Introduction

1. Introduction • Uses of the term topic: • Sentential topic • Discourse topic • Characteristics of topic: • Topic information • Presupposition pools • Sentential topic and the presupposition pool • Relevance and speaking topically

2. Discourse fragments and the notion ‘topic’ • The data studied in discourse analysis is a fragment of discourse, and the discourse analyst has always to decide where the fragment begins and ends => in order to decide what constitutes a satisfactory unit for analysis. • Topic helps determine the boundaries of chunks of discourse because each chunk of discourse has its own topic which is marked either formally or notionally ( meaning)

3. Ways for identifying the boundaries • Explicit ways: • Formulaic expressions Once upon an time . . . And the lived happily ever after. • These markers help the analyst decide where the beginning of a coherent fragment of discourse occurs. • Implicit ways: • The analyst is forced to depend on intuitive notions about where one part of conversation ends and another begins. • Speaker-change: it does not necessarily terminate a coherent fragment of conversation

4. Intuitive notion of topic • By appealing to the intuitive notion of topic the analyst can decide which point of speaker-change among the many could be treated as the end of one chunk of the conversation. • The chunk of conversation in discourse then can be treated as a unit of some kind because it is on a particular topic.

5. What is “topic”? • The concept of topic is elusive; different scholars use it to refer to different phenomena, from a constituent of a clause to propositions of a text. • There is no widely accepted definition.

6. Existing definitions of Topic Defining topic from the viewpoint of form, structure Defining topic from the viewpoint of content

7. Uses of the term topic:topic as agrammatical unit Sentential topic • Hockett: has distinguished between topic and comment: • sentential topic may coincide with the grammatical subject Ex. John / ran away ‘the speaker announces a topic and then says something about it …’ p 70

8. 1. Topic = Subject • A traditional grammatical analysis of a sentence: subject and predicate : Example 1 Subject Predicate Mary saw John. • Topic and comment are related to the subject and the predicate of the sentence: Example 1 Topic Comment Mary saw John.

9. BUT in discourse analysis We are concerned with what is being talked about! (content) • This type of topic ( discourse topic based on content ) is unlikely to be identifiable as one part of a sentence. • Morgan: it is not sentences that have topics, but speakers

10. Content-based definitions • Summative topic • Topic framework

11. Semantic approachsummative ( discourse topic) topic • Keenan & Schieffelin: discourse topic is not simply a NP or a sentence. It is the proposition (expressed as a phrase or a sentence), about which the claim is made or elicited (similar to the title of discourse). Example 2 Peter is going to Paris next week Van Dijk: discourse topic summarizes, reduces, organizes and categorizes the semantic information of discourse: Semantic representation of the topic of this sentence: go to (Peter, Paris e & next week (e).

12. discourse topic • It is not a simple NP but a proposition • Discourse topic is a proposition about which some claim is made or elicited . • Single proposition ( expressed as a phrase or asentence = discourse topic • Their experiments treated topic as equivalent to title

13. Topic as Title • For any text, there is a single correct expression which is the ‘topic’.p.72-73 • But it should not be too difficult to imagine several different titles for a passage, each of which could equally facilitate comprehension. • So, in any text there is a number of different ways of expressing the topic => represent different judgement of what is being written or talked about in a text.

14. Problem with summative topic This semantic approach is like writing a proposition/headline which summarises a text. However, it is sometimes difficult to do this kind of summary…. If there is a large number of different ways of expressing the topic of even a short text, how can we determine which one is the correct one?

15. It is not as simple as this! • The difficulty of determining a single phrase or sentence as the topic of a piece of printed text is increased when fragments of conversational discourse are considered. • In any conversation, what is being talked about will be judged differently at different points and the participants themselves may not have identical views of what each is talking about. There is no such thing as the one correct expression of the topic for any fragment of discourse. There will always be a set of possible expressions of the topic. Tyler: the topic can only be one possible paraphrase of a sequence of utterances

16. Reasons why Discourse analysts study this notion ‘Topic’ • It is the central organising principle for a lot of discourse • It enables the analyst to explain why several sentences or utterances should be considered together as a set of some kind, separate from another set. • It provides a means of distinguishing fragments of discourse which are felt to be good, coherent.

