AN EXERCISE ABOUT DISCOURSE ANALYSIS(DINH DUC NHAT)

-Define the topic framework and relevant factors in the text.. I- An example of narrative discourse II- The topic framework and relevant factors in the text.. http://www.first-school.ws/

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