- Email: [email protected]
Handbook of Discourse Analysis
Journal of Pragmatics 38 (2006) 1521–1527 www.elsevier.com/locate/pragma
Book review Handbook of Discourse Analysis Deborah Schiffrin, Deborah Tannen, Heidi E. Hamilton (Eds.), Blackwell, 2001, 872 pages, £ 47,95 Almost 50 years after Harris’ article ‘‘Discourse Analysis’’ (1952) and 16 years after van Dijk’s Handbook of Discourse Analysis, another comprehensive handbook, edited by the wellknown linguists D. Schiffrin, D. Tannen and H. Hamilton, appeared in the Blackwell series of linguistics handbooks. Although the editors agree on the main features of ‘‘discourse analysis’’, i.e. ‘‘(1) anything beyond the sentence, (2) language use, and (3) a broader range of social practice that includes non-linguistic and non-specific instances of language’’ (p. 1), they have a broad and dynamic view of the field, taking into account both their personal evolvement with respect to the subject matter and the development of the field as a whole. The collection of the articles trying to bring together prototypical theoretical, methodological, and empirical insights is organized in four thematic parts. The first (‘‘Discourse Analysis and Linguistics’’), comprising nine articles, focuses on the influence of different linguistic aspects and phenomena on discourse: intonation, semantics, sociolinguistics, information structure, typology, discourse, etc. The second part (‘‘The Linking of Theory and Practice in Discourse Analysis’’) consists of eight articles and presents a wide range of methods and theoretical paradigms. The third part (‘‘Discourse: Language, Context, and Interaction’’) is the largest one in the volume, consisting of 14 articles that focus on the interactive contexts in which (and through which) language is used. Finally, the eight articles of the fourth part (‘‘Discourse across Disciplines’’) examine different approaches to the field of discourse from a psycholinguistic, social-psychological, sociological, educational, literary or computational perspective. In this review, we will focus on sociolinguistic aspects of discourse analysis (DA) as well as the representativity of theory and methods in the field. We will first present selected relevant views and materials of the handbook and end up in the last section with some critical reflections on its content and organization. 1. The articles of the first part provide a good overview of linguistic aspects on discourse. The focus is on basic notions like ‘‘intonation’’ (E. Couper-Kuhlen), ‘‘cohesion’’ (J.R. Martin), ‘‘discourse markers’’ (D. Schiffrin), ‘‘information structure’’ (G. Ward and B.J. Birner) and ‘‘register’’ (D. Biber and S. Conrad), but further issues such as semantic reasoning (D. Blakemore, N. Norrick), the possibility of distinguishing different discourse types (J. Myhill) and insights into the historical conditioning of DA approaches (L.J. Brinton) are discussed as well. 0378-2166/$ – see front matter # 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2006.03.004
1522
Book review
The authors do an excellent theoretical and methodological job: they do not only show in detail how discourse analysis should be done, but they also demonstrate what cannot be neglected if DA is to be done properly. Thus, for example, understanding ‘‘cohesion’’ implies for Martin sensitivity towards sociolinguistic contexts. This is also true for Schiffrin who claims that the criteria for isolating discourse markers have to be checked in sociolinguistic contexts of authentic discourse stretches and not only on a word class definition (Fraser’s proposal). In addition, Blakemore states that the hearer’s intuition about text coherence is guided by the content of utterances and his/her search for relevance in the first place. Furthermore, the synchronic view has to be supplemented by the so-called diachronically oriented DA (Brinton) which focuses on (a) the evolution of discourse marking over time, (b) larger changes in discourse structures, and (c) changes in text types. Brinton considers this approach to be ‘‘the richest and most rewarding aspect of the new field of historical discourse analysis’’ (p. 152). Biber and Conrad underline the cross-linguistic dimension: spoken and written discourse should be analyzed and compared; therefore, one would need a multi-dimensional approach to register variation based on electronic corpora, computational tools and multivariate statistical techniques which can provide comprehensive descriptions of cross-linguistic patterns of register variation. All these views are original and linked to the perspectives of first class experts in the field who present their theory and methodology with passion. This part indicates indeed the ‘‘disciplinary diversity’’ that the editors attribute to DA (p. 1), but in doing so they also transmit a sense of patchwork rather than a coherent order. 2. ‘‘The Linking of Theory and Practice in Discourse Analysis’’, the next part of the handbook, focuses on theoretical positions and fundamental methodological issues. For example, in the opening article, R.T. Lakoff argues for ‘‘the necessity of an inter-, cross-, and multidisciplinary approach for discourse analysis’’ (p. 200), if we want to achieve full understanding of what discourse is. For the field of interactional sociolinguistics J.J. Gumperz raises the question of interdisciplinary from a different perspective: how do (different) sociocultural background knowledge and the kind of use we put language in (contextualization cues in co-occurrence with grammatical and lexical signs) influence participants’ interpretation (inferencing) of interaction? His methodology offers an applicable analysis to language and culture studies of all kinds. A similar question is tackled by E.A. Schegloff by focusing on utterances as actions (and not so much as units of information). DA will be problematic, he argues, ‘‘if we do not systematically distinguish what an utterance is about or what it is saying, (. . .) from what it is doing (. . .)’’ (p. 234). As the title of this part indicates, ‘‘practice’’ is juxtaposed to ‘‘theory’’, and apparently understood as a cover term for ‘‘practical tools’’ for doing DA. Therefore, basic information on quantitative and qualitative operationalizations, on segmenting and transcribing discourse, etc., is offered. As one would expect from an American handbook, computer analysis takes a prominent position in both, quantitative and qualitative approaches to discourse analysis. S. Dubois and D. Sankoff make a plea for a quantitative analysis of data which derive from a large corpus of speech and aim to show that different levels of meaning are intertwined in discourse. Using similar tools, M. Stubbs investigated the contribution of words and phrases to text cohesion including the knowledge about their predictable combinations and conventionalized language use. According to J.A. Edwards employment of all these powerful tools will fail to contribute to good descriptions and explanations, if not accompanied by a reasonable and theoretically reflected transcription of the oral data. In her overview of the most relevant and effective factors
Book review
1523
for transcribing discourse, she introduces three types of encoding (transcription, coding, and mark-up) and describes the principles of category design, systematic encoding, and the approach to the readability of transcripts. 3. As already mentioned, the third part is the most extensive in the book and is divided in two sections: (A) ‘‘Political, Social, and Institutional Domains’’, and (B) ‘‘Culture, Community, and Genre’’. In our opinion, the editors could have easily made two distinct parts out of these sections, thus avoiding the heterogeneity and size of this part. Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) figures prominently in the first section. According to T. van Dijk, this approach does not have a particular theory because it is ‘‘a type of discourse analytical research that primarily studies the way social power abuse, dominance, and inequality are enacted, reproduced, and resisted by text and talk in the social and political context’’ (p. 352). Hence, CDA is a field of applied DA with key notions like, e.g. ‘‘power’’, ‘‘dominance’’, ‘‘ideology’’, ‘‘discrimination’’, ‘‘interests’’, ‘‘social order’’, etc. The aim of the CDA is to shed light on the rationale of social action. Unfortunately, details are not given as to which linguistic tools would help us achieve these aims, although the author addresses the problem of ‘‘neutral’’ categories which are not based on a virtual ‘‘parti pris’’ but on ethics and Kantian principles of ‘‘ratio’’, among others. The CDA principles, as well as its aims, are outlined in more detail by R. Wodak and M. Reisigl in their discussion of discourse and racism. The authors present five discourse analytical approaches to racism and include their most important elements into an integrated ‘‘global’’ approach. The link between the ‘‘macro-’’ and ‘‘micro-level’’ is established by three notions, i.e. ‘‘fields of action’’, ‘‘genres’’ and ‘‘discourse topics’’ (p. 383; illustrative figure on p. 384). Political discourse (J. Wilson) and media discourse (C. Cotter) both have to do with power, conflict, control and domination; so Wilson’s conclusion is that ‘‘all discourse analysis is political discourse’’ (p. 398). According to these authors, every linguistic level from lexis to pragmatics is affected by political discourse. Further institutional domains, e.g. forensic, medical, educational, are examined in this section. R.W. Shuy shows that there are two perspectives on looking at the interface between ‘‘law’’ and ‘‘linguistics’’: (a) ‘‘using [linguistic] analysis to analyse criminal cases’’ (p. 438) and (b) ‘‘using criminal cases to address linguistic problems’’ (p. 444). This article gives an excellent insight in interdisciplinary relevance: the two fields, law and linguistics, are complementary as they enrich each other in a significant way. N. Ainsworth-Vaughn’s discussion of medical encounters indicates a number of problems in the available literature, e.g. describing the genre itself and its constitutive speech activities, while S. Fleischman examines medical language as an ‘‘occupational register’’, dedicating a substantial section to ‘‘written genres’’, which have not been well analyzed up to now, as well as to metaphors with respect to the body, kinds of pain and illness, feelings of physical states, etc. As for the educational domain, C.T. Agder summarizes a number of empirical studies on the linguistic practices in the classroom, indicating ‘‘the need for more interdisciplinary collaboration in research design, data collection, and analyses requiring close attention to talk’’ (p. 513). In the last article of this section, C. Linde looks at narratives across institutions, which is a good idea, since this genre appears in all institutional domains. In some, narratives are peripheral or unfavored (medical encounters); in others, they are just accounts for performance (schools) or for the court of justice, etc. By posing the question ‘‘Who speaks for the institution?’’, Linde actually indicates a ‘‘white spot’’ in the pragmatic literature on narratives.
