- Email: [email protected]
Introduction to Discourse Studies
Journal of Pragmatics 38 (2006) 2238–2241 www.elsevier.com/locate/pragma
Book review Introduction to Discourse Studies Jan Renkema, John Benjamins Publishing Company, Amsterdam/New York (2004). x+363 pages, EUR 115 My first reaction to Jan Renkema’s book, Introduction to Discourse Studies, was a certain reservation, since in my mind there have been enough books on the subject from various perspectives (cf. for instance, Coulthard, 1985; Savic´, 1993; Schiffrin, 1994; Gee, 1999; Philips and Jorgensen, 2002; Fairclough, 2003; Schiffrin et al., 2003). My reservations disappeared, however, right after the first reading because it was obvious that this book stands out for being a comprehensive, expertly written, and theoretically innovative textbook in the field of discourse studies. As the author himself says, it is the result of more than 25 years of experience in researching and teaching discourse. The book aims to introduce and familiarize students and beginners in discourse studies with the fundamental concepts and key questions of the field, as well as to help a broader audience approach major issues in this area from the Anglo-American, the European, and the Australian theoretical traditions. It also aims to provide a scientific apparatus for discourse studies, serving at the same time as a facilitator in the independent study of the relevant literature. The volume is thematically arranged in four parts – besides the introduction – which are subdivided in 14 extensive chapters and modular sections such that readers do not have to work sequentially their way through the book. In what follows, I will briefly outline the individual parts and chapters. In the ‘Introduction’, Renkema provides his definition of ‘discourse studies’ as ‘‘the discipline devoted to the investigation of relationship of form and function in verbal communication’’ (p. 1). He also explicates what he means by ‘the relationship between form and function’, answering at the same time the question why it is necessary to have a distinct discipline for the investigation of that relationship. Furthermore, the author states his aim and gives an overview of the organization of the volume and the materials that it includes. Part I (General orientation) comprises Chapters 2 and 3. Chapter 2, ‘Communication as action’, deals with familiar topics in pragmatics, such as Bu¨hler’s Organon model of communication, speech act theory, illocution in discourse, Grice’s maxims, relevance theory, and politeness theory. The main issues are: What is communication? What principles govern the use of the instrument ‘language’? What are the strategies that support communication among people? In Chapter 3, ‘Discourse in communication’, Renkema turns to the following questions: What is the best way to study discourse in terms of the form-function relationship in a discourse situation? What makes a series of sentences and/or utterances discourse? In other words, he focuses on discourse as part of the communicative situation, arguing that discourse cannot be analyzed satisfactorily without taking into account the discourse situation. 0378-2166/$ – see front matter # 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2006.06.001
Book review
2239
Part II (Backpacking for a scientific journey) consists of five chapters. In Chapter 4, ‘Discourse types’, Renkema outlines the characteristics of different types of discourse, such as written, oral, electronic, etc., in order to examine what is meant by a discourse type and how electronic communication that includes oral, written, and visual modes is to be studied. The Organon model is extended not only in Jakobson’s sense, but also in the direction of Steger’s (1974) typological classifications and Werlich’s (1982) discourse typology. The next chapter (‘Structured content’) discusses the organization of discourse in terms of the structure of the message content. The key question here is how to describe such a structure for the different levels of discourse. In Chapter 6 (‘Discourse connections’), Renkema, having examined important issues like cohesion and coherence, aims at determining the formal parts of discourse that connect the content elements. Deixis, staging, perspectivization, given-new management, presuppositions, and inferences are presented as relevant discourse elements that Chapter 7 (‘Contextual phenomena’) deals with. These elements are also examined from the point of view of production and perception, which are of course directly dependent on context. As the author says, ‘‘we always deal discourse on the basis of knowledge and attitudes we already have. We are no black boxes. Otherwise we would all give exactly the same rendering after seeing the same movie; nevertheless these renderings do differ in content’’ (p. 4). The last chapter in this part (‘Style’) deals with form, content, and situation, and Renkema provides here an overview of stylistic variation. He also discusses classical rhetoric, and explicates the concepts of style and register, turning finally to stylistic phenomena. Part III (Special modes of communication) comprises four chapters. Chapter 9, ‘Conversation analysis’, gives insight into a more sociological aspect. After presenting briefly various transcriptions systems, the turn-taking model, the sequential organization of conversation, as well as the form and function of discourse markers are discussed. In Chapter 10 (‘Informative discourse’), the author deals with readability in a formula, the measurement of understanding, judging of discourse quality, and the improvement of documents. This chapter is more concerned with old methods of measuring readability and with the notion of discourse quality in a more contemporary way. Chapter 11 (‘Narratives’) first focuses on the more literary structure of fairy tales, and then proceeds to three broad analytical approaches – sociolinguistic, psycholinguistic, and