Running head: LEVELS OF LANGUAGE FOR DISCOURSE ANALYSIS 1

Levels of Language for Discourse Analysis

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Levels of Language for Discourse Analysis

The section seeks to identify the different levels of language and critically discuss how they are

mentally represented in discourse levels of languages. Whether enthused by theoretical

consideration or by intuitive, various disciplines of study have developed their distinctive

approaches, guided by the specific functions and structures, or by the type of discourse, pertinent

to that specific discipline. Now that discourse is primary of all forms in language use, it is with

no doubt that the methods of linguistic analysis have been very important in understanding the

correct use of text and talk. Various methods of functional, generative and structural grammars

have been structured to explain the features of verbal expressions.

As a result, phonology, morphology, and syntax have become known as more explicit

subcomponents of such structures with the purpose of explaining the formation of words, sound

structures and understanding the formal compositions of sentences (Brentari, 1998). Likewise and

in order to provide an account for such connotations and denotations, semantics were developed

to understand the meaning of language better. Thereafter, pragmatics was developed in a bid to

portray the function of statements in the context, that is, as speech acts.

Most of the earlier works on various grammars was limited to isolated, single sentences up until

late 1960s when language scholars sought to have this framework to the actual means of language

use extended, to be precise, discourse.

From structural narratives to functional analysis

Structural descriptions characterize discourse in a number of dimensions or levels of analysis,

stipulated in quite a number of categories, units, relations or semantic patterns. This is done in both

talk (dialogue as a form of interaction) and in monological texts (Kies, 2012).

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However, the presentation of discourse as a means for social interaction still has many questions

on to it. Precisely, structural analysis does not take into account the important relation to the

components that form discourse. This holds for conversational analysis, narrative theories, metrics

and grammar, all comparably. In order to get a complete description of discourse, it is then

important to analyze discourse an intricate event that calls for more examination on their relations

with cultural, social and cognitive contexts.

Dimensions and levels of Discourse Analysis

Scientists are known to use microscopes to determine the level of magnification, in line with the

feature they are studying. Similarly, applied linguist’s studies text at different levels too. Each

level is known to provide a unique insight, which collectively provides a thorough but ‘never

complete’ understanding of the text been studied.

Phonology and Phonetics

Phonology is generally about establishing the matrices/sequences of integrated physical elements

of sound. In other words it seeks to study the phonemes in a certain sound. Phonologists are mainly

concerned with the prototypes associated to the way of expression, as they form the models of the

waves of speech. In understanding phonology as the sound structure in language, this resource

seeks to address the two questions of:

Is there structure in language?

Generally, if language at all lacked structure, then:

• People would be forced to memorize speeches and make a list of them

• There would not be units for decomposing utterances

• There could not be relations in utterances. Does language have structure?

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What are the available structures in language?

These are units that are:

• Oppose each other paradigmatically

• Relate to each other syntagmatically

Phonology units comprise of a finite number of phonemes that a particular language uses to

structure its words. Phonology addresses the difference between animal languages and human

languages. Animal languages lack phonemes and therefore there is no one to one relationship

between sound and meaning. On the other hand, human language comprise of phonemes that are

brought together in distinct means to give meaning. This makes the relationship between sound

and meaning arbitrary, as illustrated here / sit/→/tis/

Natural classes of phonemes include 1) Consonants; sibilant, labial voiced and nasal etc 2) Vowels;

tense, rounded, back and low etc. Prosodic phonology includes sentence stress, phase, word stress

and intonation (Kies, 2012).

On the other hand, phonetics is the study of the physical aspects related to a particular sound. It

seeks to understand how sound is produced and perceived, specifically referred to as phones, while

getting a clear understanding of how “commands” finally becomes a certain vocal tract and

articulator movements. Xu (2011) notes that “on the acoustic side, phonetics turns the mental

spectrogram we receive from the nerve endings in our cochlea’s into feature sets and timings of

the sort that it received from the phonological center during articulation”.

In the whole, phonology reacts to phonemes while phonetics reacts to sounds.

