University of Languages and International study Vietnam National University, Hanoi DISCOURSE ANALYSIS Assignment Supervisor: Student’s full name: Dinh Duc Nhat Group: 06.1E4 Hanoi, April 2010 University of Languages and International study Vietnam National University, Hanoi Student’s full name: Dinh Duc Nhat Group: 06.1E4 DISCOURSE ANALYSIS Assignment -Find an example of narrative discourse. -Define the topic framework and relevant factors in the text. -Analyze the text in terms of its generic stages. Draw the diagram and work at that. Table of content I- An example of narrative discourse II- The topic framework and relevant factors in the text. III- The diagram and the analysis of the text in terms of its generic stages. IV- Reference The process of working I-An example of narrative discourse. A Shepherd Boy tended his master's sheep near a dark forest not far from the village. Soon he found life in the pasture very dull. All he could do to amuse himself was to talk to his dog or play on his shepherd's pipe. One day as he sat watching the sheep and the quiet forest, and thinking what he would do should he see a wolf, he thought of a plan to amuse himself. His master had told him to call for help should a wolf attack the flock, and the villagers would drive it away. So now, though he had not seen anything that even looked like a wolf, he ran toward the village shouting at the top of his voice, "Wolf! Wolf!" As he expected, the villagers who heard the cry dropped their work and ran in great excitement to the pasture. But when they got there they found the boy doubled up with laughter at the trick he had played on them. A few days later the Shepherd Boy again shouted, "Wolf! Wolf!" Again the villagers ran to help him, only to be laughed at again. Then one evening as the sun was setting behind the forest and the shadows were creeping out over the pasture, a Wolf really did spring from the underbrush and fall upon the Sheep. In terror the boy ran toward the village shouting "Wolf! Wolf!" .But though the villagers heard the cry, they did not run to help him as they had before. "He cannot fool us again," they said. The wolf killed a great many of the boy's sheep and then slipped away into the forest. Liars are not believed even when they speak the truth. http://www.first-school.ws/theme/fables/shepherd-boy-wolf.htm II- The topic framework and relevant factors in the text. Analysis of the text in term of its generic stages. In order to have a language map of topic framework and relevant factors in the text above, we initially must understand what topic framework is. The notion of topic framework consists of the notion “topic” which is quite elusive, different scholars use it to refer to different phenomena, from a constituent of a clause to propositions of a text. According to Nunan (1993: 125), topic is “the subject matter of a text”. It is a means of delimiting a unit of text/talk; the central orhanizing principle for a lot of discourse. In Keenan and Schieffeli’s points of view, discourse topic is not simply a noun phrase or a sentence. It is the proposition, about which the claim is made or elicited. This approach is close to the understanding of discourse topic as a title of discourse. In An Introduction to Discourse Analysis by Nguyen Hoa, the notion “topic” as “ what is being talk about” is attractive because it seems to be the central organizing principle for a lot of discourse, and it might help us to determine what set of sentences should be considered together as a set of some kind, separate from another set. This can serve as a criterion for distinguishing the connected coherent from anything that is not. However, what is needed is a characterization of “topic”, and as Brown and Yule suggest, this is possible with in a topic “framework”. A topic framework should comprise all the activated (relevant to the interpretation of what is said or written) features of context because they are the aspects of contexts directly reflected in the text, and need to be called upon to interpret it. What happens is that the speaker or writer usually operate within this topic framework to produce language, thus we will have a sense that the sentences are connected topically. According to Brown and Yule, as there are a large number of phrases expressing the topic of even a short text, a topic framework was introduced. A topic framework depends on which features of context became activated in a particular piece of discourse. In general, the topic framework would represent a combination of elements derived from the activated physical context (time and place, facts about the speaker and the hearer), and from the discourse fragment itself (people, places, entities, events, facts, etc.) often previously mentioned in the discourse. As can be seen in the model of narrative discourse above, in the text, the topic framework is the story of a shepherd boy who was a liar and the massage to