No title

Applied Linguistics No.3,

Vol. I,

Autumn 1980

THEMATIC ISSUE APPLIED DISCOURSE ANALYSIS Guest Editor: J. McH. Sinclair

CONTENTS Introduction. JOHN McH. SINCLAIR You Did Say Oral Interactive Discourse? HENRY HOLEC When Communication Breaks Down: Levels of Coherence in Discourse:

Page 185 189

PHILIP RILEY

201

CHRISTIAN BACHMANN

217 224

Le Social Pese Lourd sur le Discours: un cas D'inegalite Interactionnelle. Interactional Markers in Dialogue. EDDY ROULET Conceptual and Communicative Functions in Written Discourse. H. G. WIDDOWSON

Analyse de Discours et Pragmatique de la Parole dans Quelques Usages d'une Didactique des Langues. DANIEL COSTE Some Implications of Discourse Analysis for ESP Methodology. JOHN Me H. SINCLAIR

Discourse as Self-Expression on the Reduced Personality of the Second Language Learner. PETER HARDER Some Problems Concerning the Evaluation of Foreign Language Classroom Discourse. WILLIS J. EDMONDSON

234 244 253 262 271

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This volume gathers together a set of papers which originated in a colloquium held in Berne from 30 May to 2 June 1979. The colloquium was sponsored by the Swiss National Foundation for Scientific Research and the University of Berne and organized by Rene Richterich of that university. Several of the papers were originally written in French, and two remain in that language, though English versions have been made. The translations were done with great care and promptitude by Philip Riley, who also helped in tracking down an elusive reference in French. The Editors and Publisher would like to thank the sponsors, the organiser and the translator, and all the contributors for making their work available and revising it for publication. The guest Editor would like to add thanks to Henry Widdowson for his helpful liaison and final reading of the manuscript.

NOTE It was the intention to include in this collection a paper by Teun. A. Van Dijk entitled 'Discourse Studies and Education' which was prepared for the Berne Colloquium but could not be presented there. Unfortunately shortage of space has obliged the Editors to defer publication of this important contribution to the next issue of Applied Linguistics.

REFERENCES All references are listed at the end of this issue, with the exception of those belonging to the article by Christian Bachmann, which appear on p. 221.

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THEMATIC ISSUE APPLIED DISCOURSE ANALYSIS Edited by J. McH. SINCLAIR

CONTENTS

Introduction JOHN McH. SINCLAIR

You Did Say Oral Interactive Discourse? HENRI HOLEC When Communication Breaks Down: Levels of Coherence in Discourse PHILIP RILEY Le Social Pese Lourd sur le Discours: un cas D'inegalite Interactionnelle CHRISTIAN BACHMANN Interactional Markers in Dialogue EDDY ROULET Conceptual and Communicative Functions in Written Discourse H. G. WIDDOWSON

Analyse de Discours et Pragmatique de Ia Parole dans Quelques Usages '

d'une Didactique des Langues DANIEL COSTE

Some Implications of Discourse Analysis for ESP Methodology JOHN McH. SINCLAIR

Discourse as Self-Expression on the Reduced Personality of the Second Language Leamer PETER HARDER Some Problems Concerning the Evaluation of Foreign Language Oassroom Discourse WILLIS J. EDMONDSON

Aims

The aim of this journal is to Typescripts Contributions should promote a principled approach to be typed in double-spacing on one language education and other lan­ side of the paper. The presentation related concerns by en­ should conform as closely as possible guage couraging inquiry into the relation­ to the printed style of the journal. ship between theoretical and practical References are to be incorporated in studies. The journal is less interested the text according to the following in the ad hoc solution of particular convention: problems and more interested in the Krashen (1978) considers this handling of problems in a principled phenomenon. way, by reference to theoretical This phenomenon seem$ to support studies. the distinction between acquisition Viewing applied linguistics as a and learning (Krashen 1978). relation between theory and practice, Works referred to should be listed at the editors give priority to papers which develop specific links between the end of the article. Footnotes theoretical linguistic studies, educa­ should appear not at the foot of the relevant page but at the end of the tional research, and the planning and implementation of practical pro­ text. grammes. Within this framework, the Proofs Galley proofs will be sent to journal welcomes contributions in the author for correction and should such areas of current inquiry as first be returned to the London editor and second language learning and within ten days of receipt. Page teaching, bilingualism and bilingual proofs will be corrected by the editor. education, discourse analysis, trans­ Copyright The editors will assume lation, language testing, language that an article submitted for their teaching methodology, language consideration has not previously been planning, the study of interlanguages, published, and is not being con­ stylistics and lexicography. One of sidered for publication elsewhere, the features to be developed is a either in the submitted form or in a section of notes and discussion which modified version. Acceptance of gives an opportunity for readers to author's copyright material is on the make short and relatively informal understanding that it has been comments on the articles and reviews assigned to the Oxford University published in the journal and on other Press subject to the following con­ ditions: The author is free to use the matters of current interest in the field. Contributions Four copies of arti­ article in subsequent publications cles should be sent in typescript to written or edited by himself provided one of the three editors. If that editor that acknowledgement is made of judges that an article is to be con­ Applied Linguistics as the place of sidered for publication he will send original publication. Except for brief copies to his fellow editors and an ex­ extracts the Oxford University Press ternal reader for assessment and will not give permission to a third comment. Authors should retain one party to reproduce material from an copy to refer to when they receive article unless two months have editorial comment and for the cor­ elapsed without response from the rection of proofs. Articles should authors after the relevant application normally be in English although con­ has been made to them. tributions in other languages will be Offprints Thirty offprints of arti­ considered if they are provided with cles and reviews will be provided to authors free of charge. a substantial summary in English.

