Suggestions for further reading

Blakemore,D.(1992). Understanding utterances:An introduction to pragmatics.Oxford:Blackwell.

Leech.G.N.(1983). Principles of pragmatics. London:Longman.

Levinson.S.C.(1983)Pragmatics.Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.

Yule,G.(1996). Pragmatic.Oxford:Oxford University Press.

Conclusion

This chapter has surveyed some of the most important factors affecting language users’ choices of linguistic form. With reference to sociocultural appropriacy and persupposition, we have examined the context-embedded nature of speaker meaning and intention and how the hearer is able to determine these by relying on shared knowledge, context, and conventional expression. Grice’s Cooperative Principle, Leech’s Politeness Principle and Austin and Searle’s Speech Act Theory have been examined cross-culturally to show that each speech community is pragmatically as well as grammatically unique. In terms of comprehending and producing discourse competently in the target language, it is as important to understand the pragmatics of the target culture as it is to understand the grammar and vocabulary of the target language.

Politeness

Since communication can be viewed as the primary and most inclusive social framework for language use, it is logical to expect all speech communities to develop rules and ways in which to improve and accommodate communicative acts in order to ensure and promote social harmony. The area of politeness deals with perceptions, expectations, and conventional realizations of communicative strategies which enhance social harmony. In acquiring one’s first language, a person also acquires these rules of politeness as part of one’s sociocultural and pragmatic competence. When learning a second language, one needs to acquire the new culture’s politeness framework, which often is very different from that of one’s own culture. Perhaps a good example of opposing cross-cultural perceptions of politeness is the following incident, which took place in the United States, where a Japanese-born daughter-in-law came by unexpectedly to visit her American-Jewish mother-in-law during lunchtime. The daughter-in-law had stopped earlier at a snack shop to buy a sandwich to eat while visiting her mother-in-law. Japanese rules of politeness dictated both that she not impose on her mother-in-law in any way and that she should demonstrate that she stopped by only to enjoy her company. 

On the other hand, the Jewish mother-in-law was shocked and quite offended that her daughter-in-law did not feel that she could come over any time and expect to get a sandwich or some simple lunch from her mother-in-law. In both cases, there are important cultural expectations of “what is polite,” but these preceptions clash in term of cultural presupposition: in the Japanese case, it is most important to maintain respect for the freedom of choice of the other person and to avoid imposition at all costs. In the Jewish tradition, feelings of solidarity and hospitality override any question of imposition, and so it is expected that someone who is close to you will “impose” from time to time as a normal part of the social relationship.

This example is also good illustration of negative versus positive politeness in Browb and Levinson’s (1978) terms. Negative politeness avoids imposition whereas positive politeness expects imposition. The Japanese culture is more negative politeness oriented in that maintaining social distance is highly valued, whereas the american-Jewish culture places higher value on lack of social distance and focuses on group solidarity and positive politeness as more appropriate values for family interactions. In the example described here, positive politeness ranks group solidarity as having very high value in the one culture, whereas in the other culture negative politeness is primarily concerned with maintaining the other party’s “freedom action” and avoiding imposition at al costs. When moves from one culture to another, it may take a long time to become fully sensitive to the subtleties of a new set of politeness rules.

Leech (1983) adds the politeness principle (PP) o Grice (1975) more general cooperative principle (CP) in order to “minimize the expression of impolite beliefs.... and [maximize the expression of polite beliefs]” (81) The essence of Leech’s PP is to minimize unfavorable behavior towards the hearer or a third party while attempting to increase favorable consequences. Leech suggest a cost-benefit scale where the claim is that when the speaker is impolite, there is a higher cost for hearer. To be polite, therefore, means to minimize cost to the hearer and to be impolite is to maxim it. The following definition and example may help clarify this :

Cost to Hearer = speaker is impolite incooperate, and do not value hearer’s well being

Benefit to Hearer = speaker is polite and conviderate of the teacher even at his/her own expense

Example: a situation where an insurance agents is asked to help the customer with an usual claim, which turn out not to be covered by the policy and the customer complains bitterly. If the agent might say “We are very sorry that our policy doesn't cover your claim, but I am sure another agent and more accommodating in future. Would you like me to recommend some another agencies ? In the first case, the agent who responds impolitely does not consider the customer’s (hearer’s) benefit, while in the second case, although the agent cannot offer direct assistance, s/he is still very considerate of the customer’s needs (lowering the hearer’s costs).

Each culture may have rather different norms with respect to the expected politeness considerations of “cost-benefit,” As we have seen from the earlier example about the Japanese daughter-in-law and the Jewish-American mother-in-law, the Japanese perception of politeness and “benefit to the hearer” entailed the notion of “minimizing imposition,” whereas the Jewish expectation was “to accept and appreciate family hospitality.” Consequently, we see that rules of politeness cannot be translated directly from one culture to another.

Leech (1983) suggest that these politeness principles are inherent in the categorization of speech acts as well as in the realization of each speech act. Therefore, he classifies illocutionary functions in terms of how they interact with the goal of achieving social harmony :

Competitive : the illocutionary goal competes with the social goal (e.g, ordering, requesting, demanding, begging)

Convivial : the illocutionary goal coincides with the social goal (e.g, offering, inviting, greeting, thanking, congratulating)

Neutral : the illocutionary goal is indifferent to the social goal (e.g, asserting, reporting, announcing, instructing)

Conflicative : the illocutionary goal conflicts with the social goal (e.g, threatening, accusing, cursing, reprimanding)

Considerations of politeness often relate to the degree of directness expressed in speech acts. When talking about Leech’s competitive speech act or Brown and Levinson’s face-threatening speech acts, there is implied imposition on the hearer in the actual performance of the speech act. In order to lessen the force of the impossition, all languages seem to have conventionalized less direct (or indirect) realizations of such speech acts. Instead of saying to the hearer, “Close the door,” we might prefer an indirect version, e.g, “It’s could in here.” However, it should also be recognized that an indirect speech act is often harder to interpret and so speaker of languages often develop conventionally indirect realization patterns which enable us to make indirect requests that are nonetheless unambiguous such as “Could you close the door ?” or “Do you want to open the door ?” – the former is more polite and formal : the latter is more casual and familiar. Being conventionally recognized request forms, such questions should not be answered literally but according to their illocutionary force. However, this fact is not always obvious to second language learners who have acquired different ways of expressing conventionalized indirect speech acts in their first language.