1524
Book review
The second section starts with a short article on discourse and intercultural communication by R. Scollon and S. Wong Scollon. In a way, this article frames the following ones as it addresses the problem of discourse and intercultural communication and, in particular, of the meaning of ‘‘culture’’. Contrary to the well-known European definition of ‘‘culture’’ by Redder and Rehbein (1987), ‘‘culture’’ is here considered as a (too) broad and imprecise cover-term that could be operationalized and substituted by ‘‘discourse formation’’—the latter being ‘‘constitutive of cultural categories’’ (p. 543). Consequently, the authors replace the vague term ‘‘intercultural communication’’ with ‘‘interdiscourse communication’’ (p. 544). The basic understanding of this communication is then a ‘‘mediated discourse perspective’’ which ‘‘shifts from a focus on the individuals involved in communication (. . .) to a focus on mediated action as kind of social action. The central concern is now not persons but social change’’ (p. 544). The other articles in this section address the sociolinguistic variables ‘‘generation’’ (age, children), ‘‘gender’’ and ‘‘medium of communication’’ (computer). For example, S. Kendall and D. Tannen in their discussion of discourse and gender present the pragmatic details of the ‘‘male’’ and ‘‘female’’ construction of discourse, revealing different styles and communicative strategies according to social settings and the purpose of communication. The authors give a comprehensive overview of the available literature, covering – in contrast to other articles in the handbook – also European research on the subject. As far as the reviewing of the literature on language and gender is concerned, there is a considerable overlap with J. Cook-Gumperz and A. Kyratzis’ article on child discourse. But these two authors offer also a good documentation of child-adult discourse, the development of personhood and self-identity via discourse and the ‘‘moral’’ aspect of every-day talk. In addition, they make a more extensive use of ‘‘fresh’’ data in order to illustrate the relevant issues. A final example from this section is S.C. Herring’s article on computer-mediated discourse, a type of discourse that emerged only in the last 20 years. The author discusses the variables of the ‘‘medium’’ and the ‘‘linguistic structure’’ which is determined by both norms of written language (distance) and norms of oral language (interactive proximity, simultaneity of communication in the same place). Under the heading of ‘‘interaction management’’, Herring gives examples of discourse stretches illustrating techniques of ‘‘addressivity’’ (p. 519) and ‘‘referential tracking problems’’ (linking, quoting). 4. The last part of the book deals with the perspectives of other disciplines on discourse. For example, W. Chafe’s article on the analysis of discourse flow addresses fundamental (psycho-)linguistic aspects of DA and approaches a ‘‘text’’ by ‘‘topic navigation’’, ‘‘navigation by schema’’ and ‘‘navigation by interaction’’. Departing from a classical linguistic view, the author claims that ‘‘[T]here are, in fact, two streams, one a stream of thoughts, the other of sounds’’ (p. 673). Via ‘‘topic’’ and ‘‘prosody’’ as operationalizable surface structures of language use, he tries to access the underlying thoughts. In our opinion, this article is actually the most suitable and best introduction to DA, therefore it should have been better placed either in the first or the second part of the handbook. The socio-psychological perspective of R. Harre´ is comparable to the ‘‘political discourse’’ concern (critical, moral, social) of the third part. He backs his views on the discursive turn in social psychology with arguments from the history and theory of science, and gives specific examples for the ‘‘microstructure of social order’’ (p. 697) looking at different kinds of narratives under the cover-term ‘‘micro-structure of social episodes’’. But, unfortunately, the methodology is quite general and vague!
Book review
1525
In their contribution on imagination in discourse, H.H. Clark and M. Van der Wege get back to ‘‘narratives’’ as excellent discourse examples for gaining deeper insights in the psychology of ‘‘imagination’’ (including visual and spatial representations, deixis and point of view, gestures, voices, mimetic props and emotion) of the multivarious ways of participating in narratives (theoretical and empirical knowledge). Considerable research is summarized here, and this is in our opinion the best article as well as the most substantially documented one in this part on discourse across disciplines. As final example from this part of the handbook let us mention B.L. Webber’s article on the computational perspectives on discourse and dialogue. This is a very valuable account of the state of the art of discourse models within AI and the possible future developments in the area of dialogue, discourse and computer possibilities. 5. As the editors state in their ‘‘Introduction’’, ‘‘[T]he variety of papers in this Handbook reflects the full range of variation in definitions of – and approaches to – discourse analyses’’ (p. 2); they have tried ‘‘to provide a starting point from which the major highways emanate’’ (p. 10). Both statements are certainly true for the book as a whole. The structure and the presentation of the articles (parts, sections) reflect, in a rough sense, major areas and ‘‘topics’’ of the field, at least for getting a first ‘‘knowledge’’ of discourse phenomena. There are very exciting views and presentations of original research by internationally known (mostly) American researchers. The book offers valuable insights in particular foundations and research domains of (almost only) verbal (oral) interaction. We recommend the handbook for all students and persons interested in discourse who want to get some kind of general overview about ‘‘what is done in that field’’.1 There is, however, a certain arbitrariness in the presentation of particular terms, levels of analysis, theory, methodology, application etc. From a ‘‘Cartesian’’ European point of view (which is the reviewers’ bias), it would have been better to order the contributions in a more systematic way, i.e. with respect to what is the ‘‘general’’ (e.g. Chafe’s article as the first one) versus the ‘‘particular’’ (e.g. Couper-Kuhlen’s article), and with respect to theory, methodology and application. The display of knowledge within a particular field is not ‘‘subject-centered’’ (and thus objectively systematic) but author-oriented (each author gives different kinds of suggestions and opens a window according to his or her view – depending on the personality of the writer and his or her school – to a discourse phenomenon). But the display of knowledge should also depend on a larger scientific community—an international community including Europe, Australia, and Asia (cf. for example the discussion of ‘‘politeness’’). Of course, each of the articles has a hidden ‘‘associative’’ potential and may turn out to be a treasury of knowledge for a certain domain, notion or ‘‘procedure’’. However, in most cases this cannot be inferred from the title of the article and/or cross-reference. In this sense each presentation is very ‘‘suggestive’’, and does not offer a reliable (calculable, predictable) help for specific (re)search questions/ interests. Elaborating a bit further on this last point we would say that the area of ‘‘doing discourse research’’ is quite neglected. Although Edwards presents an excellent overview of choices which
1
For a systematic examination of terms and their role in theories and methodologies, one can also consult the handbook edited by Brinker et al. (2001) which covers very systematically all the different terms, theories and methods of oral and written discourse in international research. However, it has the disadvantage of not being ‘‘so original’’ and ‘‘fresh’’ with respect to the presentation of particular focal points in the investigation of verbal interaction.