APPLIED DISCOURSE ANALYSIS: AN INTRODUCTION JOHN McH. SINCLAIR

University ofBirmingham

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This collection of papers shows something of the wide range of activity that is pushing itself forward in the description of what I hardly dare to call discourse; and its inipact on the profession of language teaching. It shows a set of ideas on the move, starting out from origins in· sociology, linguistics, philosophy and psychology, and jostling for the attention of scholars and teachers. There is nothing fixed or static here, but there is plenty to encourage new thinking, stimulate better descriptions, and suggest innovations in classroom practice and materials. All the papers were composed around the same theme, and so the sequence I have chosen reflects emphases rather than clearly distinct topics. The earlier papers propose and discuss categories of description, with a growing attention to textual examples as we go along. The later papers pay more detailed at­ tention to the implications for_practical teaching that arise from description, although they also attend to theoretical matters. If the reader has not yet acquired the convenient disease of terminological blindness, he should feel the symptoms before very long. The different disciplines that feed discourse description, the linguistic and national con­ ventions, and the tentative nature of many of the proposals for description, all combine in a minefield of terminology. I shall tiptoe through it, but in order to say anything at all I am bound to set a few mines off, while at the same time repeating what has already been said somewhere in the papers which follow. This is European work-Western European, in fact. Although the bibliography contains many references outside the area, particularly to American sources, there were (exceptionally for this annual gathering) no transatlantic representatives. But even though no-one had to travel a thousand miles to Berne, and all knew each other's work, fluidity of the topic area led to discussions which were rich in attempts to get alignment of views. In the process of editing, I became confident that there was much more common ground than a first study might suggest. Scholars will quite rightly defend distinction A or category X until they are utterly convinced that it is either identical to someone else's, or very like it, but carrying less justification. One major feature of this kind of work is the concern to reveal the organization of language above the sentence. Although there is a case to be made for the sentence as the highest unit of grammar, there are repetitive patterns, and restrictions on occurrence, and meaningful sequences to be observed in longer stretches of language. Whether such organisation is linguistic, or how much of it is, is discussed in Harder's paper; but awareness of it certainly contributes to our understanding of the task of learning a language.

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Speech and writing are held to b e manifestations of the same general type, in that they are said to be 'in the same language'. But in many ways they can be obviously different, and many of the papers make proposals which maintain the distinction while attempting to relate them to each other by elaborating the descriptive framework. A key development in this kind of analysis is the recognition that language is addressed from one person to another, and the instances show at least traces of this fact. In conversation there is so much attention paid to the mechanism of interaction that it can be used as the basis for description. Written and spoken texis of much greater length than the sentence are required in order to realise this important aspect of description. It could be argued from the evidence in this volume that the task has just begun; that the large-scale categories are but thinly described, and that the preponderance of descriptive work is onlyjust hovering above the sentence. Caution, however, is appropriate because the shift of focus to more ex­ tended instances of language reveals that other forces are at work, partly determining the selections made in the texts. A sentence, perhaps, can be chipped out of its co-text and displayed on a blackboard for elucidation of its construction-in fact some of the received definitions of a sentence seem to do little more than paraphrase this property. But a longer text displays its place in social intercourse, and matters concerning the people involved, the reasons for their acts of communication, the social forces that play upon them, the wider interpretations of their behaviour, cannot be excluded. Substantial problems in research methodology are raised, and while there is little evidence yet of generally accepted solutions, the authors are notably willing to recognise the consequences of broadening their perspectives of description. They are struggling to make what they say correlate, at least, with the mass of cross­ cutting issues which are currently under consideration. Only through this process, and the painstaking establishment of links between actual instances and descriptive categories, will a satisfactory comprehensive model be achieved. No particular prominence is accorded to the spoken language in this volume, but it is probably true to say that much of the work has been stimulated by the demands made on description by recent attention to dif­ ferent types of spoken verbal interaction. Spoken language is more firmly rooted in social intercourse, more difficult to isolate and observe, more problematic in its structure-at least in the present state of our knowledge. Changes in people's relationships, shared knowledge, awareness of their environment can be studied as they happen. The results of such study can then be compared with the written language, which we can credit with having similar intentions to effect changes but suffering delays in execution. An important point is emerging from the study of conversation, shown most clearly in Riley's paper, though related to the meticulous observations of Sacks, Schegloff, Jefferson and their circle. It is that the actual execution of conversations needs to be separately accounted for, and distinguished from the underlying structures that they are held to realise. The distinction between these two may not yet be quite clear. However, the intricate process by which speakers co-operate to produce conversation seems to have at least two facets. On the one hand, each utterance can be described in terms of the way in which