organizational – to show the different perspectives from which narratives are studied. Chapter 12 (‘Argumentation and persuasion’) begins with an examination of the structure of argumentation. Renkema demonstrates the pragma-dialectical and socio-psychological approaches, and then turns to the stylistic features of the quality of argumentation. Part IV (Special interest) includes the last three chapters of the book. In Chapter 13 (‘Discourse and cognition’), the author sheds light upon some of the most relevant issues related to ‘‘the shared interests in discourse and cognition’’ (Virtanen, 2004:11). In modular subsections, this chapter concentrates on various issues such as modeling discourse production, product and process analysis, processing and prior knowledge, aspects of processing, modeling discourse processing, and metaphor in cognitive research, seeking an answer to the following question: What is happening in our brain in the production and perception of discourse? Chapter 14 (‘Discourse and institution’), ‘‘contains some main issues in research conducted in the language of and within the institutions’’ (p. 243). It deals with role behavior and differentiation trends in institutional discourses such as agent–client interaction, politics, law, bureaucracy, media, and health care. The chapter is primarily concerned with the sociological approach, presenting the key publications in this field. In Chapter 15 (‘Discourse and culture’), Renkema revisits the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis broadening the horizon of this view to a more general aspect of society that goes beyond particular roles of interlocutors – culture. He also presents an overview of
2240
Book review
Critical Discourse Analysis, the discipline which has grown rapidly during last two decades (Wodak and Meyer, 2001; Fairclough, 2003). The separate modular sections in this chapter deal with issues related to gender, racism, and intercultural communication. The author raises three questions relevant for the research in this subfield of discourse studies: ‘‘Can we detect cultural values from discourse? If so, what can discourse tell us about how people are influenced by culture? And, is it possible to change cultural values by changing discourse?’’ (p. 278). The present volume can be seen as continuing the author’s previous work, Discourse Studies: An Introductory Textbook (1993), which has been reprinted several times and published in four languages. At the same time, it is a further demonstration of his ability to provide clear, concise and accessible accounts of what really matters in discourse studies. Jan Renkema’s Introduction to Discourse Studies is a textbook designed to serve as an introduction to the interdisciplinary nature of discourse studies. The author guides his reader in a step-by-step manner into the subject-matter, paying particular attention to the origins of key concepts in the field. Each chapter ends with questions and assignments (the answers are to be found at the end of the book) along with relevant bibliographical information. Though not a fully new idea (cf. for instance Savic´, 1993), it is excellent to organize a textbook in this way (and should become standard practice for textbooks), as it helps students not only recapitulate the material they have just read but also motivates them to reflect upon and discuss seemingly simple matters. The volume also includes an impressive index of 500 entries covering the most frequently employed concepts in this field, as well as a long bibliographical list of 400 references. Taken together, all this provides a considerable amount of material for teachers to concentrate in their lectures on subjects of their preference. Renkema’s book fully meets its aims and is a valuable supplement to the existing literature on discourse studies. It is not only a lucidly written and comprehensive textbook but also brings new insights into the field. For instance, it discusses topics such as electronic, institutional, and multimodal discourse analytical approaches, which are usually not included in other textbooks on the subject. A further strength of the volume is the concise description of the origins of the key concepts in discourse studies. It would be hard for me to come up with any negative aspects of the book, because the few weaknesses that I could mention turn out to be instances of differing opinions and/or approaches rather than flaws. For example, genre analysis does not get as much attention as I would have liked it to have. But it seems that Renkema, consistent with his aims, wants to keep his discussion focused on the most influential frameworks and views in order to avoid possible confusion of his audience. All in all, Introduction to Discourse Studies contributes substantially to the field of discourse studies. At the same time, it presents a kind of culmination of the author’s longstanding interest in the field of discourse. As such, this volume deserves a wide readership for its theoretical insights, clear expression, and relevance to the discipline, and is highly recommended to students and beginners in the discourse studies, but also to all scholars in fields (linguistic or other) that touch upon the fundamental concepts of discourse. In my view, Jan Renkema has set the bar extremely high with his textbook, Introduction to Discourse Studies. So high, in fact, that it is hard to imagine any book in this field as fine as this one appearing anytime soon. References Coulthard, Malcolm, 1985. An Introduction to Discourse Analysis. Longman, London. Fairclough, Norman, 2003. Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research. Routledge, New York/London. Gee, James Paul, 1999. An Introduction to Discourse Analysis: Theory and Method. Routledge, New York/London. Philips, Louise, Jorgensen, Marianne, 2002. Discourse Analysis as Theory and Method. Sage, London/Thousand Oaks/ New Delhi.
