinated the different volunteers, both in Italy and out of
it, that we were responsible for...
My all-time favourite project, though, was the ANG in Radio Puglia Free Generation
(https://freegenerationradio.it/)! As part of this project, I wrote and recorded different podcasts,
about volunteering, about social media, creativity... It was a lot of fun, and I really enjoyed learning
how to use the different recording tools and editing apps!

Meeting the other volunteers was also great! I got really lucky with both my awesome flatmates (Hi
Juliette! Hi Eshan! I miss you guys!) and the two volunteers I worked with (Hi Kristina! Hi Cecilia!). It
was great living and working with them, and we did a lot of activities with the other volunteers too,
as well as some trips around the country!

Of course, Coronavirus changed our plans. A lot of the activities and exchanges we had planned were
postponed or cancelled. A lot of volun teers went home during the lockdown and didn’t come back.
Others, like me, stayed in Italy during that time.

I won’t lie, it wasn’t easy or fun all the time. But we found ways. We helped deliver groceries to at risk
people who couldn’t go to the supermar ket or the pharmacy. We prepared food packages for those
who needed them in those difficult times. We arranged to go and get our own groceries at the same
time so we could meet in the queue in front of the supermar ket and talk a bit (with masks and social
distancing measures, obvious ly!). Some helped by cutting fabrics that would then be sewn into
masks. My Italian teacher took the class online and maintained it during the en tire lockdown and
even after it, since the schools weren’t reopening. We checked on each other regularly. I started
online classes and baked a lot. I also learned how to cook foccacia and other Italian dishes, and
enjoyed the sun on the balcony despite the frustration of not being able to go take a walk by the sea
because it was further than 200m away from the flat and that was the limit.

But during that time, I was lucky: I had the support of my organisa tion, of the other volunteers, of my
sending organisation and family, back in Luxembourg. And it felt amazing to be able to go out and see
each other again once the lockdown was lifted!!

I ended up spending a lot of my last month in Italy travelling, visiting Puglia with another volunteer
who had gone home during the lockdown and come back once it was lifted. We went to Otranto, took
a hike all the way to the lighthouse, saw turtles in the Cave di Bauxite...

My last week in Italy, I meet up with the people from my Italian class for one last gelato. I was invited
over by my mentor (hi Maria! Thank you again for everything ) for a proper send-off meal with all the
local spe cialities and it was delicious. I went for a walk along the Lungo Mare, then walked into the
water a bit on the small beach behind the Duomo. I went for brunch with a couple of friends, then
met up with some others to say goodbye. I might have shed a tear or two as I left Moleftta.

Did this experience go as planned? Not exactly. Even in my ‘worst case scenario’ planning, I hadn’t
exactly expected a global pandemic!

But it was certainly an amazing experience, and I am really glad I did it! And hey, it even helped me
figure out what I wanted to do next! I m

now actively looking for jobs in the area of youth work and European proj ects for young people!

All in all, my European Solidarity Corps volunteering taught me a lot. New skills, new languages... but
also a different culture, a different way of seeing the world. It came at a time in my life where I really
needed it, and it was exactly what I needed!

I might be home in Luxembourg now, but Molfetta and Puglia have definitely cemented their place in
my heart - and I’ll definitely come back at some point! My Volunteering Story
Arrivederci, Molfetta! Mi manchi gia! 7. Conclusion

This chapter focuses on defining and conducting written discourse analysis accompanied by sample
coding and also specific analyses on writ ten discourse, including genre analysis and metadiscourse
analysis, which are considered specific parts of discourse analysis. Using written discourse analysis
can help prospective teachers of English to understand and tailor their writing and guide your
learners accordingly.