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.