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THE RELATIONS BETWEEN PRAGMATICS AND DISCOURSE STUDIES<br>
<br>
Here is a summary of how I see the relations between pragmatics and
discourse studies. <br>
<br>
1. As areas of research both pragmatics and discourse studies (as I
prefer to call what is often called 'discourse analysis') have emerged
more or less at the same time in the 1960s, in both cases at the margin
of, and in reaction against, formal sentence grammars, and similar
limitation in other disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. <br>
<br>
2. Thus, pragmatics extended grammar and linguistics (then limited to
syntax and -- a little bit of -- semantics) with a third main
component, that of the study of language use as action, beginning with
the work on speech acts by Austin and Searle, and later in various
other directions interested in actual language use in context and
communication, such as the study of conversational postulates, maxims
and implicatures by Grice, and on politeness by Brown and Levinson. In
a broad sense these developments correspond to the field of the third
main domain of semiotics as defined by Charles Morris in the 1930s:
Syntax as the study of the relations of signs among themselves
(structure), semantics as the study of the relation between signs and
the world (meaning, reference), and pragmatics as the study of the
relations between signs and their users (use, action). Of course, this
is only a very rough correspondence, because also sociolinguistics and
psycholinguistics, which emerged at the same time in the 1960s, are
also studies of language use, interested in the relations between
'signs' (utterances, expressions, etc.) and their users. In sum,
pragmatics is quite heterogeneous (speech acts, implicatures,
conversational postulates and politeness, among some of its major
domains of research, are very different objects of research) but they
all have to do with actual language use, action, interaction and
appropriateness of language use rather than with abstract (syntactic)
well-formedness or structure, or with (semantic) meaningfulness or
reference. In this sense, pragmatics overlaps with conversation
analysis as well as with (other) discourse studies, both also studying
forms of language use and interaction. <br>
<br>
3. Discourse Studies (DS) also extended the then (1960s) current
structuralist and generative grammars, by emphasizing, first of all,
that the unit or object of language use should not be based on isolated
(invented) sentences, but on real, natural instances of text or talk.
It did so, in linguistics, for instance by examining the way sequences
of propositions (meanings of discourse) were coherent, both locally, as
well as globally. At the same time sociolinguistics (especially Labov)
was interested in everyday storytelling and other speech activities
(e.g., the study of ritual insults of African American youths in the
USA). Semiotics in France developed the study of the structural
analysis of stories, whereas the 'new rhetoric' and other disciplines
started the more systematic study of argumentation, and linguistically
oriented literary studies advocated the study of style, overlapping
with the study of social style (as one aspect of language variation) in
sociolinguistics. As one of the first in these many directions of
discourse studies, that is, already at the beginning of the 1960s, the
work of Dell Hymes </font><font face="Palatino Linotype">in
anthropology </font><font face="Palatino Linotype">emphasized the need
for the study of complete communicative events in their cultural
contexts. Micro-sociology, and especially ethnomethodology, interested
in interaction of everyday life, more specifically focused on the study
of mundane conversation, and later more generally on
talk-in-interaction (also in institutional settings). And cognitive
psychology extended the then current psycholinguistic study of the
comprehension of sentences to the broader field of discourse processing
(production and comprehension), the representation (storage, recall,
etc.) of discourse in memory and the crucial role of knowledge in these
processes. <br>
<br>
4. In other words, all major disciplines of the humanities and social
sciences were involved in the early development of Discourse Studies as
a "cross-discipline" between 1964 and 1974. In sum, like pragmatics
also DS is interested in many different aspects of language use, but
its unified object of analysis is language use as actual, naturally
ocurring text or talk. At first this object was studied mostly in more
formal terms (semantic, interactional, narrative, argumentative, etc.,
structures) and later also in a more cognitive perspective (actual
processing of discourse), a social perspective (as social interaction
and as constitutive of social organization) and a cultural perspective
(as culturally variable language use and communicative events in
cultural contexts). <br>
<br>
5. From this <i>very</i> succinct -- and hence incomplete -- summary
of the developments of pragmatics and Discurse Studies, we may conclude
the following:<br>
<br>
(a) They are overlapping cross-disciplines in the humanities and social
sciences, both interested in the study of naturally occurring language
use, and especially in the study of text and talk as social
interaction. At the international congress of pragmatics, many if not