All cultures are concerned with maintaining social harmony and therefore we find rules of politeness incorporated in the rules of speech that one has to acquire as part of language learning. Each language, accordingly, has developed a repertoire of speech act realizations that enable the language user to be a “polite” interactant and an accurate interpreter of discourse. In most cultures these rules of linguistic behavior are also accompanied by appropriate eye gaze, body language, and gestures. When learning a new language, the learner cannot possibly expect to acquire complete pragmatic competence, let it is possible to incorporate the study of manageable amount of pragmatic information into a language program and to include activities which make the learner aware of and sensitive to the major features of politeness and common variations on expressing politeness in the new language.

However, as Beebe (1996) has pointed out on several occasions, we do not recommended teaching second language learners always and only to be polite since there are occasions and circumstances in which users of target language will behave rudely or offensively in their interactions with nonnative speakers. On such occasions, language learners should be able to recognize the rude or offensive behavior and to know that they may respond in ways that are less than polite. They should also be aware of expressions and resources they can use convey their displeasure with interlocutors who are being rude to them.

Speech Act Serve Social Function

As we have seen, successful communication takes place when speakers share knowledge, beliefs, and assumption and when they adhere to similar rules of cooperative interaction. Language, however is not only a vehicle to exchange thoughts and ideas: we often use utterance in order to perform social action or functions. If a teacher in a traditional classroom tells a student. “I will have to inform your parents about your behaviour,” it usually is not only statement that imparts information since it may also have the power of the threat with dire consequences. By making this statement, the teacher may also have performed a threatening act.

Similarly, when one friend tells another, “You look great today,” this utterance serves not only as a description but function mainly as a “compliment” and as such fulfills a social function. Social action performed via utterance are generally called speech acts. All cultures use speech act in order to perform social functions and in most languages there are some performative verb that directly represent the speech act (1975) such as : apologize, complain, complement, modes, promise, and so forth. Although these performative verb carry the lexical meaning of the speech act they convey, they are not always the most common realization of the speech act in normal conversation. Thus when apologizing in a spoken situation. English speakers tend to use the expression “I am sorry” much more often then the more formal “I apologize”

A speech act is usually performed within a situation that provides contextual elements that help interpret the speaker’s intention. Thus if a person says “It’s really cold in here” in a room where there is a open window and the addressee is near the window, this utterance can easily be interpreted as a request for the interlocutor to close the window. Contextual and social information make it possible for interactants to interpret each other’s intention even when these intentions are not explicitly stated.

When a speech act is uttered. The utterance carnes locutionary meaning based on the meaning of the linguistic expression. Thus, our earlier example “I am hungry” is a basic description of the speaker’s state. However it taken on illucutionary force when it action a requested and the illocutionary force has the intended meaning of “please give me some food” Furthermore, since a speech act is directed toward an addressee who “suffers the consequences” of the act, it also has perlocutionary force, which is the effect the act has on the addressee. Every realization of the speech act has therefore three dimensions: locutionary meaning, illocutionary force, and prelocutionary effect.

Speech act can be classified according to how they affect the social interaction between speakers and hearer. The most basic categirization (Searle, 1969) consist of five different types of speech acts : declarative s, representatives, expressives, directives, and commisives.

Declarative s (also called performatives) are speech act that “change the world” as a result of having been performed. Some good example of such declarative speech acts are when the jury foreman announces, “We find the defendant not guitly!” and when the justice of the peace says, “I now pronounce you man and wife.”

Representatives are speech acts that enable the speaker to express feelings, beliefs, assertions, illustration, and the like. An example of such representative speech act would be statement made by a speaker at an argicultural convention such as “Today, tomatoes can be grown in the desert.

Expressives are among the most important speech acts for learners of a second or a foreign language. These speech acts express physiological states of the speaker or the hearer. Apologizing, complaining, complimenting, and congratulating are examples of expressives.

Directives are speech acts that enable speakers to impose some action on their hearer. Through directives the speakers can express what s/he wants and then expect the hearer to comply, Inherently, these are face-threatening acts toward the hearer since they usually impose the hearer. Commands, order, and requests are example of directives.

Commisive are speech acts that enable speakers to commit themselves to future actions. Promises and refusals are commisives. By definition these are speech acts whereby the speaker takes on or refuses some responsibility or task and are, therefore, face-threatening to the speaker, or imposing on the speaker. The use of reformative verbs makes such speech acts more explicit. In the case of a promise, the choice of the verb “promise” makes the statement a strong commitment, which is more costly to the speaker but advantageous to the hearer. In the case of refusals, on the other hand, the use of the verb “refuse” strengthens the denial of compliance and can lead to conflict or to a clash between the interlocutors.

Although it seems that all languages share a similar inventory of speech acts, the realizations and the circumstances that are appropriate for each speech act may be quite different in different cultures, and a learner needs to acuire speech act knowledge as apart of language acquisition. This is what Celce-Murica, Dornyei, and Thurrell (1995) refer to as actional competence in their model of communication competence, which – among other things – extends the model of Canale and Swain (1980) and Cvanale (1983) to include speech acts. Chapter 9, which deals with the speaking skill, makes suggestions for the teaching of speech acts.

Cooperation And Implicature

Human communication is based on the fact that, as a rule, human beings want to communicate with one other successfully and what to maintain social harmony while doing so. It stands to reason, therefore, that during routine communication the participants involved in the interaction are wiling and perhaps even eager to cooperative so as the ensure successful communication. It seems that most exchanges are characteristically, to some extent, cooperative efforts, and each participant tends to recognize some common purpose. On this premise. Grice (1975) developed the cooperative principle for the conversation. This rather general principle maintains the following: “Make your conversational contribution such as required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged.” It seems that interactants base their expectations on the cooperative principle and on other relevant contextual features. Grice’s cooperative principle consists of four maxims :

1. THE MAXIM OF QUANTITY

Make your contribution as informative as required. Do not make your contribution more informative that required. The mutual expectation of the interactants is that quantitatively the speaker’s contribution is just right for the interaction at hand. More would e too much and less would be too little for successful communication to take place.

2. THE MAXIM OF QUALITY

Try to make your contribution one that is true. A. Do not say what you believe to be false. B. Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence. The mutual expectation of the interactants is that the speaker makes proposition or provides information that s/he believes to be true.

3. THE MAXIM RELATION

Be relevant. The mutual expectation of the interactants is that the speaker makes a contribution to the communicative exchange that is relevant to the topic and the situation of this exchange.

