Meanings And Representations: Discourse Flashcards
What is foregrounding?
- Drawing attention to something (in this case via grammatical deviation).
- E.g. ‘ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country,’ JFK’s inaugural address.
- ‘and I called for a drought upon the land, and upon the mountains, and upon the corn,’ King James Bible.
What are clauses?
- A group of words that contains a subject and a verb that have a relationship.
- subject (s), object (o), complement (c), adverbial (a).
- E.g. ‘the squirrel darted up the tree’. ‘Squirrel’ is the subject and ‘darted’ is the verb.
What is the subject of a clause?
- usually a noun phrase.
- Usually indicates the element responsible for carrying out the verb process.
- E.g. ‘I turned on the television,’ ‘I’ is the subject.
What is the object of a clause?
- Usually a noun phrase.
- Identifies the entity being acted on by the action of a verb process.
- E.g. ‘I turned on the television,’ ‘the television’ is the object.
- ‘I lent my friend my iPad,’ ‘my friend’ + ‘my iPad’ are both objects.
What is the complement of a clause?
- Usually a noun phrase.
- Is the attribute of a subject in a relational verb process.
- E.g. ‘I was tired’, ‘tired’ is the complement.
- ‘The news that she was dead shocked us all’, ‘that she was dead’ is a noun complement clause attached to the noun ‘news’.
What is the adverbial of a clause?
- Usually an adverb or prepositional phrase.
- Identifies the circumstances of a verb process in terms of time, place or manner.
- E.g. ‘I put the book on the floor’, ‘on the floor’ is the adverbial as it identifies the place of the verb process ‘I put’.
What were William Labov’s narrative categories?
- Suggested a structure for explaining how speakers gave accounts of personal experiences:
- abstract
- orientation
- complicating action
- resolution
- coda
What is the abstract (A) of one-speaker narratives (Labov’s narrative categories)?
- An indication that the speaker wants a listener’s attention and is signalling the start of the narrative.
What is the orientation (O) of one-speaker narratives (Labov’s narrative categories)?
- the ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘where’ and ‘why’ - that set the scene and provides background information that the speakers sees as important.
What is the complicating action (CA) of one-speaker narratives (Labov’s narrative categories)?
- The main body of the narrative.
What is the resolution (R) of one-speaker narratives (Labov’s narrative categories)?
- The ending of the narrative that ties up loose ends and provides closure.
What is the coda (C) of one speaker narratives (Labov’s narrative categories)
- a signal that the narrative has ended.
What is internal evaluation?
- An expression of attitude towards the events in a narrative that occur in the same time frame as the main action.
- E.g. ‘I saw my friend who gave me an invitation for her wedding (1) it was lovely to see her (.) and a surprise to hear that she was getting married.’
- ‘it was lovely to see her…’ is the internal evaluation as the speaker stands back from the action but makes comments that are within the same time frame.
What is external evaluation?
- an expression of attitude where the speaker ‘stands back’ from the main action.
- E.g. ‘then we went home and had the very boring task of putting it all away (.) not my favourite thing to do’.
- ‘…not my favourite thing to do’ is the external evaluation, speaker stands back from the action and simply expresses an attitude towards the event.
What are Charles Goodwin’s story structure?
- Proposed alternative model highlighting interactive nature of storytelling. Suggested 6 interactional techniques speakers use when building narratives together:
- Story preface
- Story solicit
- Preliminary to the story
- Story action
- Story climax
- Story appreciation
What is the story preface (Charles Goodwin story structure)?
- a signal that a speaker wants to tell a story and an invitation for others to show interest.
- E.g. ‘Well I’ve often found Rob rude’.
- ‘I really love’.
What is the story solicit (Charles Goodwin story structure)?
- A response from someone else that they want to listen to the story.
- E.g. ‘Why (.) what has he done to you’.
- ‘Are you sure?’.
What is the Preliminary to the story (Goodwin’s story structure)?
- background information to the story in the form of the ‘who’. ‘where’, ‘what’ and ‘why’.
- E.g. ‘Ok, well, I had this new sofa and he just came in’.
- ‘It’s a comedy, it’s about a group of interns trying to work their way up to become surgeons in a hospital’.
What is the story action (Goodwin’s story structure)?
- The main body of the narrative.
- E.g. ‘put his feet all over it… I told him, get your feet off, and he laughed’.
- ‘They have to show that they are good enough to stay in that profession’.
What is the story climax (Goodwin’s story structure)?
- The conclusion of the narrative.
- E.g. ‘I told him, get your feet off, and he laughed’.
- A: ‘so you want to be a surgeon?
- B: ‘of course not’ (story climax)