1526
Book review
have to be taken into account if one aims at the transcription of particular discourse types according to particular research interests, other articles which would provide methodological insights in ‘‘segmenting’’ discourse, practicing data investigation, isolating prosodic features via available computer programs or searching discourse data banks2 for different types of genres, and so on, are missing. If it is true that there are different cultures of (doing) research with different foci and results, then the handbook under review is a mostly US-centered mono-cultural presentation of discourse studies. Well developed European research on discourse, e.g. Ehlich (1994), Fritz and Hundsnurscher (1994), Linell (1998), and in particular the Geneva discourse model by Eddy Roulet (1999), is ignored. Cross-cultural discourse analysis as is now done for many years, for example, in the Department of Cognitive Anthropology at the Max Planck Institute in Nijmegen is not integrated nor is the influential book by Hanks (1996) on ‘‘communicative practices’’ in a discourse cross-cultural perspective taken into account. The handbook offers original individual views indeed, but not the diversity of views and studies in the international community doing research in and on discourse. Perhaps a different title, e.g. ‘‘Handbook of American Perspectives on Discourse’’ would reflect better the discourse concerns inside the book. Last but not least: there are minor, ‘‘formal’’ shortcomings. There is no cross-reference among terms and notions, e.g. ‘‘turn-taking’’ or ‘‘units of discourse’’, where other views of these concepts are given. ‘‘Names’’ – except for those of M. Foucault, R. Lakoff and W. Labov – are not included in the index. In other words, particular notions and researchers who have been important in the field cannot be looked up and located via index. The fact that the name of Harris is not included in the Index shows that written and/or literary discourse are no longer the focus of the broad, orally oriented, field which developed far away from its first beginnings 50 years ago. In conclusion, The Handbook of Discourse Analysis informs the reader about major topics and trends in discourse analysis—it is not an encyclopaedia. Its strength is the original and individual presentation of research areas and topics by well-known – in most cases American – representatives of the field. It does not cover systematically the terms, methodological and theoretical issues of the field, but it delivers excellent insights in particular areas and approaches according to the authors’ perspectives. It is a reference book for doing and initiating research only in a restricted sense: there are broad and valuable reports and presentations of discourse studies, but the analytical tools (and the methodology to practice these) are not given in more detail. Nevertheless, this Handbook ‘‘offers a comprehensive sense of the scope and possibilities of discourse analysis’’ (p. 10) within the limits outlined above. References Brinker, Klaus, et al. (Eds.), 2001. Text- und Gespra¨chslinguistik: Ein Internationales Handbuch zeitgeno¨ssischer Forschung. HSK 16. Mounton de Gruyter, Berlin. Dijk, Teun A. van (Ed.), 1985. Handbook of Discourse Analysis. Blackwell, London. Ehlich, Konrad (Ed.), 1994. Diskursanalyse in Europa. Peter Lang Verlag, Frankfurt a.M., Berlin. Fritz, Gerd, Hundsnurscher, Franz, 1994. Handbuch der Dialoganalyse. Niemeyer Verlag, Tu¨bingen. Hanks, William, 1996. Language and Communicative Practices. Westview Press, Oxford.
2
See, for example, the huge Max Planck data bank in cognitive anthropology (under the direction of Stephen Levinson) in Nijmegen and the data bank of the Institut fu¨r Deutsche Sprache (IDS) in Mannheim, which comprises many types of genres. Michael Clyne in Melbourne (Australia) also disposes of a considerable discourse data bank. It is quite important to know where what kinds of data are available, especially for cross-cultural comparisons.
Book review
1527
Harris, Zellig, 1952. Discourse Analysis. Language 28, 1–30. Linell, Per. (Ed.), 1998. Special issue: discourse across professional boundaries. An interdisciplinary journal for the study of discourse (IJSD). Redder, Angelika, Rehbein, Jochen, 1987. Zum Begriff der Kultur. In: Redder, A., Rehbein, J. (Eds.), Arbeiten zur interkulturellen Kommunikation. Osnabru¨cker Beitra¨ge zur Sprachtheorie (OBST) 38, 7–21. Roulet, Eddy (Ed.), 1999. La description de l’organisation du discours. Didier, Paris. Norbert Dittmar is professor for sociolinguistics at the Free University of Berlin. His main fields of research are besides sociolinguistics, discourse analysis and second language acquisition. His recent publications include the books Transkription: Ein Leitfaden mit Aufgaben fu¨r Studenten, Forscher und Laien (VS Verlag fu¨r Sozialwissenschaften, 2004, 2nd ed.), Die Sprachmauer: Die Verarbeitung der Wende und ihrer Folgen in Gespra¨chen mit Ost- und WestberlinerInnen (Berlin: Weidler, 1999). He has also co-edited (with Anna Giaccalone Ramat) the volume Grammatik und Diskurs/Grammatica e discorso: Studien zum Erwerb des Deutschen und Italienischen (Tu¨bingen: Stauffenburg, 1999). Irene Forsthoffer, M.A., has been research assistant in linguistics at the University of Potsdam and at the Free University of Berlin. She has published together with N. Dittmar the article ‘‘Konversationsanalyse’’, in the volume Methoden der Organisationsforschung (edited by S. Ku¨hl and P. Strodtholz, 2002). Forthcoming is her PhD thesis Verfahren der Themenorganisation in Alltagsgespra¨chen: Eine interaktionale Analyse.