4. THE MAXIM OF MANNER

A. avoid obscurity B. Avoid ambiguity C. Be brier D. Be orderly. The mutual expectation of the interactants is that the speaker makes his/her contribution as clear and as comprehensible as possible, and that while doing so, s/he takes all precautions to ensure such clarity in terms of performance and delivery.

These maxims can be considered basic assumptions that people follow in their communicative interaction; however, it must be acknowledged that assume Anglo-American culture. We believe the maxims get reinterpret when applied to other cultures. In most cultures, it is generally the case that people provide just the appropriate amount of information for the other party to be able to interpret the intention. We can usually assume that people tell the truth (or the truth are best known to them), that their contribution are relevant to the discussion at hand, and that they try to be as clear as they can. When a speaker is aware of having unintentionally violated a maxim, s/he will immediately try to adjust and make a connections in order to restore adherence to the maxims. It is often the apologetic additions that make it obvious that a speaker is self-correcting violations of this kind. Thus, for instance, if a speaker told us a story too many details (perhaps making the wrong assumptions about what the hearer already knows), s/he might apologize by saying: “You probably know all this, so let me get to the main point.” Or in the opposite situation, where someone (at an information counter perhaps) may not have given enough information about something, s/he may simply supplementary information upon realizing the confused look on the hearer face. It is quite clear that communicators are very aware of the need to cooperate in terms of quantity of information in order to allow the other party to make the proper inferences and to get the intention of the language user.

Similarly, when one is not completely sure that one has proper evidence for the statements one makes, it is possible to use various hedges in order not to take full responsibility for the quality of an utterance. As speakers in this case we may add qualifying openers such as, As far as i know I am not quite sure bu, I believe that I think that The addition of such openings to an utterance releases speakers from the need to adhere fully to the maxim of quality and allows them to state beliefs or opinions rather than facts.

The maxim of relation (or relevance) plays a very important role in maintaining the topic of a conversation. As soon as we want to change the topic, we can do so by using some introductory or opening phrase such as “On another matter altogether,” The addition of such openings to an utterance that is no longer relevant and thus move the conversation toward a new topic. The added information being conveyed here is that I would rather speak about something else. This can do be done explicitly, as it often is, by people like diplomats or politicians when they answer a problematic question with the phrase “No comment”

Has, therefore, generally, assumed that communication is successful because interactants adhere to the cooperative maxims. When they don’t the assumption may be that they deliberately violate a maxim in order to convey additional (implicit) information or add some special meaning and implicature, beyond what is actually said, Thus, the politician who answers a reporter’s question with “No comment” leave deliberate room for implicature and interpretation on the part of the nearer. In some case, the reporter might simply say later. “so and no was underwiling to comment” which is a way for the reporter to ignore the implicature. Alternatively, the reporter may present some speculation related to the fact that at this point the speaker did not disclose all the details.

Within each culture there are acceptable ways to “deliberately” violate maxims. For instance, when complimenting a person, one is not expected to adhere fully to the maxim of quality. Similarly, when thanking someone for an usually nice gift, the receiver might deliberately violate the maxim of quantity and say more than necessary in order to express a deeper sense of gratitude. Since such a “violation” is usually recognized by both interactants, it has added communicative value.

When communication takes place between two interactants who do not share the same language or the same culture, unintended violations of the maxims can easily occur. Here was assume that the four maxims apply to all cultures but that their interpretation may be quite different. Being informative or relevant on some mutual, expectation with the respect to the maxims that would make communication more or less successful. Furthermore, the value related to each maxim might be quite different in different culture. Thus, quantity may be differently perceived by speakers of different cultures. One example of such differencies is the amount of information perceive as appropriate when giving someone directions in response to a request. In some cultures the appropriate answer would be brief and informative. In other it would be lengthly and contain some digression from the main poin. If a speaker from the first culture directly translates the directions s/he gives into the language of the other culture, The speaker may sound somewhat disinterested or rudely terse. If, however, a speaker from the latter culture does the same thing when functioning in the former one, s/he may sound overly verbose and perhaps even annoying. In order words, such pragmatic transfer might result in the violation of a maxim in the new language and culture. When such cross-cultural violations take place, the speakers may not be aware of the need to carry out a correction and may therefore leave the impression of being impolite or even aggressive, when this was not at all the speaker’s intention.

What Does Pragmatics Entail

According to Yule (1996), the area of pragmatics deals with speakers meaning and contextual meaning. Speaker meaning is concerned with the analysis of what people mean by their utterances rather than what the words and phrases in those utterances might mean in and of themselves. Thus when a speaker says “I am hungry,” the semantic meaning of this utterance is that the speaker feel pangs of hunger. Pragmatically viewed, if the sentence is produced by a youngster who has come back from school at noon speaking to his mother in the kitchen, it probably functions as a request for a lunch. Alternatively, if it is produced by the same youngster after having completed lunch, it could function as a complaint expressing the opinion that there hasn’t been enough food to eat for lunch, or perhaps the child intends it as a request for a dessert. Speaker meaning, rather than sentence meaning, can only begin to be understood when context is taken into consideration Any utterance, therefore, can take on various meanings depending on who produced it and under what circumstances.

Pragmatics studies the context within which an interaction occurs as well as the intention of the language user. Who are the addresses, what is the relation between speakers/writers and hearers/readers, when and where does the speech event occur ? and so on. Thus, the same utterance “I am hungry” when produced by a street beggar and addressed to a passerby would be generally perceived as a request for money rather than for food since shared knowledge- in this case- leads to this interpretation.

Pragmatics also explores how listeners and readers can make inferences about what is said or written in order to arrive at an interpretation of the user’s intended meaning. Obviously, the emphasis in this kind of exploration must be placed not only on what is actually said but also on what is not being said explicitly but recognized implicitly as part of communicative exchange, such as presupposition, implication, shared knowledge, and circumstantial evidence.

Fro the above description of description of pragmatics, it may seem to the reader that this is an impossible area of communicative interaction to analyze since it seems so difficult to predict what different people might be intending. What makes human communication possible, however is the fact that pragmatic competence relies very heavily on conventional culturally appropriate, and socially acceptable ways of interacting. These rules of appropriacy result in regular and expected behaviors in language use. It is generally understood that within a given social and cultural group, people usually know what is expected and what is considered appropriate behavior, and this knowledge enables them to interpret the language uses they encounter.

