Features of Discourse Analysis:
Discourse analysis describes what the speaker and the hearer do than the relationship existing between sentences. According to Maniruzzaman, 2006 there are four discoursal features to consider.
1. Reference: speaker refers by using some appropriate expression. He invests his expression by the act of referring. It is noteworthy to say that referring is not an expression but an element that can be used in an expression. That is a reference is an act on the part of the speaker. For example-
A- My uncle is coming home from Canada on Sunday.
B- How long has he been away for?
A- Oh no, they lived in Canada eh he was married to my mother’s sister. Well she’s been dead for a number of years now.
Here in the example ‘he’ is used to refer to ‘my uncle’ and ‘she’ to ‘my mother’s sister’.
2. Presupposition: it is defined in terms of assumptions. The speaker makes it about what the hearer is likely to accept without challenge. It is a pragmatic idea. It is the common ground of the participants in the conversations. For example-
A- My uncle is coming home from Canada.
B- My uncle is not coming home from Canada.
C- I have an uncle.
Here sentence (B) is unnecessary, while sentence (C) is a presupposition of the speaker in uttering sentence (A). (Maniruzzaman, 2006).
3. Implicature: According to Maniruzzaman, 2006, it stands for what a speaker can imply, suggest, or mean as distinct from what the speaker literally says. There are two types of implicature.
Conventional: it is determined by the conventional meaning of the words used.
Such as- He is an Englishman; he is, therefore, brave.
Conversational: it is derived from a general principle plus a number of maxims which speakers will normally obey. It includes conventional implicatures. The general principle is called the ‘co-operative principles’.
4. Inference: It is a process that is used to arrive at an interpretation for utterances or for the connections between utterances (Maniruzzaman, 2006). For example-
“In the kitchen there was a huge dresser and when anyone went in you see + the hats and coats were all dumped on this dresser.”
Inferences:
The hats and coats belong to the visitor to the house;
The house has the dresser; and
The dresser is in the kitchen.
Source:
http://englishstudyhelp.blogspot.com/2012/05/discourse-analysis-and-language.html