Norbert Dittmar* Free University Berlin Fachbereich Philosophie und Geisteswissenschaften Institut fu¨r Deutsche und Niederla¨ndische Philologie Boltzmannstr. 3, D-14195 Berlin, Germany Irene Forsthoffer Steinbuckstr. 22 86653 Monheim-Rehau, Germany *Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (N. Dittmar) [email protected] (I. Forsthoffer)
Book review Handbook of Discourse Analysis Deborah Schiffrin, Deborah Tannen, Heidi E. Hamilton (Eds.), Blackwell, 2001, 872 pages, £ 47,95 Almost 50 years after Harris’ article ‘‘Discourse Analysis’’ (1952) and 16 years after van Dijk’s Handbook of Discourse Analysis, another comprehensive handbook, edited by the wellknown linguists D. Schiffrin, D. Tannen and H. Hamilton, appeared in the Blackwell series of linguistics handbooks. Although the editors agree on the main features of ‘‘discourse analysis’’, i.e. ‘‘(1) anything beyond the sentence, (2) language use, and (3) a broader range of social practice that includes non-linguistic and non-specific instances of language’’ (p. 1), they have a broad and dynamic view of the field, taking into account both their personal evolvement with respect to the subject matter and the development of the field as a whole. The collection of the articles trying to bring together prototypical theoretical, methodological, and empirical insights is organized in four thematic parts. The first (‘‘Discourse Analysis and Linguistics’’), comprising nine articles, focuses on the influence of different linguistic aspects and phenomena on discourse: intonation, semantics, sociolinguistics, information structure, typology, discourse, etc. The second part (‘‘The Linking of Theory and Practice in Discourse Analysis’’) consists of eight articles and presents a wide range of methods and theoretical paradigms. The third part (‘‘Discourse: Language, Context, and Interaction’’) is the largest one in the volume, consisting of 14 articles that focus on the interactive contexts in which (and through which) language is used. Finally, the eight articles of the fourth part (‘‘Discourse across Disciplines’’) examine different approaches to the field of discourse from a psycholinguistic, social-psychological, sociological, educational, literary or computational perspective. In this review, we will focus on sociolinguistic aspects of discourse analysis (DA) as well as the representativity of theory and methods in the field. We will first present selected relevant views and materials of the handbook and end up in the last section with some critical reflections on its content and organization. 1. The articles of the first part provide a good overview of linguistic aspects on discourse. The focus is on basic notions like ‘‘intonation’’ (E. Couper-Kuhlen), ‘‘cohesion’’ (J.R. Martin), ‘‘discourse markers’’ (D. Schiffrin), ‘‘information structure’’ (G. Ward and B.J. Birner) and ‘‘register’’ (D. Biber and S. Conrad), but further issues such as semantic reasoning (D. Blakemore, N. Norrick), the possibility of distinguishing different discourse types (J. Myhill) and insights into the historical conditioning of DA approaches (L.J. Brinton) are discussed as well. 0378-2166/$ – see front matter # 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2006.03.004
1522
Book review
The authors do an excellent theoretical and methodological job: they do not only show in detail how discourse analysis should be done, but they also demonstrate what cannot be neglected if DA is to be done properly. Thus, for example, understanding ‘‘cohesion’’ implies for Martin sensitivity towards sociolinguistic contexts. This is also true for Schiffrin who claims that the criteria for isolating discourse markers have to be checked in sociolinguistic contexts of authentic discourse stretches and not only on a word class definition (Fraser’s proposal). In addition, Blakemore states that the hearer’s intuition about text coherence is guided by the content of utterances and his/her search for relevance in the first place. Furthermore, the synchronic view has to be supplemented by the so-called diachronically oriented DA (Brinton) which focuses on (a) the evolution of discourse marking over time, (b) larger changes in discourse structures, and (c) changes in text types. Brinton considers this approach to be ‘‘the richest and most rewarding aspect of the new field of historical discourse analysis’’ (p. 152). Biber and Conrad underline the cross-linguistic dimension: spoken and written discourse should be analyzed and compared; therefore, one would need a multi-dimensional approach to register variation based on electronic corpora, computational tools and multivariate statistical techniques which can provide comprehensive descriptions of cross-linguistic patterns of register variation. All these views are original and linked to the perspectives of first class experts in the field who present their theory and methodology with passion. This part indicates indeed the ‘‘disciplinary diversity’’ that the editors attribute to DA (p. 1), but in doing so they also transmit a sense of patchwork rather than a coherent order. 2. ‘‘The Linking of Theory and Practice in Discourse Analysis’’, the next part of the handbook, focuses on theoretical positions and fundamental methodological issues. For example, in the opening article, R.T. Lakoff argues for ‘‘the necessity of an inter-, cross-, and multidisciplinary approach for discourse analysis’’ (p. 200), if we want to achieve full understanding of what discourse is. For the field of interactional sociolinguistics J.J. Gumperz raises the question of interdisciplinary from a different perspective: how do (different) sociocultural background knowledge and the kind of use we put language in (contextualization cues in co-occurrence with grammatical and lexical signs) influence participants’ interpretation (inferencing) of interaction? His methodology offers an applicable analysis to language and culture studies of all kinds. A similar question is tackled by E.A. Schegloff by focusing on utterances as actions (and not so much as units of information). DA will be problematic, he argues, ‘‘if we do not systematically distinguish what an utterance is about or what it is saying, (. . .) from what it is doing (. . .)’’ (p. 234). As the title of this part indicates, ‘‘practice’’ is juxtaposed to ‘‘theory’’, and apparently understood as a cover term for ‘‘practical tools’’ for doing DA. Therefore, basic information on quantitative and qualitative operationalizations, on segmenting and transcribing discourse, etc., is offered. As one would expect from an American handbook, computer analysis takes a prominent position in both, quantitative and qualitative approaches to discourse analysis. S. Dubois and D. Sankoff make a plea for a quantitative analysis of data which derive from a large corpus of speech and aim to show that different levels of meaning are intertwined in discourse. Using similar tools, M. Stubbs investigated the contribution of words and phrases to text cohesion including the knowledge about their predictable combinations and conventionalized language use. According to J.A. Edwards employment of all these powerful tools will fail to contribute to good descriptions and explanations, if not accompanied by a reasonable and theoretically reflected transcription of the oral data. In her overview of the most relevant and effective factors
Book review
1523
for transcribing discourse, she introduces three types of encoding (transcription, coding, and mark-up) and describes the principles of category design, systematic encoding, and the approach to the readability of transcripts. 3. As already mentioned, the third part is the most extensive in the book and is divided in two sections: (A) ‘‘Political, Social, and Institutional Domains’’, and (B) ‘‘Culture, Community, and Genre’’. In our opinion, the editors could have easily made two distinct parts out of these sections, thus avoiding the heterogeneity and size of this part. Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) figures prominently in the first section. According to T. van Dijk, this approach does not have a particular theory because it is ‘‘a type of discourse analytical research that primarily studies the way social power abuse, dominance, and inequality are enacted, reproduced, and resisted by text and talk in the social and political context’’ (p. 352). Hence, CDA is a field of applied DA with key notions like, e.g. ‘‘power’’, ‘‘dominance’’, ‘‘ideology’’, ‘‘discrimination’’, ‘‘interests’’, ‘‘social order’’, etc. The aim of the CDA is to shed light on the rationale of social action. Unfortunately, details are not given as to which linguistic tools would help us achieve these aims, although the author addresses the problem of ‘‘neutral’’ categories which are not based on a virtual ‘‘parti pris’’ but on ethics and Kantian principles of ‘‘ratio’’, among others. The CDA principles, as well as its aims, are outlined in more detail by R. Wodak and M. Reisigl in their discussion of discourse and racism. The authors present five discourse analytical approaches to racism and include their most important elements into an integrated ‘‘global’’ approach. The link between the ‘‘macro-’’ and ‘‘micro-level’’ is established by three notions, i.e. ‘‘fields of action’’, ‘‘genres’’ and ‘‘discourse topics’’ (p. 383; illustrative figure on p. 384). Political discourse (J. Wilson) and media discourse (C. Cotter) both have to do with power, conflict, control and domination; so Wilson’s conclusion is that ‘‘all discourse analysis is political discourse’’ (p. 398). According to these authors, every linguistic level from lexis to pragmatics is affected by political discourse. Further institutional domains, e.g. forensic, medical, educational, are examined in this section. R.W. Shuy shows that there are two perspectives on looking at the interface between ‘‘law’’ and ‘‘linguistics’’: (a) ‘‘using [linguistic] analysis to analyse criminal cases’’ (p. 438) and (b) ‘‘using criminal cases to address linguistic problems’’ (p. 444). This article gives an excellent insight in interdisciplinary relevance: the two fields, law and linguistics, are complementary as they enrich each other in a significant way. N. Ainsworth-Vaughn’s discussion of medical encounters indicates a number of problems in the available literature, e.g. describing the genre itself and its constitutive speech activities, while S. Fleischman examines medical language as an ‘‘occupational register’’, dedicating a substantial section to ‘‘written genres’’, which have not been well analyzed up to now, as well as to metaphors with respect to the body, kinds of pain and illness, feelings of physical states, etc. As for the educational domain, C.T. Agder summarizes a number of empirical studies on the linguistic practices in the classroom, indicating ‘‘the need for more interdisciplinary collaboration in research design, data collection, and analyses requiring close attention to talk’’ (p. 513). In the last article of this section, C. Linde looks at narratives across institutions, which is a good idea, since this genre appears in all institutional domains. In some, narratives are peripheral or unfavored (medical encounters); in others, they are just accounts for performance (schools) or for the court of justice, etc. By posing the question ‘‘Who speaks for the institution?’’, Linde actually indicates a ‘‘white spot’’ in the pragmatic literature on narratives.