the readers “ Liars are not believed even when they speak the truth” . This boy told the villagers a lie that wolf appeared to kill his flock of sheep. His lie was repeated the second time. And the third time, when the appearance of the wolf was the truth, the villagers did not come to help him any more because they thought that was a more lie of the boy. Through the story, all of the events, characters, time and sentences are combined to aim at describing the story about the lie of the shepherd boy and its consequence as the topic framework in the text. Similarly, to define the relevant factors in the text, we must firstly have knowledge of what relevance is. In An Introduction to Discourse Analysis by Nguyen Hoa, relevance is an important indicator of the topic framework, at least from English point of view. We will all feel whether a piece of information is relevant or not. We think by relevance, we mean that a piece of information should be relevant to the existing topic framework, since it is the central organizing axis of discourse. Thus it is possible to modify Grice’s Relation Maxim: participants of the conversation have to make their contributions relevant in terms of the existing topic framework. They are expected to be speaking topically as Brown and Yule suggest the use of expression “speaking topically” instead. That is: A discourse participant is “speaking totally” when he make his contribution fit closely to the most recent elements incorporated in the topic framework”, (Brown and Yule, 1983:84). All things considered, the relevant factors shown in the text are all the characters consisting of shepherd boy, villagers, wolf, flock of sheep; the place where the boy tended his master’s ship; the events that the boy told lie twice and when the wolf appeared to kill his sheep in the third time he cried out “wolf, wolf!” All this factors are relevant to one another and combined in the topic framework of the text, Liars are not believed even when they speak the truth. III- The diagram and analysis of the text in terms of its generis stages: Thanks to the diagram drawn below, it is easily visualised in Hoey's pionts of view that the full problem solution pattern consists of five elements. To begin with, it is the situation within which there is a complication or problem. The situation occurs in sentences 1,2,3,4 and 5. In this part, the setting of the story is built with the place, and characters, scene…and the reason making the boys fell bored and dull. This makes the readers have a prediction about the behaviors of the shepherd boy. In the construction of the text’s generic stages, the next stage is the creation of problem for the story. Then series of problems are created. The first one is the first lie of the boy and he receives the first response of the villagers. They run towards the boy to help him. Continuously, the second problem is followed by the first problem and it receives the second response of the villagers, they again revive the trick of the boy. The story is continued to reach to the climax (highest point) when the next problem happens. This time a Wolf really did spring from the underbrush and fall upon the Sheep. It is quite different from the last two responses. The village’s response is not to run to help the boy. Afterwards, the result is that the boy was in terror without help from the villagers. As a massage to the readers, the evaluation for the whole story is the ending of the story “ Liars are not believed even when they speak the truth.” Situation in which problems created: (sentences 1,2,3,4,5) Pronlem 1: Response to problem 1 (sentence 6) (sentences 7,8) Problem 2: Response to problem 2 (sentences 9) (sentence 10) Problem 3: Response to problem 3 (sentences 11,12) (sentences 13,14) Result/ solution (sentence 15) Evaluation of result or solution. (sentence 16) IV- References: Brown G., Yule G. Discourse Analysis. (1983) Hoey, M. 1994. Signalling in Discourse: a functional analysis of a common discourse pattern in written and spoken English. In Coulthard (1994a). 26- 45. Nunan, D. Introducing Discourse Analysis. (1993). Penguin Books Nguyen Hoa. An Inroduction to Discourse Analysis Schiffrin D. Approaches to Discourse. (1994). Oxford & Cambridge: Blackwell. http://www.first-school.ws/theme/fables/shepherd-boy-wolf.htm . 2010 University of Languages and International study Vietnam National University, Hanoi Student’s full name: Dinh Duc Nhat Group: 06.1E4 DISCOURSE ANALYSIS Assignment -Find an example of narrative discourse. . the text, we must firstly have knowledge of what relevance is. In An Introduction to Discourse Analysis by Nguyen Hoa, relevance is an important indicator of the topic framework, at least from. Coulthard (1994a). 26- 45. Nunan, D. Introducing Discourse Analysis. (1993). Penguin Books Nguyen Hoa. An Inroduction to Discourse Analysis Schiffrin D. Approaches to Discourse. (1994). Oxford & Cambridge: Blackwell.