Morphology

Morphology deals with morphemes, defined as the smallest units of meaning and linguistic form

(either grammatical or lexical) and the way in which they are formed (make words) as well as their
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relationship with other words of the same language. Words that comprise more than a single

morpheme are referred to as morphologically complex words. In this case, one component may be

termed as the core one, the basic of the form, while the rest could be regarded as add-ons. The core

or basic morpheme is generally known as base, root or stem while the added words are referred to

as affixes. Affixes appearing before the stem are called prefixes while those that come after are

known as suffixes.

For example, in the word disfigured, dis- is the prefix, while figure is the stem and –d is the suffix.

The English language doesn’t really contain any infixes, unless expressed in various expletives

like Kalama-effing-zoo or un-effing-believable.

There are two categories of morphemes notably function and content morphemes. The underlying

factor in the difference is that some morphemes communicate a common sort of informational or

referential content, in a manner non reliant of the grammatical structure of the language in question

– whereas other morphemes greatly rely on a certain function of grammar, demonstrating a

syntactic connection between units in a text, or obligatorily-specific classes such as tense or

number.

Therefore, (the stems of) adjectives, verbs and nouns are normally content morphemes: “catch”,

“yellow”, “Mark” and “stick” are all in the category of category morphemes. These types of are

also at times referred to as open-class morphemes, as they are classify with other categories open

to the creation of arbitrary new words. More often, people borrow or make up new morphemes in

these categories: “grok”, ‘byte” nuke”, “smurf” etc ( ).

In comparison, prepositions (“by”, “to”), articles (“the’, “an”), pronouns (“him”, “her”), and other

conjunctions are generally function morphemes, because they seek to bring together components

grammatically together (“struck by lightning,” “Mark and Kelvin,” “Sonia saw her cat”), or
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present obligatory features of morphology like exact certainty (“he crossed a river”, or “he crossed

the river”, but not “he crossed river”). These types are also referred to as closed-class morphemes,

as they don’t classify with other categories open to invention or borrowing. People cannot add new

pronouns, articles or prepositions.

Looking closer at language, we can further ascertain that morphemes can be further subcategorized

into two other large subgroups namely grammatical morphemes and lexical morphemes. This can

be well explained in the figure below.

Source: Kies (2012)

Syntax
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Words are put together to form sentences by following the rules of syntax. It is, therefore, a form

of grammar whose concern is chiefly word order within a given sentences and the agreement of

words within that sentences. Syntax, therefore, acts as a form of control in the manner in which

the sentences have been constructed. Many sentences in English do follow the structure of the

subject, verb then followed by an object, for example, a dog washes its paws that clearly shows

the correct form of the word order with an agreement between the words(Bayley, Cameron, &

Lucas, 2013).

Where there is no agreement the sentence could read, “The dog washes their paws” which has no

sense at all. for agreement to be present, the possessive ‘It’ has to be incorrect use hence the

sentence, “the dogs (which is plural) wash their (in plural form) paws (in plural)” indicating the

correct usage of the plural possessive “their” syntax becomes even more complex to understand

for complex sentences where identifying what is the subject, verb and object is as well as

identifying what the relation in between them is i.e. if they are in agreement(Gallagher, & Prutting,

1991). The Syntax of a sentences representation in linguistics can be described using diverse

methodology e.g. in the sentence below

“The girl kicked the bucket”

The syntax is described using the following methods

1. Syntactic categories

This is the testimonial of the accurate succession of the parts of the speech where the subject is

tagged along by the verb then followed by the object. Therefore the subject is the girl, the verb is

the word kicked and the object is the bucket (McCarthy, 2006).

2. Explanation through a sequence of transformational conventions

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For example, using the above example:

Sentence is transformed to noun phrase +verb

Verb phrase is transformed to verb-noun phrase

Noun phrase is transformed to article +noun

Where verb phrase is “kicked the bucket” and noun phrase is “the girl”; “the bucket”

3. Use of parsing diagrams

These diagrams are used to show the parts of the sentences in a graphical manner which showcases

the relationship between the components of a given sentences. An example of a parsing diagram

cab as follows.