1524
Book review
The second section starts with a short article on discourse and intercultural communication by R. Scollon and S. Wong Scollon. In a way, this article frames the following ones as it addresses the problem of discourse and intercultural communication and, in particular, of the meaning of ‘‘culture’’. Contrary to the well-known European definition of ‘‘culture’’ by Redder and Rehbein (1987), ‘‘culture’’ is here considered as a (too) broad and imprecise cover-term that could be operationalized and substituted by ‘‘discourse formation’’—the latter being ‘‘constitutive of cultural categories’’ (p. 543). Consequently, the authors replace the vague term ‘‘intercultural communication’’ with ‘‘interdiscourse communication’’ (p. 544). The basic understanding of this communication is then a ‘‘mediated discourse perspective’’ which ‘‘shifts from a focus on the individuals involved in communication (. . .) to a focus on mediated action as kind of social action. The central concern is now not persons but social change’’ (p. 544). The other articles in this section address the sociolinguistic variables ‘‘generation’’ (age, children), ‘‘gender’’ and ‘‘medium of communication’’ (computer). For example, S. Kendall and D. Tannen in their discussion of discourse and gender present the pragmatic details of the ‘‘male’’ and ‘‘female’’ construction of discourse, revealing different styles and communicative strategies according to social settings and the purpose of communication. The authors give a comprehensive overview of the available literature, covering – in contrast to other articles in the handbook – also European research on the subject. As far as the reviewing of the literature on language and gender is concerned, there is a considerable overlap with J. Cook-Gumperz and A. Kyratzis’ article on child discourse. But these two authors offer also a good documentation of child-adult discourse, the development of personhood and self-identity via discourse and the ‘‘moral’’ aspect of every-day talk. In addition, they make a more extensive use of ‘‘fresh’’ data in order to illustrate the relevant issues. A final example from this section is S.C. Herring’s article on computer-mediated discourse, a type of discourse that emerged only in the last 20 years. The author discusses the variables of the ‘‘medium’’ and the ‘‘linguistic structure’’ which is determined by both norms of written language (distance) and norms of oral language (interactive proximity, simultaneity of communication in the same place). Under the heading of ‘‘interaction management’’, Herring gives examples of discourse stretches illustrating techniques of ‘‘addressivity’’ (p. 519) and ‘‘referential tracking problems’’ (linking, quoting). 4. The last part of the book deals with the perspectives of other disciplines on discourse. For example, W. Chafe’s article on the analysis of discourse flow addresses fundamental (psycho-)linguistic aspects of DA and approaches a ‘‘text’’ by ‘‘topic navigation’’, ‘‘navigation by schema’’ and ‘‘navigation by interaction’’. Departing from a classical linguistic view, the author claims that ‘‘[T]here are, in fact, two streams, one a stream of thoughts, the other of sounds’’ (p. 673). Via ‘‘topic’’ and ‘‘prosody’’ as operationalizable surface structures of language use, he tries to access the underlying thoughts. In our opinion, this article is actually the most suitable and best introduction to DA, therefore it should have been better placed either in the first or the second part of the handbook. The socio-psychological perspective of R. Harre´ is comparable to the ‘‘political discourse’’ concern (critical, moral, social) of the third part. He backs his views on the discursive turn in social psychology with arguments from the history and theory of science, and gives specific examples for the ‘‘microstructure of social order’’ (p. 697) looking at different kinds of narratives under the cover-term ‘‘micro-structure of social episodes’’. But, unfortunately, the methodology is quite general and vague!
Book review
1525
In their contribution on imagination in discourse, H.H. Clark and M. Van der Wege get back to ‘‘narratives’’ as excellent discourse examples for gaining deeper insights in the psychology of ‘‘imagination’’ (including visual and spatial representations, deixis and point of view, gestures, voices, mimetic props and emotion) of the multivarious ways of participating in narratives (theoretical and empirical knowledge). Considerable research is summarized here, and this is in our opinion the best article as well as the most substantially documented one in this part on discourse across disciplines. As final example from this part of the handbook let us mention B.L. Webber’s article on the computational perspectives on discourse and dialogue. This is a very valuable account of the state of the art of discourse models within AI and the possible future developments in the area of dialogue, discourse and computer possibilities. 5. As the editors state in their ‘‘Introduction’’, ‘‘[T]he variety of papers in this Handbook reflects the full range of variation in definitions of – and approaches to – discourse analyses’’ (p. 2); they have tried ‘‘to provide a starting point from which the major highways emanate’’ (p. 10). Both statements are certainly true for the book as a whole. The structure and the presentation of the articles (parts, sections) reflect, in a rough sense, major areas and ‘‘topics’’ of the field, at least for getting a first ‘‘knowledge’’ of discourse phenomena. There are very exciting views and presentations of original research by internationally known (mostly) American researchers. The book offers valuable insights in particular foundations and research domains of (almost only) verbal (oral) interaction. We recommend the handbook for all students and persons interested in discourse who want to get some kind of general overview about ‘‘what is done in that field’’.1 There is, however, a certain arbitrariness in the presentation of particular terms, levels of analysis, theory, methodology, application etc. From a ‘‘Cartesian’’ European point of view (which is the reviewers’ bias), it would have been better to order the contributions in a more systematic way, i.e. with respect to what is the ‘‘general’’ (e.g. Chafe’s article as the first one) versus the ‘‘particular’’ (e.g. Couper-Kuhlen’s article), and with respect to theory, methodology and application. The display of knowledge within a particular field is not ‘‘subject-centered’’ (and thus objectively systematic) but author-oriented (each author gives different kinds of suggestions and opens a window according to his or her view – depending on the personality of the writer and his or her school – to a discourse phenomenon). But the display of knowledge should also depend on a larger scientific community—an international community including Europe, Australia, and Asia (cf. for example the discussion of ‘‘politeness’’). Of course, each of the articles has a hidden ‘‘associative’’ potential and may turn out to be a treasury of knowledge for a certain domain, notion or ‘‘procedure’’. However, in most cases this cannot be inferred from the title of the article and/or cross-reference. In this sense each presentation is very ‘‘suggestive’’, and does not offer a reliable (calculable, predictable) help for specific (re)search questions/ interests. Elaborating a bit further on this last point we would say that the area of ‘‘doing discourse research’’ is quite neglected. Although Edwards presents an excellent overview of choices which
1
For a systematic examination of terms and their role in theories and methodologies, one can also consult the handbook edited by Brinker et al. (2001) which covers very systematically all the different terms, theories and methods of oral and written discourse in international research. However, it has the disadvantage of not being ‘‘so original’’ and ‘‘fresh’’ with respect to the presentation of particular focal points in the investigation of verbal interaction.