Book review
2241
Savic´, Svenka, 1993. Diskurs analiza [Discourse Analysis]. Faculty of Philosophy, Novi Sad. Schiffrin, Deborah, 1994. Approaches to Discourse. Blackwell, Oxford. Schiffrin, Deborah, Tannen, Deborah, Hamilton, Heidi (Eds.), 2003. The Handbook of Discourse Analysis. Blackwell, Oxford. Virtanen, Tuija (Ed.), 2004. Approaches to Cognition through Text and Discourse. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin/New York. Wodak, Ruth, Meyer, Michael (Eds.), 2001. Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis. Sage, London/Thousand Oaks/New Delhi. ˇ arapic´ is interested in text and discourse linguistics and critical discourse analysis, e.g. text strategies, text Aleksandar C typology, cohesion, genres. He has published a few academic articles in Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian as well as a number of review articles both in his native language and in English.
ˇ arapic´ Aleksandar C Department of Postgraduate Studies in Linguistics, Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia E-mail address: [email protected]
Book review Introduction to Discourse Studies Jan Renkema, John Benjamins Publishing Company, Amsterdam/New York (2004). x+363 pages, EUR 115 My first reaction to Jan Renkema’s book, Introduction to Discourse Studies, was a certain reservation, since in my mind there have been enough books on the subject from various perspectives (cf. for instance, Coulthard, 1985; Savic´, 1993; Schiffrin, 1994; Gee, 1999; Philips and Jorgensen, 2002; Fairclough, 2003; Schiffrin et al., 2003). My reservations disappeared, however, right after the first reading because it was obvious that this book stands out for being a comprehensive, expertly written, and theoretically innovative textbook in the field of discourse studies. As the author himself says, it is the result of more than 25 years of experience in researching and teaching discourse. The book aims to introduce and familiarize students and beginners in discourse studies with the fundamental concepts and key questions of the field, as well as to help a broader audience approach major issues in this area from the Anglo-American, the European, and the Australian theoretical traditions. It also aims to provide a scientific apparatus for discourse studies, serving at the same time as a facilitator in the independent study of the relevant literature. The volume is thematically arranged in four parts – besides the introduction – which are subdivided in 14 extensive chapters and modular sections such that readers do not have to work sequentially their way through the book. In what follows, I will briefly outline the individual parts and chapters. In the ‘Introduction’, Renkema provides his definition of ‘discourse studies’ as ‘‘the discipline devoted to the investigation of relationship of form and function in verbal communication’’ (p. 1). He also explicates what he means by ‘the relationship between form and function’, answering at the same time the question why it is necessary to have a distinct discipline for the investigation of that relationship. Furthermore, the author states his aim and gives an overview of the organization of the volume and the materials that it includes. Part I (General orientation) comprises Chapters 2 and 3. Chapter 2, ‘Communication as action’, deals with familiar topics in pragmatics, such as Bu¨hler’s Organon model of communication, speech act theory, illocution in discourse, Grice’s maxims, relevance theory, and politeness theory. The main issues are: What is communication? What principles govern the use of the instrument ‘language’? What are the strategies that support communication among people? In Chapter 3, ‘Discourse in communication’, Renkema turns to the following questions: What is the best way to study discourse in terms of the form-function relationship in a discourse situation? What makes a series of sentences and/or utterances discourse? In other words, he focuses on discourse as part of the communicative situation, arguing that discourse cannot be analyzed satisfactorily without taking into account the discourse situation. 0378-2166/$ – see front matter # 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2006.06.001
Book review
2239
