WEEK 11: layers of analysis

Question 1

What is discourse analysis?

Answer 1

= systematic analysis and interpretation of a discourse (structures and fuctions)

Question 2

What are text characteristics?

Answer 2

1) intentionality - intention to communicate message
2) feasibility - easy to process
3) appropriateness - bring about reference, force, effect
4) conventionality - conformity to usage conventions

Question 3

What is the difference btw meaning and sense?

Answer 3

Meaning - explicit, objective, one meaning (semantics)
Sense - implicit, subjective, multiple meanings (pragmatics)

Question 4

What is the difference between connotative and denotative meaning?

Answer 4

Denotative = main meaning, explicit, less changeable, influenced by linguistic factors (historical circumstances)

Connotative - additional meaning, implicit, more changeable, influenced by extralinguistiv factors (specific dog)

Question 5

What are the types of connotative meaning?

Answer 5

1. Stylistic
   - emotive - emotive and sense perception (anger, love)
   - evaluative - rational and evaluative perception (perfect citizen)
   - expressive - sense and image perception (bully, log when talking about people)
2. Functional-stylistic component
   - constant associtations with its usual application in certain speech situations of communication (words reflect its style - twin rotor engine - polytechnic)

Question 6

What is metaphor?

Answer 6

Compare 2 distinctively different, yet similar things (my love is a rose)

Question 7

What is epithet?

Answer 7

Describes person or thing in imaginative manner
(Golden hands, blood-red sky)

Question 8

What is hyperbole?

Answer 8

= deliberate overstatement/exaggeration to intensify the feature in question
(He is rotting in jail)

Question 9

What is meiosis?

Answer 9

= opposite of hyperbole, deliberate understatement, helps to make speech more expressive
(theehugger X environmentalist)

Question 10

What is metonymy?

Answer 10

=referent is substituted by sth which is closely related to it
(Wood for forest, aspirin for any painkiller)

Question 11

What is synecdoche?

Answer 11

= variety of metonymy, uses parts of something to represent the whole
(new car —> new wheels)

Question 12

What is antithesis?

Answer 12

= 2 contrasting ideas presented together to stress the contrast
(chaos X order)

Question 13

What is oxymoron?

Answer 13

= combination of words opposite in their meanings (genuine fake watches)

Question 14

What is pun?

Answer 14

= wordplay to achieve humorous effect

Question 15

What are the Halliday’s metafunctions?

Answer 15

1. Ideational - natural world including ones consciousness
2. Interpersonal - social world, the relationship between speaker/hearer
3. Textual - verbal world, flow of information in text

Question 16

What is stylistic device?

Answer 16

= conscious intentional intensification of some typical structural/semantic property of language unit

• SDs display application of 2 meanings:
  1) referential (in language as a system)
  2) contextual (what it means in context - swallowed —-> disappear)

Question 17

What is textual metafunction?

Answer 17

= ability to show clear links btw new clause and the discourse that precedes it

Question 18

What is theme and rheme?

Answer 18

Theme = point of departure, first linguistic element in a sentence

Rheme = the rest of the sentence

Question 19

What are the types of themes?

Answer 19

1. Topical theme - mandatory, relate to content of the text
2. Textual theme - optional, form of conjuntion between clauses (next, then)
3. Interpersonal theme - clause is related to listeners or readers (vocatives which relates to person or people)

Question 20

What are the patterns of organization (thematic development)?

Answer 20

1. Fan pattern - repetition of theme of previous clause (I saw I counquered)
2. Zig zag pattern - rheme becomes a theme in the next clause (im from ottawa, ottawa is…)

Question 21

What is a discourse marker?

Answer 21

= signal transitions in converstion, index relation of utterance to the preceding context

Question 22

What are the types of discourse markers?

Answer 22

1) Interpersonal
- relationship btw speaker & listener
- look, exactly, you know
2) Referential
- now, then, because, and
3) Structural
- states the importance and nonimportance
- first of all, so, in the end
4) Cognitive
- speakers though process
- uhh, oh!, I mean