Furthermore language forms are selected or preferred by interactants so as to accommodate and strengthen some of shared and mutually perceived situational phenomena. Two areas of language analysis that have looked at what allows the listener or reader to make inferences based on what is said or written are presupposition and implication.

When a proposition is presupposed, it cannot be denied or called into question. For example :

A: Isn’t it odd that John didn’t come ?

B:No, it’s not odd at all.

In this brief exchange both speaker A and speaker B shared the presupposition “John didn’t come.” The interlocutors in this exchange chose linguistic forms that enable them to share the persupposition. Notice that not all verbs or predicate adjectives have this property. If we change “odd” to “true,” there would be no constant presupposition since the truth value of “John didn’t come” changes from one syntactic environment to the next when the proposition is danied or questioned :

1. It is true that John didn’t come.

2. It isn’t true that Jhonn didn’t come

3. Isn’t it true that John didn’t came ?

It is combined knowledge of pragmatics and linguistics that enables interlocutors to be effective users of presupposition.

In this case of implication, the hearer/listener is able to make certain inferences based on what is said or written. These inferences go beyond the words themselves, yet are generally predictable from the linguistic forms chosen. For example, if someone says “Jane will support Bo. After all,  she is his sister,” we know that the speaker is not only giving a reason in the second clause for Janes’ behavior,which is described in the first clause; through his use of the connector “after all,” the speaker is also indicating that he believes both he and the listener share some obvious prior knowledge (i.e, Jane is Bob’s sister). Here again we see how the choice of linguistic forms reflects the knowledge shared by the interlocutors.

From the examples given above, it seems obvious that a very important factor facilitating both spoken and written communication is shared knowledge. As we have seen, language users make linguistic decisions and choices based on certain persuppositions with respect to the situation and the participants in the communicative interaction. Such decision are baseds primarily on what is perceived as shared knowledge.

Obviously, when we misjudge shared knowledge or the preceptions of the other participants in the interaction we might create an instance of miscomunication. This can happen among speakers of the same language and within the same sociocultural setting, as will become obvious from the following exchange between a university student and a clerk in a departmental office at a university in the United States both view  native speaker of English :

Woman (student): Excuse me, where can I make some Xerox copies ?

Clerk : For ?

Woman : (silence)

Clerk : Are you an instructor ?

Woman :No, a student.

Clerk : We can only make Xerox copies for instructor.

Woman: Well, I... OK. Nut where can I find s [pay] Xerox machine ? (the original intention)

Clerk: Oh, I see. Up the stairs, pat the bookstore.

In the above exchange 1 there was obviously a breakdown in communication since the first utterance, which was an information question, was misunderstood by the clerk as a request: the clerk then applied to this situation nonrelevant prior knowledge that was unshared by the student.

In exchanges that take place between language users from different social or cultural groups of different linguistic groups, miscomunication can result from lack of shared knowledge of the world and of the appropriate target behavior. In our attempt to lead the L2 learner to communicative competence, which goes far beyond linguistic competence, pragmatic must be taken into account. While developing knowledge and understanding of how the language work, the learner must also develop awareness and sensitivity to socialcultural patterns of behavior. It is only skillfully combined linguistic and pragmatic knowledge that can lead to communicative competence in the second language.

Pragmatics In Discourse Analysis

INTRODUCTION

Traditional language analysis contrasts pragmatics with syntax and semantics (See Widdowson,1996,for a general introduction to linguistic). Syntax is the area of language analysis that describes relationships between linguistic forms, how they are arranged in sequence, and which sequences are well formed and therefore grammatically acceptable Chapter 4 focuses on this type of linguistic knowledge and its relation to discourse.

Semantic is the area of language analysis that describes how meaning is enouded in the language and is therefore concerned mainly with the meaning of lexical items. Semantic is also concerned with the study of relationship between language forms and entities in real or imaginary worlds (Yule,1996). Chapter 5 focuses on vocabulary and thus deals with some areas of semantic in relation to discourse.

Whereas formal analyses of syntax and semantics do not consider the users of the linguistic forms that they describe and analyze, pragmatics deals very explicitly with the forms. As such, pragmatics is concerned with people’s intentions, assumptions, beliefs, goals, and the kinds of actions they perform while using language. Pragmatics is also concerned with context, situation, and settings within which such language uses occur.

A language user’s lexicogrammatical competence is his/her knowledge of syntax and lexical semantics in the target language. In describing such competence we need to present the rules that account for the learner’s implicit formal knowledge of grammatical and vocabulary. Pragmatic competence, on the other hand, is a set of internalized rules of how to use language in socioculturally appropriate ways, taking into account the participants in a communicative interaction and features of the context within which the interaction takes place.

While lexicogrammatical competence can be described in formal term, pragmatic competence is at present a much less formalized and structured area of inquiry. Since pragmatic deals with human elements, it is less objective and more difficult to describe; thus formal language analysis tends to exclude pragmatics. In recent years, how ever, more attention has been directed toward pragmatic competence and even interlanguage pragmatics for L2 learners Blum-Kulka, et al, 1989; Kasper and Blum-Kulka, 1993), which is the learner’s developing pragmatic competence in the target language.

Suggestion And Further Reading

Brown.G&Yule,G(1980) Discourse analysis.Cambridge:Cambridge University Press

Cook.G(1989), Discourse.Oxford:Oxford University Press

Nunan.D(1993)An introduction to discourse analisis.Harmondsworth.England:Penguin

Paltridge.B(200)Making sense of discourse analysis. Gold Coas,Australia:Antipodean Educational Enterprises

Conclusion

Two important influences in language teaching methodology over the past two decades have been (1) the arguments for making formal language learning as “natural” as possible (Krashen and Terrell, 1983) and (2) the importance using “authentic” materials in the language classroom (Ur. 1984). The approach we present in this book allows for a principled response to those concerns in that language resources and discourse processing are presented in an interactive and integrated manner that encourages both principled use of authentic discourse samples and simulation of natural language processing.

In Part 1 we present the theoretical background for subsequent chapters. This chapter provides an introduction to discourse analysis, whereas Chapter 2 (Pragmatics in Discourse Analysis) provides background on the importance of context for the appropriate production and the adequate interpretation of discourse. We discuss the language resources underlying discourse knowledge in Part 2 and the language skills involved in discourse processing in Part 3. In Part 4 we treat important issues in implementation with respect of teaching language through discourse: Chapter 10 deals with curriculum development. Chapter 11 explores language assessment, and Chapter 12 treats the training of teachers and learners.