Part II (Backpacking for a scientific journey) consists of five chapters. In Chapter 4, ‘Discourse types’, Renkema outlines the characteristics of different types of discourse, such as written, oral, electronic, etc., in order to examine what is meant by a discourse type and how electronic communication that includes oral, written, and visual modes is to be studied. The Organon model is extended not only in Jakobson’s sense, but also in the direction of Steger’s (1974) typological classifications and Werlich’s (1982) discourse typology. The next chapter (‘Structured content’) discusses the organization of discourse in terms of the structure of the message content. The key question here is how to describe such a structure for the different levels of discourse. In Chapter 6 (‘Discourse connections’), Renkema, having examined important issues like cohesion and coherence, aims at determining the formal parts of discourse that connect the content elements. Deixis, staging, perspectivization, given-new management, presuppositions, and inferences are presented as relevant discourse elements that Chapter 7 (‘Contextual phenomena’) deals with. These elements are also examined from the point of view of production and perception, which are of course directly dependent on context. As the author says, ‘‘we always deal discourse on the basis of knowledge and attitudes we already have. We are no black boxes. Otherwise we would all give exactly the same rendering after seeing the same movie; nevertheless these renderings do differ in content’’ (p. 4). The last chapter in this part (‘Style’) deals with form, content, and situation, and Renkema provides here an overview of stylistic variation. He also discusses classical rhetoric, and explicates the concepts of style and register, turning finally to stylistic phenomena. Part III (Special modes of communication) comprises four chapters. Chapter 9, ‘Conversation analysis’, gives insight into a more sociological aspect. After presenting briefly various transcriptions systems, the turn-taking model, the sequential organization of conversation, as well as the form and function of discourse markers are discussed. In Chapter 10 (‘Informative discourse’), the author deals with readability in a formula, the measurement of understanding, judging of discourse quality, and the improvement of documents. This chapter is more concerned with old methods of measuring readability and with the notion of discourse quality in a more contemporary way. Chapter 11 (‘Narratives’) first focuses on the more literary structure of fairy tales, and then proceeds to three broad analytical approaches – sociolinguistic, psycholinguistic, and organizational – to show the different perspectives from which narratives are studied. Chapter 12 (‘Argumentation and persuasion’) begins with an examination of the structure of argumentation. Renkema demonstrates the pragma-dialectical and socio-psychological approaches, and then turns to the stylistic features of the quality of argumentation. Part IV (Special interest) includes the last three chapters of the book. In Chapter 13 (‘Discourse and cognition’), the author sheds light upon some of the most relevant issues related to ‘‘the shared interests in discourse and cognition’’ (Virtanen, 2004:11). In modular subsections, this chapter concentrates on various issues such as modeling discourse production, product and process analysis, processing and prior knowledge, aspects of processing, modeling discourse processing, and metaphor in cognitive research, seeking an answer to the following question: What is happening in our brain in the production and perception of discourse? Chapter 14 (‘Discourse and institution’), ‘‘contains some main issues in research conducted in the language of and within the institutions’’ (p. 243). It deals with role behavior and differentiation trends in institutional discourses such as agent–client interaction, politics, law, bureaucracy, media, and health care. The chapter is primarily concerned with the sociological approach, presenting the key publications in this field. In Chapter 15 (‘Discourse and culture’), Renkema revisits the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis broadening the horizon of this view to a more general aspect of society that goes beyond particular roles of interlocutors – culture. He also presents an overview of
2240
Book review