17. Discourse approachTopic framework • Brown and Yule: the idea of topic framework; • A topic framework depends on which feature of context becomes activated in a particular piece of discourse. Example 4 (From the movie “Schindler’s List”)

18. Topic framework • What is the topic of the episode?: ”Schindler needs some space?” “Germans decline the offer?” • The speakers discuss several things: Schindler’s products, Schindler’s problem of space, Germans inability to help, Schindler offers to buy, Christmas presents

19. Topic framework for this episode • Schindler’s factory, 4 participants: Schindler (has a factory, produces goods for the German Army), Kuhnpast and Hohne (army offices, have no space), Stern (secretary), lack of space, K. and H. can’t help, S. offers to buy, K and H decline, Christmas presents

20. Characterisationof the topic:Topic framework • The analyst can determine what aspects of the context are explicitly reflected in the text as the formal record of the utterance • Activated features of context: aspects which are directly reflected in the text which need to be called upon to interpret the text • They constitute the contextual framework within which the topic is constituted

21. Topic framework • Aspects of the speakers assumptions about his hearer’s knowledge must be considered in relation to the elements which the speaker does make explicit in his contribution. • Any consideration of topic involves asking why the speaker said what he said in a particular discourse situation. Coulthard, Sacks: there is a constant analysis in conversation of what is said in terms of why that now and to me.

22. Topic framework • Certain elements which constrain the topic can be determined before the discourse begins; they are part of the context of a speech event. • In relation to contextual features to a particular speech event, however, we are particularly interested in only those activated features of context pertaining to the fragment of discourse being studied.

23. Topic framework • The topic framework consists of elements derivable from the physical context and from the discourse domain of any discourse fragment. • These elements are a means of making explicit some of the assumptions a speaker can make about his hearer’s knowledge – we are talking about the total knowledge which the speaker believes he shares with his/her hearer.

24. Topic framework • The final 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.

25. How topics are developed Speaking topically vs. speaking on the topic Gender and discourse topic

26. Relevance of conversational contributions • Once topic framework elements and the correlation between the elements have been identified, judgments about relevance of contributions to the conversation by the participants can be made.

27. Relevance of conversational contributions • Gricean maxim of relevance: participants of the conversation have to make their contributions relevant in terms of the existing topic framework or they are expected to be speaking topically; • Participants are speaking topically when they pick up the phrases form the preceding speaker and include them into their contribution.

28. Example of speaking topically Example 5 A: When did you last speak to Jan? B: I’m not sure. About a week ago. Why? A: I’ve heard from C that shehas got engaged /…/ (participant A provides the reason)

29. Relevance of conversational contributions • Lexical cohesion is a sign that the discourse topic is being maintained Example 6 Sealsare carnivorous with a difference. Most carnivorous live on land. Seals, however, live in the water, coming on landonly to test and to breed. There are some seals that actually mate in water but even so, the females have to come on landto give birth to their young, which are called pups. When seals come out of land in large numbers to mate and to give birth, those placesare called rookeries.

30. Speaking topically and speaking on the topic • There are situations, where participants have to concentrate on a particular issue (e.g. a debate, the President’s speech). • When participants ignore the previous speaker’s contribution, they are often speaking on the topic.

31. Presupposition pools • Venneman proposes: for a discourse, there is a presupposition pool which contains information constituted from general knowledge, from the situative context of the discourse, and from the completed part of the discourse itself. • Within the presupposition pool for any discourse, there is a set of discourse subjects and each discourse is, in a sense, about its discourse subjects.

32. Presupposition pools • The number of the discourse subjects in a presupposition pool shared by participants in a discourse, particularly participants who know each other well, is potentially large. • Selecting the discourse subjects must have to do with their relevance to the particular discourse fragment under consideration. • This relevance must be those to which reference is made in the text of the discourse.

33. Sentential topic & the presupposition pool • Presupposition pool shared by participants restricts the analyst investigation to describing the relationship between pairs of sentences.

34. Relevance and speaking topically • Topic framework represents the area of overlap in the knowledge which has been activated and is shared by the participants at a particular point in a discourse. • Once these have been identified, the analyst has some basis for making judgements of the relevance with regard to conversational contributions.

35. Relevance and speaking topically • This technical term is derived from the conversational maxim proposed by Grice 1975: • They have to do with: relevance of conversational contributions. • But they are relevant to what?! • Make your contribution relevant in terms of the existing topic framework.

36. Relevance and speaking topically • We can capture this by the expression ‘speaking topically’ • It is an obvious feature of casual conversation in which each participant contributes equally and there is no fixed direction for the conversation to go. • Speaking on a topic: the participants are concentrating their talk on one particular entity, individual or issue.

37. Relevance and speaking topically • In practice any conversational fragment will exhibit patterns of talk in which both speaking topically and speaking on topic are present. • Both forms are based on the existing topic framework, but the distinction derives from what each individual speaker treats as the salient element in the existing topic framework.

38. Conclusion: • We have tried to list the connexions existing across contributions in this discourse fragment to emphasise the ways in which speakers make what they’re talking about fit into the framework which represents what we (as discourse participants) are talking about in conversational discourse. • For the analyst, these connexions can signal the coherence relations which make each contribution relevant to the discourse as a whole.

39. Thanks for listening