syntax in different discourse genres

Andy Pawley apawley at COOMBS.ANU.EDU.AU
Thu Sep 11 05:56:07 UTC 1997


In reply to Frank Jaret's enquiry about construction types in different
genres, let me suggest the following (mostly Anglocentric) selection of
material, in addition to the references supplied by Paul Hopper.

1. Formal written vs conversational and narrative speech

Wallace Chafe's 1994 book /Discourse, Consciousness and Time: the Flow and
Displacement of Conscious Experience in Speaking and Writing/ reviews his
own research over two decades on how and why spoken and written discourse
differ and contains an extensive bibliliography.

I have a couple of papers with Frances Syder which tackle the same problem,
with particular reference to syntax.

A. Pawley and F. Syder (1983)  'Natural selection in syntax: notes on
adaptive variation and change in vernacular and literary grammar' in J.
Pragmatics 7: 551-579.

A. Pawley and F. Syder (in press) 'The one clause at a time hypothesis.'
(the book ed. H. Riggenbach won't be out for a while, but I can provide
copies of the paper)

A. Pawley (1984) 'School English is nobody's mother tongue: reflections on
vernacular and school-acquired language.' In A. Berry (ed.) /Communication/
(an extremely obscure publication but I can help...)

There are some golden oldies, such as:

William Labov (1973) 'The transformation of experience in narrative syntax'
(in W. Labov /Language in the Inner City/, U. Penn Press.

A. Duranti and E. Ochs (1979) 'Left-dislocation in Italian conversation' in
T. Givon (ed.) /Syntax and Semantics vol. 12, Discourse and Syntax/, pp.
377-417.

E. Ochs (1979) 'Planned and unplanned discourse', in T. Givon (ed.) /Syntax
and Semantics, vol. 12, Discourse and Syntax/, pp. 51-80. (Academic Press)

Deborah Tannen (ed.) (1982) /Spoken and Written Language/, esp. papers by
Chafe ('Integration and involvement in speaking, writing  and oral
literature'), P. Clancy (on Japanese) and Ch. Li and S. Thompson (Chinese).

W. Chafe (ed.) (1980) /The Pear Stories: Cognitive Cultural and Linguistics
Aspects of Narrative Production/.


2.  Oral formulaic genres. One can read th extensive literature on and the
ethnography of speaking and on verbal arts in various languages, e.g.
Albert Lord's classic /The Singer of Tales/, without finding much
systematic work on construction types.  However, Kon Kuiper
<k.kuiper at ling.canterbury.ac.nz>. has written quite a few papers which
touch on the special grammar of rapid speech by sports commentators,
auctioneers, etc. as part of a broader functional analysis of their
discourse properties. I'll mention just his recent book and one paper:

Koenraad Kuiper (1996) /Smooth Talkers: the Linguistic Performance of
Auctioneers and Sportscasters./ Lawrence Erlbaum, N.J.

K. Kuiper and D. Haggo (1984)  'Livestock auction, oral poetry and ordinary
language'. Language and Society 13:205-234.

I have done a similar sort of paper about radio cricket commentaries:

A . Pawley (1991) 'How to talk cricket: on linguistic competence in a
subject matter.' In R. Blust (ed.) /Currents in Pacific Linguistics:
Essays...in Honour of George Grace./ pp. 339-368.  Pacific Linguistics,
C-117.

One of Kuiper's students has written a thesis on the discoyrse structure
and grammar of Weather Forecast broadcasts, which may be available from
Kuiper.

There are other (mainly unpublished) papers that I'm aware on formulaic
constructions peculiar to casual speech, but that'll do for now.


Andrew Pawley
Dept. Linguistics
Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies
Australian National University



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