The Discourse Approach To Language Teaching New Roles For Teacher Learner And Materials

In the modern school setting and the changing learning environment with high-teach accesibility to libraries, computer networks, and other resources, the roles of teachers, learners, and materials is constanly changing. A discourse prespective on language teaching and language learning can be helpful in redefining such roles.

Teacher in the new learning setting are expected to become reflective researchers who evaluate and rethink their approaches, attitudes, and methods of presenting new subject matter to students, at every stage in the teaching/learning process. They are no longer the only decision maker in this process since learners share and become partners in the process; teachers, however, have a new and very important role to play by becoming personal mentors for individual students, coaching and guiding them to become autonomous learners.

Learners are no longer passive recipients of the teaching process. They are expected to be more independent, to make choices, and to initiate learning activities. They are expected to take responsibility for their own learning and become aware of their own strategies and tactics, using meta cognition to assist them in improving their own learning endeavors. They are also often encourage to carry out self-evaluation in order to further their learning and to develop metacognitive awarenes in order to plan and regulate their language learning and language using skills. Discourse elements and routines are very important tools in helping autonomous learners to become successful.

Materials used in the learning/teaching proccess must asllow the autonomous learner and the facilitating teacher that are make choices, consider alternatives, and plan for specific needs. Only materials that are flexible enough to allow for and encourage such tactics can ensure the personal growth of both teachers and learners.

Chapter 12 addressed many of the issues we have raised here regarding the new roles of teachers, learners, and materials.

A Pedagogical Perspective On Communicative Competence

The major goal of taking a language course is to enable students to develop communicative competence. The term “communicative competence” was first coined by Dell Hymes (1967, 1972) and his colleagues (anthropological linguists, sociolinguists, and functional linguist), who argued that language competence consist not only of Chomsky’s (1957, 1965) grammatical competence but also of sociolinguistic or pragmatic competence, which covers all situated aspects of language use and related issues of appropriacy: the speaker (and, if different, the original author), the addressee(s), the messege, the setting oe event, the activity, the register, and so forth.

Hymes’ term “communicative competence” was taken up by those language methodologist who contributed to development of Communicative language Teaching (e.g, Wilkins,1976:Widdowson,1978) However, a pedagogical framework based explicitly on the notion of communicate competence was first proposed by Canale and Swain (1980) and Canale (1983),4 who argued that communicative competence could be described as consisting od at least four components :

1. Linguistic or grammatical competence, which consist of the basic elements of communication sentence patterns, morphological infections, lexical resources, and phonological or ortnographic systems.

2. Sociolinguistic competence, which consist of the social and cultural knowledge required to use language appropriately with reference to formality, politeness, and other contextually defined choices.

3. Discouse competence, which consist the section sequencing and arrangement of words, structures, and sentences/utterances to achieve a unified spoken or written whole with reference to a particular message and context

4. Strategies competence, which includes the strategies and procedures relevant to language learning, language processing, and language production. It activates knowledge of the other competences and helps sets compensate for gaps or deficiencies in knowledge when they communicate.

In our option, the core or central competency in the Canale and Swain framework is discourse competence since this is where everything else comes together: It is in discourse and through discourse that all of the other comperencies are realized. And it is in discourse and through discourse that the manifestation of the other competencies can best be observed, research and assessed.

The Organization Of This Book

In Part 1 of this book we present theoretical background information. Chapter 1 provides an introduction to discourse and discourse analysis, whereas Chapter 2 (Pragmatics in Discourse analysis) provides further background on the importance of context and shared knowledge for appropriate production and adequate interpretation of discourse.

There are two basic frameworks that underlie the approach proposed in this book and guide its organization (i.e, a language knowledge framework and a discourse processing framework). We are using the term “knowledge” to refer to what cognitive psychologists (Anderson,1985) call declarative knowledge, which refers to things such as facts, rules, and images that one is able to describe explicitly. In term of learning a language, this type of knowledge refers to things such as knowing the grammar rules and word meanings explicitly and being able to state them. We are using the term “Processing” to refer to what the same cognitive psychologist call procedural knowledge, which is the ability to apply complex cognitive skills automatically in appropriate ways without even thinking about them. This ability enables language users to produce and interpret written and spoken discourse effectively.

In part 2 of this book we consider the three language resources (phonology,grammar, and vocabulary) and pragmatics when language users communicate, both as receivers and producers.

Depending on the type and extent of knowledge and experience a learner has, different processing strategies for interpreting and producing discourse will be activated or developed. Nonnative language users often lack the proficiency that would allow them to process easily the spoken and written discourse to which they are exposed in a second language. An important way in which they can compensate for their lack of knowledge is for them to rely heavily on contextual features and prior knowledge to process new information. This is referred to as top-down or knowledge-driven interpretation. For example, when reading a difficult article, the reader might consider where the article appeared, who wrote it, and what the tittle is in order to facilitate interpretation of a linguistically difficult text.

In contrast language processing that relies heavily on linguistic features such as spelling pattern, grammatical infections, and word choices is referred to as bottom-up or data-driven interpretation which in some cases is facilitated nonverbal cues

such as gestures, illustrations and so on. Effective language users are able to combine top-down and bottom-up processing in arriving at reasonable interpretation of what the speaker/writer intended.

 Figure 1.2 presents an integrated picture of the discourse processing framework. When top-down processing is activated, language users combine their prior knowledge (content schemata) and socio cultural and discourse knowledge (formal schemata) with their assessment of pragmatic and contextual features relevant to the task at hand. All these elements are channeled through pragmatic considerations in order to produce and interpret discourse. When bottom-up processing occurs, language users combine language knowledge with specific and local communication features in order to produce or interpret discourse. Sometimes top-down processing takes priority at other times bottom-up concerns require more attention, but ideally there is purposeful integration of both types of processing. Successful discourse processing also requires metacognitive awareness, which enables language users to fine tune their production/interpretation process. Ideally discourse processing involves automatic procedural knowledge;however in some cases it is useful and necessary to active nonautomatic declarative knowledge to correct errors and to resolve ambiguities or contradictions in the production or interpretation of discourse.