most papers are on discourse and conversation. <br>
(b) Pragmatics especially advocated the extension of grammar and other
formal approaches limited to syntax and semantics, with a third
'pragmatic' component studying language use as (speech) acts,
interaction and relations between language users. Discourse Studies
also advocated an extension of grammar and linguistics, but initially
especially for the very object of study: not isolated sentences, but
discourse. <i>Both</i> pragmatics and DS are interested in naturally
occurring language use, that is, in text and talk. <br>
(c) Discourse Studies is broader than pragmatics because it sees
pragmatics as just one (major) area of discourse studies. DS is <i>also</i>
interested in the formal study of discourse syntax, in discourse
semantics (coherence, topic-comment., focus, presupposition, etc.), in
genres, narrative and argumentation structures, as well as the
cognitive processing and mental representation as well as the
situatedness of discourse in society. DS also features a more critical
approach specifically interested in the study of the role of discourse
in the (re) production of social power and power abuse, for instance in
sexism, racism and other forms of social domination and inequality.<br>
<br>
6. The development of new (cross) disciplines is of course hardly very
systematic. Hence the many overlaps between pragmatics and Discourse
Studies. After the early 1970s these developments also overlapped with
developments in (e.g. interactional) sociolinguistics (the work of
Gumperz et al), psycholinguistics, linguistic anthropology, and later
in social psychology ("discursive psychology") and communication
studies. In other words we thus have a very broad discipline of
"language use, interaction or discourse", with many different aspects,
dimensions, levels or topics of resaerch, each with different (formal,
descriptive, empirical, etc.) methods - and extending far beyond the
original mother disciplines of linguistics, sociology, anthropology and
psychology.<br>
<br>
6. My <i>personal perspective </i>on the links between discourse
studies and pragmatics is that 'pragmatic' should strictly speaking be
used only for studies of language use as acts, action or interaction,
as a third component besides syntax as the study of form/structure of
discourse, of semantics as the study of meaning (intension) and
reference (extension). Each of these three main levels of the study of
language use or discourse then may first have a more formal, abstract,
normative dimension (as is the case for generative and formal grammars,
formal semantics, philosophical speech act analysis, conversation
analysis, argumentation analysis, etc. -- often making structures
explicit in terms of rules). Each of these levels of discourse study
also has a more 'empirical' dimension in the analysis of actual text
and talk of actual language users (mental processing, mental models) as
members of social groups and communities, and in socially situated
interaction within institutions and social structures. In these studies
text and talk are examined rather in the more dynamic terms of moves
and strategies (politeness, self-presentation and impression
management, persuasion, manipulation, etc.), the influence of
discourse, the exercise of power, and the constitution and reproduction
of the social order. This last dimension would also need to make
explicit the nature of context, as well as the relations between
discourse or language use with such context. We thus have the following
schema:<br>
<br>
DISCOURSE STUDIES<br>
SYNTAX: FORM<br>
LOCAL: discourse syntax, pronouns, word-worder, style<br>
GLOBAL: formats, schemas: narrative, argumentative,
conversational<br>
SEMANTICS: MEANING, REFERENCE<br>
LOCAL/MICRO: sequential coherence, topic-comment, focus,
presupposition<br>
GLOBAL/MACRO: global coherence, discourse topics<br>
PRAGMATICS: (INTER)ACTION<br>
LOCAL: speech acts sequences; interaction: turn-taking, side
sequences<br>
GLOBAL: speech/discourse activities: parliamentary debates,
political campaigns, teaching a class, etc. <br>
<br>
Each of these levels then has a more formal, normative dimension as
well as a more empirical (cognitive, and socioculturally situated,
contextual) dimension studying actual language users (and their
identities, roles, relations, goals and knowledge) in socially situated
interaction. <br>
<br>
This is a schema of the organization of <i>(sub) disciplines,</i> and
not of actual research projects and topics, which may combine different
levels and dimensions. Thus one may study such different things as
presuppositions, fallacies, storytelling, racist discourse, and a host
of other topics at the levels of form (formats), meaning and (inter)
action, and both in more formal or more empirical and contextualized
(laboratory, field, situation) studies. <br>
<br>
Although this is a simplification and in a way a reduction, this
schematic view of the relation of pragmatics with respect to discourse
studies may clarify a bit what otherwise may be seen as an extremely
complex collection of more or less overlapping approaches. <br>
<br>
There are now many introductions to (and handbooks of) both pragmatics
and discourse studies that detail much of what has been said above. <br>
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