Discourse: Language in context
English and English writing is of interest to people all over the place. So I want to talk about discourse, which is one end of the range of subdisciplines of language studies or linguistics. And I would summarise discourse as a matter of looking at language in context, the language in actual situations of use. In a sense, that means it should be at the core of linguistic study. It's real language in real situations. But the nature of linguistics itself is such with its abstraction and its drive to find systems and, in a sense, simplifications-- idealised models. That means that linguistics is rather more abstract than discourse analysis. If we go back to discourse analysis, we're looking at language in particular contexts.
And one of the first things I've mentioned as a way into thinking about language in context is this idea of deixis-- D-E-I-X-I-S. Same root as the word we use for the index finger or for indexes of books. Like those words, it has to do with pointing. And there are words that are absolutely at the core of the spoken language, the spoken language that five-year-olds, four-year-olds use that is deictic, words like "I and you, here and there, this, that, now, then, today, yesterday, tomorrow." And all of these deictic words have shifting reference. They only can be made sense of when you have an understanding of where the speaker has situated themselves when they use them.
So when I use the word "I," as you can imagine, it's different from when you use the word "I." And that applies to all of the other words I've just listed, like "here" and "now." When is now?
Now at the moment is 2:30 on a Wednesday afternoon in November. By the time you watch this, now will be different. So very interestingly and very much at the core of language is this idea that words like these shifting words have to be interpreted in context. And what I would suggest is that, ultimately, that's true of all language, not just the so-called deictic words. But with the deictic words, we feel it most strongly. So to go back to my first idea, discourse is language in context.
That means you have to look at everything in the context when you decide how language is being used, what it means, what's the value of it, what's the reasonably predictable effect of it-- or what is the effect of it? You have to think about who the speaker and the addressees are if it's speech. You have to think about their status perhaps. You may have to think about their gender. You may have to think about whether they're face to face in the same room or whether they're thousands of miles apart.
You may have to think about their profession. And you'll certainly have to make some assessment of their purposes. Why are they speaking in the first place? And why are these people listening to the person who's speaking? What's going on? So discourse analysis is taking language back into the fundamental uses of language in communication. People surviving, procreating, coping with illness, working if they have to work, having fun if they don't have to work-- the fundamentals of why we're alive. And that's why I suggest that, with discourse analysis, we do have to think about the people involved. We have to think about where they're located in time and space and what kind of background shapes everything they say.
Once you start thinking about the background and you mention another word that is pretty important in discourse analysis, and that is the idea of pragmatics. Pragmatics, again, is looking at language in context. But it's thinking about all of the unsaid backgrounds, things that are implicit when people say something. If I say, it's a bit chilly in here, to somebody else, maybe I'm implying or implicating that I want the window closed. But I've never mentioned a window. I've just said, it's a bit chilly in here. So it does depend on other things like it being cold or the other person realising it's cold and that I'm not joking. You can go into a sauna and say, it's a bit chilly here. People don't immediately look around to close the window. Because they realise, in the context, that that must be a joke or some kind of clumsy irony or something like that. So all of these things always bring you back to looking at language not on its own or abstracted, but in the context of people, interactants, purposes, agendas, things you want to get done, kinds of relationship you want to nurture with other people. And that's, I think, the fundamentals of it. The other thing I would say from the outset is that why I do discourse analysis is because I have particular interests I want to explore. And you should raise that question for yourself too. If anyone asks you to try doing a discourse analysis of whatever, the first question you should ask is, why? What's the point of doing this? What is the point of a discourse analysis of Anthony's speeches in Julius Caesar? What's the point of looking at women's magazines for the way that they represent men and women? So in a sense, you have to have some underlying interest-- some reason-- for looking at these things in the first place.