1526
Book review
have to be taken into account if one aims at the transcription of particular discourse types according to particular research interests, other articles which would provide methodological insights in ‘‘segmenting’’ discourse, practicing data investigation, isolating prosodic features via available computer programs or searching discourse data banks2 for different types of genres, and so on, are missing. If it is true that there are different cultures of (doing) research with different foci and results, then the handbook under review is a mostly US-centered mono-cultural presentation of discourse studies. Well developed European research on discourse, e.g. Ehlich (1994), Fritz and Hundsnurscher (1994), Linell (1998), and in particular the Geneva discourse model by Eddy Roulet (1999), is ignored. Cross-cultural discourse analysis as is now done for many years, for example, in the Department of Cognitive Anthropology at the Max Planck Institute in Nijmegen is not integrated nor is the influential book by Hanks (1996) on ‘‘communicative practices’’ in a discourse cross-cultural perspective taken into account. The handbook offers original individual views indeed, but not the diversity of views and studies in the international community doing research in and on discourse. Perhaps a different title, e.g. ‘‘Handbook of American Perspectives on Discourse’’ would reflect better the discourse concerns inside the book. Last but not least: there are minor, ‘‘formal’’ shortcomings. There is no cross-reference among terms and notions, e.g. ‘‘turn-taking’’ or ‘‘units of discourse’’, where other views of these concepts are given. ‘‘Names’’ – except for those of M. Foucault, R. Lakoff and W. Labov – are not included in the index. In other words, particular notions and researchers who have been important in the field cannot be looked up and located via index. The fact that the name of Harris is not included in the Index shows that written and/or literary discourse are no longer the focus of the broad, orally oriented, field which developed far away from its first beginnings 50 years ago. In conclusion, The Handbook of Discourse Analysis informs the reader about major topics and trends in discourse analysis—it is not an encyclopaedia. Its strength is the original and individual presentation of research areas and topics by well-known – in most cases American – representatives of the field. It does not cover systematically the terms, methodological and theoretical issues of the field, but it delivers excellent insights in particular areas and approaches according to the authors’ perspectives. It is a reference book for doing and initiating research only in a restricted sense: there are broad and valuable reports and presentations of discourse studies, but the analytical tools (and the methodology to practice these) are not given in more detail. Nevertheless, this Handbook ‘‘offers a comprehensive sense of the scope and possibilities of discourse analysis’’ (p. 10) within the limits outlined above. References Brinker, Klaus, et al. (Eds.), 2001. Text- und Gespra¨chslinguistik: Ein Internationales Handbuch zeitgeno¨ssischer Forschung. HSK 16. Mounton de Gruyter, Berlin. Dijk, Teun A. van (Ed.), 1985. Handbook of Discourse Analysis. Blackwell, London. Ehlich, Konrad (Ed.), 1994. Diskursanalyse in Europa. Peter Lang Verlag, Frankfurt a.M., Berlin. Fritz, Gerd, Hundsnurscher, Franz, 1994. Handbuch der Dialoganalyse. Niemeyer Verlag, Tu¨bingen. Hanks, William, 1996. Language and Communicative Practices. Westview Press, Oxford.
2
See, for example, the huge Max Planck data bank in cognitive anthropology (under the direction of Stephen Levinson) in Nijmegen and the data bank of the Institut fu¨r Deutsche Sprache (IDS) in Mannheim, which comprises many types of genres. Michael Clyne in Melbourne (Australia) also disposes of a considerable discourse data bank. It is quite important to know where what kinds of data are available, especially for cross-cultural comparisons.
Book review
1527
Harris, Zellig, 1952. Discourse Analysis. Language 28, 1–30. Linell, Per. (Ed.), 1998. Special issue: discourse across professional boundaries. An interdisciplinary journal for the study of discourse (IJSD). Redder, Angelika, Rehbein, Jochen, 1987. Zum Begriff der Kultur. In: Redder, A., Rehbein, J. (Eds.), Arbeiten zur interkulturellen Kommunikation. Osnabru¨cker Beitra¨ge zur Sprachtheorie (OBST) 38, 7–21. Roulet, Eddy (Ed.), 1999. La description de l’organisation du discours. Didier, Paris. Norbert Dittmar is professor for sociolinguistics at the Free University of Berlin. His main fields of research are besides sociolinguistics, discourse analysis and second language acquisition. His recent publications include the books Transkription: Ein Leitfaden mit Aufgaben fu¨r Studenten, Forscher und Laien (VS Verlag fu¨r Sozialwissenschaften, 2004, 2nd ed.), Die Sprachmauer: Die Verarbeitung der Wende und ihrer Folgen in Gespra¨chen mit Ost- und WestberlinerInnen (Berlin: Weidler, 1999). He has also co-edited (with Anna Giaccalone Ramat) the volume Grammatik und Diskurs/Grammatica e discorso: Studien zum Erwerb des Deutschen und Italienischen (Tu¨bingen: Stauffenburg, 1999). Irene Forsthoffer, M.A., has been research assistant in linguistics at the University of Potsdam and at the Free University of Berlin. She has published together with N. Dittmar the article ‘‘Konversationsanalyse’’, in the volume Methoden der Organisationsforschung (edited by S. Ku¨hl and P. Strodtholz, 2002). Forthcoming is her PhD thesis Verfahren der Themenorganisation in Alltagsgespra¨chen: Eine interaktionale Analyse.
Norbert Dittmar* Free University Berlin Fachbereich Philosophie und Geisteswissenschaften Institut fu¨r Deutsche und Niederla¨ndische Philologie Boltzmannstr. 3, D-14195 Berlin, Germany Irene Forsthoffer Steinbuckstr. 22 86653 Monheim-Rehau, Germany *Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (N. Dittmar) [email protected] (I. Forsthoffer)