In figures 1.1 and 1.2 knowledge components appear inside ovals content knowledge, discourse knowledge, and language knowledge. Processing elements appear inside triangles: assessment of contextual features, consideration of pragmatic features and processing strategies: metacognition is inside a diamond and spoken or written discourse

(product or text) is always represented inside the central rectangular box. Discourse and pragmatic are sometimes represented with two shapes simultaneously since these two areas can reflect both knowledge and processing. Thus the term “discourse” may occur in a rectangle and/or an oval. And the term “pragmatic” may occur inside a triangle or inside an oval and a triangle simultaneously. These visual shapes will be used consistently in the specific adaptations of these two figures that we present in each chapter throughout the book.

Effective language users shift easily form one discourse processing mode to the other, depending on the requirements of the production/interpretation task. For example, the reader encountering an unfamiliar word in a text will use the word’s syntactic position and morphological endings (i.e, bottom-up processing) to arrive at an interpretation.

In Part 3 of this book we treat the four language skills (listening,reading,writing, and speaking) in terms of our discourse processing framework, which we will discuss in greater detail later.

In addition to elaborating on both the language knowledge framework and the discourse processing framework that we have introduced here, we will endeavor to make our approach to language teaching practical by suggesting throughout the next pedagogical applications that we believe are consistent with a discourse perspective on a language and language teaching. The discussion questions and activities at the and of each chapter are designed to facilitate understanding and application of the approach we are proposing. The suggestions for further reading are intended to simulate additional thinking of the topics and issues we raise.

Types Of Context

Duranti and Goodwin (1992) propose four types of context :

a. setting (physical and interactional)

b. behavioral environment (nonverbal and kinetic)

c. language (co-text and reflextive use of language)

d. extrasituational (social, political, cultural, and the like)

For our specific purposes, two of these types of context are particularly important corresponding roughly to Duranti and Goodwin’s (a) and (c) respectively (1) the situational context- i.e, the purpose, the participants and the physical and temporal setting where communication is taking place (i.e, analyzed as pragmatics) and (2) the discourse context (or co-context), the stream of prior and subsequent language in which a language segment or an exchange occurs (i.e, analyzed as discourse).

For example, if someone encounters a friend and says “Hello,” the person expects some sort of oral response. Or if one hears an utterance such as “Who else was there ?” one looks to prior discourse about the people present at some event in order to interpret the utterance.

In written texts we can often make sense of the message and understand the meaning thanks to the co-text, the language material in any particular piece of discourse. In the following passage, excerpted from the middle of an article in Time magazine on the National Cherry Festival in the United States, it becomes clear how important co-text is in the process of interpreting the written text :

Indeed, the victory for vendors and consumers could well be the festival’s loss. The 6.00 Sara Lee slices typically sold at the festival are donated by the company, with proceeds funneled back to the festival organization.

(Time, July 1998:4)

In this piece of discourse, in order to understand what “victory” the writer is talking about, we need to have read the earlier sections of the article. To understand why this is the “festival’s loss” we need to read on and find out that there used to be a donation (which will no longer exist) that everyone attending made to the festival organization. And if the reader does not know (from prior knowledge) who or what Sara Lee is, s/he may find out via cataphoric reference when “the company” is mentioned. All the cohesive devices and the coherence organization elements work within the wider co-text and need to be properly identified by anyone trying to interpret the meaning of the text.

Shared Knowledge

In a communicative exchange both interactants rely their prior knowledge which may or may not be shared.Shared knowledge is perhaps most important for everyday communicative exchanges. When such exchanges take place between participants who are familiar with each other, they rely on their shared knowledge. Thus, in the following exchange between husband and wife the discourse is meaningful to both because they share knowledge on which the exchange is based :

Wife : The reception is in the garden. (implies that it will be cool)

Husband : I’m wearing the brown jacket, (implies that he has taken the proper precautions)

An outsider may not necessarily get the implied meanings from simply listening to the exchange. When a communicative exchange occurs among strangers, the physical environment often supplies the contextual factors that may be necessary, such as in the following exchange at an airport : 

Traveler : I am looking for my bags: Ijust got off this flight

Attendant: Baggage Claim is one flight down. You can take the elevator.

For discourse where context is not readily available (written text or formal speeches), those interpreting the discourse have to rely more heavily on the text itself and on their prior knowledge. Relevant prior knowledge can create the appropriate context within which it is possible to understand and properly interpret the discourse.

In the language classroom, context-reduced discourse is not always presented to students along with the background they need to be able to interpret it. Thus, let us imagine that in an English-as-a-foreign-language classroom, somewhere in a non-English-speaking country, the teacher introduces the “Gettysburg Address” as a reading passage. If the students are not familiar with the history of the United States and with the background of the Civil War, and the conditions under which Preident Lincoln delivered this speech, they will have a difficult time understanding the text. A great deal for background knowledge is needed in order to create the global context within which the text can be understood. Some sections of this book will address the need to create a meaningful context within the language classroom so that (a) difficult texts can be properly interprets and (b) students can learn and become enriched by the context and information that they encounter, thus enabling real communication to take place.

Contextualized and interactive uses of language can be acquired relatively quickly (two to three years) given the right type of language instruction and/or the right learning environment; however, mastering decontextualized and impersonal forms of language along with related literacy skills requires a much higher level of proficiency in the target language nad normally takes at least five to seven years even under the best conditions (Cummins,1979: Collier, 1989). School literacy requires learners to use language in such decontextualized situations, and second language learners often encounter difficulties in general scholastic performance due to a lack of the appropriate type of linguistic proficiency. For more advance language learners, it is often necessary to develop strategies for dealing with even less contextualized genres of language such as published articles legal documents, research report, and technical manuals.

What Is Context

The term context id discourse analysis refers to all factors end elements that are nonlinguistic and nontextual but which affect spoken or written communicative interaction. Halliday (1991:5) describes context as “the events that are going on around when people speak (and write).” As mentioned previously, discourse may depend primarily on contextual features found in the immediate environment and be referred to as context-embedded: or it may be relatively independent of context (context-reduced or decontextualized) and depend more on the features of the linguistic code and the forms of the discourse itself.

Context entails the situation within which the communicative interaction takes place. Discourse analysis of context entails the linguistic and cognitive choices made relevant to the interaction at hand. In contrast. Pragmatic analysis of context and contextual description relates to the participants taking part in the interaction, the sociocultural background that is relevant, and any physical-situational elements that may have some bearing on the exchange. Human communication relies quite heavily on context and on the shared knowledge that the interactants have with respect to a variety of contextual features. These issues are dealt with in Chapter 2.

