forms independent of the purposes or functions which those forms are designed to serve in human affairs. … the discourse analyst is committed to an
investigation of what …. language is used for’
10
So many different definitions of discourse have now been developed that many linguistic books contain a survey of definitions. They tend to fall into three main
categories: 1 anything beyond the sentence; 2 language use; 3 a broader range of social
practice including nonlinguistic and nonspecific instances of language.
11
Each definition arises from a particular academic domain. These include the disciplines - such as linguistics, anthropology and philosophy - from which the models
for understanding and methods for analyzing discourse first developed. Added to these are those disciplines which have applied these models and methods to issues within their
domains, such as communication, cognitive psychology, social psychology and artificial intelligence, where the models and methods have developed further in each of these
directions.
12
We will follow Johnstone’s approach, which is not to treat discourse analysis as a discipline, or as a subdiscipline of linguistics, but rather as a systematic way of
suggesting answers to research questions across disciplines.
13
An eclectic approach seems to us the most helpful one, as per van Dijk’s recommendation above, as it allows input
from other areas of research. The heuristic which Johnstone proposes is to ask questions about how discourse
shapes and is shaped by the following factors: the world, language, participants, other discourses, its medium, purpose. We propose to answer some of these questions as we
look at Zephaniah.
14
1.1.2 The Nature of Communication
Traditionally, in the Western view, language has been viewed through the metaphor of a conduit. Words are seen as packages through which information is
conveyed to addressees, who then unpack them, removing the ideas from the packaging of words.
15
It is now recognized that language does much more than merely impart information. It has at least three different functions or imports:
i informative – to exchange knowledge
10
Brown Yule, Discourse, 1.
11
Schiffrin et al., The Handbook, 1.
12
Schiffrin et al., The Handbook, 1.
13
Johnstone, Discourse, xi.
14
Johnstone, Discourse, 9.
15
Johnstone, Discourse , 56.
ii expressive – to relate to other people by sharing emotions, attitudes and
evaluations iii
conative – to bring about changes in the course of events.
16
It has been said that a communication is rarely only for information. It almost always has some element of persuasion. Birch claims that all types of texts are
‘distinctive imperative acts aimed at influencing the thoughts and actions of other people’ and that our lexical and grammatical choices are not ‘innocent choices’
17
. It has been traditionally thought that in communication, the speaker’s intentions
are decoded by the hearer, but according to Sperber and Wilson ‘the speaker’s intentions are not decoded but non-demonstratively inferred, by a process of hypothesis formation
and confirmation which, like scientific theorizing and unlike grammatical analysis, has free access to contextual information. The hearer’s aim is to arrive at the most plausible
hypothesis about the speaker’s intentions; but the most plausible hypothesis, in pragmatic interpretation as in science, may still be wrong.’
18
In any communication the speaker does not make absolutely everything explicit, which would make communicating a very long and tedious business, but only provides as
much information as he or she thinks is needed for the hearer to get the correct inference. For example, when referring to people mutually known, we do not usually use a person’s
full name but just the first name, which can sometimes lead to confusion if the listener has in mind two people with the same name.
1.1.3 The Importance of Context