Source: Rubdy, & Said, 2015.

This is the basics syntactic structure for any given sentences in English language and it is ideal to

be applied in the analysis of complex sentences as it easily breaks down the sentences and analyzes

how the different structures associated to one another. Any given language syntax therefore, holds

the regulations and set of conventions that preside over the arrangement of the phrases and the

manner in which they are conjoined together.

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This also includes the degree of variation from within languages themselves as well. Parsing

diagrams have the ability to represent any type of syntax for any given language and are

extensively used in computing to invent the central processing unit encoding languages (Bayley,

Cameron, & Lucas, 2013). They are also widely used in the presentation of musical structures due

to the nature of the graphical structure of representation that makes this approach to be flexible.

There are also more advanced syntactic structures that are also applied in linguistics.

Embedding allows for the construction of advanced and complex sentences through the addition

of further phrases within the structure of a basic sentence (Rubdy, & Said, 2015). For example

using the above example of the girl, we can have;

“The girl with blue dress kicked the bucket”

With the “blue dress” being a prepositional expression that gives a further description of the ‘the

girl”

This can be characterized as follow.

Source: (Lombardo, 2009)

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From the graphical representation, the prepositional phrase “with blue dress can be seen how it is

embedded within the subject noun phrase making the subject to be divided into a noun phrase and

the prepositional phrase. Analysis of the prepositional phrase by itself shows that it further contains

a noun phrase. The parsing representation therefore shows the association between the sentence

and the various components within it. This structure can further be extended in many numerous

ways through the introduction of subordinate phrases within different parts of the basic sentence

structure (Bayley, Cameron, & Lucas, 2013).

Conjoining allows for the extension of sentences through joining together of complete structures

or a complete structure to an incomplete one. For example;

The girl with blue dress kicked the bucket and poured some water”

The conjunction “and” links as one the complete sentences “the girl in a blue dress kicked the

bucket” with the verb phrase “poured some water” which are presented as;
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Source: Wodak, & Koller, 2008

This analysis is what brings us to the functional nature of grammar where the syntax helps in the

functional approach to the study of a language. This involves the description of the language as a

means of social interaction with the main function being inter-human communication. It, therefore,

entails the studying of the structure of language under a framework of principles, rules and

strategies that relate to and govern its communicative use and the integration of the functional

relations in the composition of the theory. As part of the systemic functional linguistics theory of

language and meaning, it, therefore, helps in making out meaning of words and sentences and it

connects language forms directly to the meaning they present (McCarthy, 2006).

Semantics
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Semantics is best described as the learning of the meanings accorded to morphine’s, phrases,

words, and sentences. The concept has for a long time been contentious to linguistics and

philosophers and its intricacies to language i.e. the manner in which humans do construct meaning

and how static those meaning really are. With semantics, it shows that the actual name is not of

importance really, it is what that thing or concept represents that does matter. For example, if a

rose ceased to be referred to as a rose, its smell, the feel of its petals and the prick of its thorns will

still remain with us (Bayley, Cameron, & Lucas, 2013). Human communication will, therefore,

become very changeling if different meanings will be given to specify vocabulary. If some say

orange in a place of a rose, then there will start to raise a lot of complications in communicating.

Semantics is, therefore, the interpretation of the meaning of words, sentences structure and signs

and it’s too large extent the determinant of how comprehension is made, the manner humans

understand others and shape the decisions that are made as a result of these interpretations. It is

indeed the branch of linguistics that relates to language and how we perceive and understand the

meaning. With this comes the complication of how meanings are made-up, the essence, the way it

is shared across to others and how they change or transform with time (Gallagher, & Prutting,

1991). A distinction, therefore, has to be made between its figurative meaning and its literal

meaning. The literal meaning is where the meaning is taken as it is i.e. at its face value e.g. when

it’s stated that the season of fall commences with the variation of the leaves color. This means that

the season begins to transform when the leaves turn their colors.