Field Of Study Within Discourse Analysis

A number of research areas within discourse analysis have received particular attention and have become significant areas of investigation in their own right. With respect to considerations relevant to language teaching, we will briefly discuss five such areas:cohension, coherence, information structure and converstaion analysis (with focus on turn-taking), and critical discourse analysis.

COHENSION

The use of various cohensive ties to explicitly link together all the propositions in a text results in cohension of that text. The most obvious structural features of such connected discourse are the cohesive ties identified and discussed by Halliday and Hasan (1976,1989). Therte are four types of grammatical ties (refference, ellipis, substitution, and conjunction) as well as a varieety of lexical ties, which we discuss in greater detail in Chapter 4 and 5. The following brief text exhibit synonymous repetition as one textual feature of cohesion that creates lexical ties :

Natural beauty plays a starring role in Santa Monica, and seaside is the perfect vantage from which to watch the performance. Early risers will notice that the show begins just after sunrise.

(Santa Monica Official Visitors Guide. 1998:18)

In this text the same event is referred to with there different noun phrases “a starring role” (first mention; new information; use of an indefinite article; “the performance” (the use of the define article indicates anaphoric reference to an earlier mention, and the semantic information relates this lexical item to “starring role”) and “the show” (the third reference made to the same event, which functions here as a synonym for “the performance”). This example may seem to display a complicated system of lexical ties and refference, but such lexical connections are very common in English writing. In the following excerpt from a letter written by a mother asking for advice on dealing with pre-teens, there are some examples of grammatical cohesive ties :

I am a working mother with two pre-teens. After dropping them off at school, i have to get right to work. But my children are disorganized and always late. A few times, I have had to turn around and go back home because one or the other forgot something.

(Children-LA’s Best Calendar of Family Event. July 1998:12)

The use of the pronoun them in the first line is an anaphoric reference to ‘two pre-teens.” The conjunction  but, which begins the second sentence express the counter-expectation arising from the second ant third sentences. The phrase “always late” is an elliptical form of the cause ‘they are always late” and the phrase one or the otheer is a good example of ellipsis at the noun phrase level meaning “one child or the other child.” Had the writer produced the other one instead of the other we would also have had an example of substitution in this text, one would have substituted for child (somewhat awkwardly in the repetition of working and work in lines 1 and 2; Childern refers bact to pre-teens and also relates more indirectly to mother. The words school and home are semantically related items as are disorganized and forgot someething. The cohension of the text is a result of all these cohesive ties, which link together the words and prepositions occuring in the text.

COHERENCE

In addition to cohesion, which is expressed via language resources, or bottom-up conection in text, effective discourse also requires coherence, which can be viewed as part of top-dwon planning and organisation. Coherence contributes to the unity of a piece of discourse such that the individual sentences hang together and relate to each other. This unity and relatedness is partialy a result of a recognizable organizational pattern for the prepositions and ideas in the passage, but it also depends on the presence of linguistic devices that strengthen global unity and create global conectedness. Recognisable patterns may include those based on temporal or spatial relations or those based on semantically associated relations such as problem-solution or cause-effect. Coherence may also depend in part on patterns and strategies of text development that are very culture specific.

While the overall coherence of a longer passage depends on the presence of a conventional scheme or organization that is recognizable as generic or specific to a particular communicative purpose and discourse community, the overall coherence of such a passage also depends on the degree of coherence within each paragrafh or section of the text. Each sentence or utterence is related both to the previous and following sentences in ways that lead the reader toward an easier and more effective interpretation of the text.

The notion of coherence applies to all four chapter in Part III of this handbook since the ability to use top-down information and strategies to interpret discourse (when listening or reading) or to produce discourse (when writing or speaking) assumes an understanding of the discourse community’s assumption- as well as a degree of control over its language conventions. These are some of the things that constitute coherence in the target course community. We shall be discussing more factors contributing to coherence later in Chapters 7 (Reading) and 8 (Writing).

INFORMATION STRUCTURE

The mjor concern of the area of discourse analysis referred to as information structure is the presentation of “old” (known) information versus “new” (unknown) information. Lsnguages use grammatical and dis course features in order to indicate which bits of information are known and which are new. European researchers often use the terms theme and rheme. While in North America topic and comment are more common. It seems that the basic principle for information structure is that themes/topics (old information) generally precede rhemes/comments (new information) in order of presentation.

In spoken discourse, old or given information is frequently resoverable from the situation. In written discourse, grammatical and discourse features play an important role in making this distinction (the use determiners, pronouns, word order in the sentence). Propositions within a larger piece of discourse also involve more local considerations of “well formedness.” According to bardovi-Harlig (1990), a sentence within a passage functions at three levels: The syntactic, the semantic, and the pragmatic. In order to understand her definitions, we need to better understand the terms “topic” and comment.”

A topic is a discourse entity that connects one part of the discourse to other parts through continuity in given information (i.e, old or known information) that runs through the entire discourse and helps us understand what being discussed. Thus, if there is a main character in the passage and most of the sentences are about the person, the identification of the main character will be known information and various grammatical and lexical devices will be used to connect the sentences through references to the main character, such as in the following text about Rona:

Rona was the youngest of three sisters. She liked music and literature. Being the youngest sister was in some ways a blessing and in others a curse...

In this example all noninitial references to Rona point back to her initial mention and link the topic of subsequent sentences in the discourse back to the initial mention.

The comment, on the other hand, is what is said about the topic and that is generally new added information. In each sentence of the example some additional information is added in the comment, develping the discourse according to the writer intention. In the example about Rona, the topic of the text is also the subject of the first sentence, so its initial position is part of the normal (unmarked) rules of English grammar. However, as we shall discuss in more detail in Chapter 4 (Grammar) and 8 (Writing), special grammatical constructions may be used to bring forward elements that would not be found in initial position in the usual discourse sequence. The passage might have continuated as follows:

For example,there was less responsibility involved in being the youngest. The most important tasks assigned to rona’s older sisters.

Here the grammatical subject “there” follows an introductory conjunctive tie (“foe example”) and allows new infoemation (“less responsibility”) to function as the marked topic of the first new sentence while the noun phrase “the most important task” is both the subject and topict of the next sentence, amplifying on “less responsibility.” “Rona” has temporalily become part of the two comments (involve in being the youngest/were assigned to Rona’s sisters) For a strength of discourse before she once again has the potential to become the topict.

Thus understanding how information is managed at the local can help contribute to coherence at the global level. The three subfields of discourse anaysis presented here were chosen to illustrate textual features of discourse that are relevant to language teaching. The next subfield dedicated to exposing social inequality in language.