Critical Discourse Analysis, the discipline which has grown rapidly during last two decades (Wodak and Meyer, 2001; Fairclough, 2003). The separate modular sections in this chapter deal with issues related to gender, racism, and intercultural communication. The author raises three questions relevant for the research in this subfield of discourse studies: ‘‘Can we detect cultural values from discourse? If so, what can discourse tell us about how people are influenced by culture? And, is it possible to change cultural values by changing discourse?’’ (p. 278). The present volume can be seen as continuing the author’s previous work, Discourse Studies: An Introductory Textbook (1993), which has been reprinted several times and published in four languages. At the same time, it is a further demonstration of his ability to provide clear, concise and accessible accounts of what really matters in discourse studies. Jan Renkema’s Introduction to Discourse Studies is a textbook designed to serve as an introduction to the interdisciplinary nature of discourse studies. The author guides his reader in a step-by-step manner into the subject-matter, paying particular attention to the origins of key concepts in the field. Each chapter ends with questions and assignments (the answers are to be found at the end of the book) along with relevant bibliographical information. Though not a fully new idea (cf. for instance Savic´, 1993), it is excellent to organize a textbook in this way (and should become standard practice for textbooks), as it helps students not only recapitulate the material they have just read but also motivates them to reflect upon and discuss seemingly simple matters. The volume also includes an impressive index of 500 entries covering the most frequently employed concepts in this field, as well as a long bibliographical list of 400 references. Taken together, all this provides a considerable amount of material for teachers to concentrate in their lectures on subjects of their preference. Renkema’s book fully meets its aims and is a valuable supplement to the existing literature on discourse studies. It is not only a lucidly written and comprehensive textbook but also brings new insights into the field. For instance, it discusses topics such as electronic, institutional, and multimodal discourse analytical approaches, which are usually not included in other textbooks on the subject. A further strength of the volume is the concise description of the origins of the key concepts in discourse studies. It would be hard for me to come up with any negative aspects of the book, because the few weaknesses that I could mention turn out to be instances of differing opinions and/or approaches rather than flaws. For example, genre analysis does not get as much attention as I would have liked it to have. But it seems that Renkema, consistent with his aims, wants to keep his discussion focused on the most influential frameworks and views in order to avoid possible confusion of his audience. All in all, Introduction to Discourse Studies contributes substantially to the field of discourse studies. At the same time, it presents a kind of culmination of the author’s longstanding interest in the field of discourse. As such, this volume deserves a wide readership for its theoretical insights, clear expression, and relevance to the discipline, and is highly recommended to students and beginners in the discourse studies, but also to all scholars in fields (linguistic or other) that touch upon the fundamental concepts of discourse. In my view, Jan Renkema has set the bar extremely high with his textbook, Introduction to Discourse Studies. So high, in fact, that it is hard to imagine any book in this field as fine as this one appearing anytime soon. References Coulthard, Malcolm, 1985. An Introduction to Discourse Analysis. Longman, London. Fairclough, Norman, 2003. Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research. Routledge, New York/London. Gee, James Paul, 1999. An Introduction to Discourse Analysis: Theory and Method. Routledge, New York/London. Philips, Louise, Jorgensen, Marianne, 2002. Discourse Analysis as Theory and Method. Sage, London/Thousand Oaks/ New Delhi.
Book review
2241
Savic´, Svenka, 1993. Diskurs analiza [Discourse Analysis]. Faculty of Philosophy, Novi Sad. Schiffrin, Deborah, 1994. Approaches to Discourse. Blackwell, Oxford. Schiffrin, Deborah, Tannen, Deborah, Hamilton, Heidi (Eds.), 2003. The Handbook of Discourse Analysis. Blackwell, Oxford. Virtanen, Tuija (Ed.), 2004. Approaches to Cognition through Text and Discourse. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin/New York. Wodak, Ruth, Meyer, Michael (Eds.), 2001. Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis. Sage, London/Thousand Oaks/New Delhi. ˇ arapic´ is interested in text and discourse linguistics and critical discourse analysis, e.g. text strategies, text Aleksandar C typology, cohesion, genres. He has published a few academic articles in Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian as well as a number of review articles both in his native language and in English.
ˇ arapic´ Aleksandar C Department of Postgraduate Studies in Linguistics, Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia E-mail address: [email protected]