With figurative meaning, the styles of metaphors and similes are employed so as to represent and

convey greater emotions e.g. stating that I am as a fast a leopard is a simile as it compares how

fast a person running is (Tannen, Hamilton, & Schiffrin, 2015). When children grow up, the learn
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by pointing with their chubby finger and state the name of whatever they are pointing to for

example letter “A” for young toddlers trying to learn. These characteristics of pointing and naming

remains part of the endearing characteristics of the rest of human life with especially in relation to

discourse, power, hegemony and discrimination Indi duals have therefore been labeled as

immigrants, where mass influx of refugees have stirred up sentiments of nationalism leading to

even some countries creating barriers around themselves and favor nationalism over regionalism

as is the case of Brexit as a means of controlling immigration. People identify themselves as British

and foreign or migrant.

This shows that naming goes on from the explanation of the instantaneous and real objects towards

generations of even more conceptual proclamation about proceedings and occurrences (Okulska,

& Cap, 2010). Another example relates to tourist in a new country where they go back to the

strategy of the toddler of pointing and naming using gestures and expressions to replace verbs and

sentences structures they are not familiar with. This shows that the denotation of sentences does

require the understanding of mutually the denotation of the explicit word as well as the syntactic

framework under which the words are entrenched in. this is because words can denote a core or

literal meaning as well as bring about a radiance of associative meanings. Closely related to

semantics is the concept of pragmatics which is the learning of how verbal communication is

utilized and how the diverse uses of words establish syntactic and semantics (Gallagher, &

Prutting, 1991).

The philosophy and organization of lexical semantics have numerous applications as their study

enables the users of a language to broaden their understanding of its stocks of words through

enhancing its dictionaries. To understand what is being said is greatly shaped and influenced by

the individual and cultural assumptions plus experience. These are indeed less visible in
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comparison to the actual words being explicitly being stated and factoring all this in what is being

said improves awareness leading to more effective communications (Bayley, Cameron, & Lucas,

2013). This leads to more appreciation and understanding of the difficulty and easy-to-read

stylishness of a particular words and the human character of the linguistic communication.

Context, therefore, becomes very important as it helps to understand more than what a person is

actually speaking (Okulska, & Cap, 2010).

For example, when the American presidential contender, Donald Trump stated that all Muslims

should be temporarily be banned from entering America, many people were out outraged by his

remarks. Yet what he meant was that he would actually outlaw immigration of people from regions

of the world that have a history of terrorism from entering the United States. He was proposing a

review of the United States counter-terrorism policy which to him he viewed as essential to the

protection of the peace and security of women and gays in the wake of the Orlando terror attack

(Tannen, Hamilton, & Schiffrin, 2015).

References

Anderson, J., M. Ewen, C., J. (1987). Principles of dependency phonology. Massachussets:

Cambridge UP

Brentari, D. (1998). A prosodic model of sign language phonology. Massachussets: MIT UP

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Bayley, R., Cameron, R., & Lucas, C. (2013). The Oxford handbook of sociolinguistics. Oxford:

Oxford University Press.

Gallagher, T. M., & Prutting, C. A. (1991). Pragmatics of language: Clinical practice issues. San

Diego, Calif: Singular Pub. Group.

Kies, D. (2012) Form and Function of Word Classes in English. Retrieved from <

http://papyr.com/hypertextbooks/grammar/word.htm>

Lombardo, L. (2009). Using corpora to learn about language and discourse. Bern [Switzerland:

Peter Lang.

McCarthy, M. (2006). Discourse analysis for language teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.

Okulska, U., & Cap, P. (2010). Perspectives in politics and discourse. Amsterdam: John

Benjamins Pub. Company.

Rubdy, R., & In Said, S. B. (2015). Conflict, exclusion and dissent in the linguistic landscape.

Tannen, D., In Hamilton, H. E., & In Schiffrin, D. (2015). The handbook of discourse analysis.

Wodak, R., & Koller, V. (2008). Handbook of communication in the public sphere. Berlin: Mouton

de Gruyter.

Xu, S. (2011). Linguistics beta: What’s the difference between phonetics and phonology?

Retrieved from <

http://linguistics.stackexchange.com/questions/180/whats-the-difference-between-

phonetics-and-phonology>
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