TURN-TAKING IN CONVERSATION ANALYSIS

In conversation, in addition to managing new and old information in a coherent way, the interlocutorts also have to take stock of and constantly monitor each other to control the turn-taking system of the target language in question since this is another feature of discourse in oral interaction. The conversational turn-talking system (Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson,1974) of any language includes conventions govverning matters such as the following : how conversations open and close, who speaks when and for how long, who can interrupt (and how this is done), how topics get changed, how much time can elapse between turn or between speakers, whether or not speakers can overlap, and whether or not speakers can complete or repair each other’s utterances. There are often important cultural (and subcultural) differentces in the way discourse communities do turn-taking. A lack of understanding of these differences can cause problems in cross-cultural communication.

One important source of organization in the turn-taking system is the “adjacency pair.’’ Where the first speaker says something that conventionally requires of the interlocutor a response that is often partly predictable. Thus a typical adjacency pair for a conventional greeting to open a conversation in English might be :

1: Hello, how are you ?

2:Fine, thanks.

Other adjacency pair often have at least two conventional options. If the first part of the pair is an invitation, the second part can be acceptance or a refusal. If the first part of the pair is a request for confirmation, the second part can confirm or disconfirm:

1:You’re from Manchester ?

2:Yes./No, Liverpool

In any given speech community such adjacency pairs can have highly conventionalized and formulate phrases associated with them. Needless to say, mastering these conventions and phrases in a second language will contribute greatly to oral fluency and communicative competence. We shall have more to say about this in chapter 9 (Speaking).

CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

The primary interest of critical discourse analysis is to deconstruct and expose social inequality as expressed, constituted, and legitimized through language use- notably in the public media such as newspapers, radio, television, films, cartoons, and the like, but also in settings such as classrooms, courtrooms, news interviews, doctor-patient interactions, as well as in everyday talk. Critical discourse analysis believe that discourse tends to become normative with repeated use and thus appears to be neutral; however, in actual fact, discourse is never neutral. It must thus be analyzed in terms of the political ideology, social history, and power structures that it embodies and expresses, explicitly or indirectly. The research of critical discourse analysts often takes on a problem-posing/problem-solving quality and addresses discriminatory use of language directed at women, lower socioeconomic classes, members of ethnic, racial, religious, and linguistic minorities, and others. Critical discourse analysts also may suggest remedies in the form of nondiscriminatory behaviours and language practices that could replace the problematic discourse. Some critical discourse analysts who are well known to language educators are Fairclough (1995). Pennycook (1995). And Phillipson (1992).

Many critical discourse analysts believe that education in general and foreign and second language education in particular are ideological and political, but that most language teachers are unaware of this. They argue that is discriminatory and that reinforces social inequality be avoided to the extent that this is possible, or – at the very least – explicitly and critically discussed if it comes up.

In our experience, language teachers who are exposed to the writings and ideas of critical discourse analysts tend either to relate strongly to this theoretical and analytical approach or to be quite put off by it since it represents a sociopolitical for ideological prespective on language and education. We believe it is important that teachers understand what critical discourse analysis is and that they are at the very least sensitized to the potentially discriminatory and demeaning discourse that may arise in the classroom and in teaching materials and be prepared to deal with it constructively (i.e, to use such instance of discourse as opportunities for discussion and actives that can make the language teachers should be sensitive to and aware of potential reactions to what they say in class- potential reactions from the whole group or from individual students- as well as reactions to what they write on student papers. It may be useful for teachers to ask themselves if a critical discourse analyst might find anything they have said or written to be problematic or offensive.

Types Of Discourse

There are many different ways to classify discourse. One dimension is written/spoken distiction resulting in written or spoken text. Both types of text can be further distinguished according to register (level of formality) or genree (communicative purpose, audience, and conventionalized style and format). Also, some discourse is largely monologic (where one speaker or writiter produces an entrie discourse with little or no interaction) while other discourse is dialogic or multiparty in nature (where two or more participants interact and – to varying degrees – construct the discourse together).

The distinction between speech and writing is often referred to as channel (Hymes, 1968) or medium, due to the fact that a different physicological process is involved in each. Yet it is clear that we can have written language that is intended to be spoken and spoken language that is designed to be read (or which was first spoken and then written down). These distinctions further interact with register and genre as can be seen in Table 1.

Discourse can also be either planned or impetunned (Ochs, 1079). Unplanned discourse includes most conversations and some written texts such as informal notes and letters. Planned discourse includes prepared speeches or seremons in oral discourse and carefully edited pr published written work. The dimension of discourse planning could be added to to the features of table 1.

Most everyday interactions, whether written (e.g, notes, shopping lists, ads, etc) or spoken, take place in familiar situations. The interlocutors rely heavily on social converstion and contextual information. This type of discourse is considered context-embeded and is probably most relevant to the orate/spoken and some orate/written types of discourse. On the other hand, most instances of written discourse and some examples of spoken discourse are removed from the immediate physical context and handle their topic(s) at a more abstract and conseptual level. This type of discourse is context-reduced, and users of such discourse need to rely more heavily on their knowledge of the language code and genre types because the context is partily unfamiliar, less immediate, and less accesible. This type of discourse is characteristic of literate spoken and written texts. Often planned discourse is context-reduced while unplanned discourse is context-embeded. Educated, proficient language users are able to use with flexibility and appropriacy both planned and unplanned and context-embeded and context-reduced discourse.

Discourse has also been described as transactional versus interactional (Brown and Yule, 1983), whhere transactional discourse involves primarily the transmissin of information or the exchange of goods and services, and interactional discourse is those instances of language use that shape and maintain social relations and identities and express the speaker’s/writer’s attitude toward the topict or toward the interlocutor(s). In this book we treat both transactional discourse, where the management of new and old information is often sailent, and interactional discourse, where the run-taking system of the target language and the realization patterns of its speech acts and stance markets can be crucial.

With the exception of spoken versus written discourse, most of these different discourse types represent continua rather than hard and fast    dichotomies. For example, a conversation where one speaker dominates can be somewhat monologic, and a letter to a friend can exhibit both interactional and transactional features. A proficient language user develops the knowledge and the skill to manipulate the different types and purposes of discourse according to his’her needs. This entails knowledge of language, of discourse, of writting and speaking conventions of sociocultural norms as well as other more specific areas of konwledge. The various chapters in this book address many of these knowledge types.