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the speaker is trying to guide the discourse. The description is made with reference to a structural model which attempts to show the underlying generalities, representing the conversation as a series of bids to control. Since in any conversation there is more than one participant, the control moves may conflict, cancel out, converge or relate to each other in many other ways. But the conversation remains usually coherent (despite the appearance of most transcripts) because the initial contract to pursue communicative ends is maintained by the implicitly recognised structure. On the other hand, the actual ways in which turns are taken and given, addressees selected, floor held and interruptions accomplished, requires an executive model. This model in turn highlights a range of behaviour that is closely bound up with the process of utterance, for example tempo, pausing, eye-contact, posture, gesture, and several phonological features. Phenomena of ambiguity and changing tack in mid-utterance are also able to be pinned down in the description of discourse execution. Without this distinction, much of the evidence cannot be precisely assigned in a description. It must be noted, however, that neither of the above domains of patterning conflates or overlaps with the domain where the basic rules of language structure are stated-the grammar, in the broad sense of the term. Turning to the applications of discourse description in language teaching, we find that there are clear converging movements in several areas. The pragmatism of teachers, and the pressures on them to respond to frequently­ changing demands, leads to a quick, if not always orderly, transfer of insights from theory to practice. The notion of communicative skills has refreshed the profession and stimulated much controversy and some innovative teaching. The new target is to make students proficient in achieving planned results from their use of language. Their command of the rules just referred to is, of course, a limiting factor, and the techniques by which structural and communicative teaching can be made complementary to each other have not yet been devised to the satisfaction of the practitioners. Almost certainly, this problem betrays a set of deficiencies in linguistic theory and description. But communicative skill implies a sensitivity to other participants, and to the general and specific constraints on the effective use of language. It demands control over the execution of utterances in both speech and writing, and alertness to control opportunities, and maintenance of co-operative structuring. It raises levels of expectation in a physical sense, to skill in con­ ducting discourse over extended instances of production, reception or both combined. It thus profits from all the areas of descriptive activity that have been mentioned. The interest in spoken interaction meets a demand for effective teaching of oral communication, and it would be simplistic to suggest that the matching is coincidental. They stimulate each other, and feedback from the classroom can be a valuable source of insights, hints and warnings to the descriptive linguist. The study of language learning brings out psychological factors that the descriptions can then be faced with. Similarly, the advances in understanding the nature of written texts or spoken monologues finds an application in the 'specific purpose' kind of language teaching, which is a major industry worldwide. Wherever language

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teaching is integrated with, involved with o r parallel o r preliminary t o the teaching of something else, there are special demands made on the student and the teacher, and hence on the descriptive support. The language being taught is liable to be carrying conceptual difficulties, or problems for the student in how to derive practical benefit from his linguistic skills. Again the perspective broadens, and severe descriptive problems arise for the analyst, who may be asked to provide a linguistic characterisation of a text which accurately reveals its potential value as an instance of language for teaching students of a remote discipline. This is Applied Linguistics with a vengeance! There is, then, a particularly lively interchange going on between the classroom and the backroom. The variety of material in this volume shows a fund of usable ideas, and brings out several important principles. It also, though, indicates that language teachers must be independent and flexible in their own attitudes if they are to profit from the continuing interchange. The subject is moving fast and variously, and there is an ever�present danger that ideas are enshrined in practice before they are thoroughly evaluated and precisely explicated. But we can see immense potential in the working-out of the themes and schemes that are presented here, and that is perhaps the main justification for presenting them to the community of applied linguists.

'YOU DID S AY 'ORAL INTERACTIVE DIS COURSE'? HENRIHOLEC

Centre de Recherches et d'Applications Pedagogiques en Langues, (CRAPEL}, Universite de Nancy II, France 1. I N T R O D U C T I O N

' ... the term "interaction" is used to describe a direct communicative exchange (the direct communicative exchange being a particular type of oral com­ munication) .' (Gremmo, Holec and Riley, 1978).

For others, both written and oral forms are interactive: 'Those working in written discourse have tended to analyse it as monologue and to ignore the fact that as he reads it the reader interacts with the text and thus an interactive model might also be appropriate to a written discourse.' (Coulthard, 1977, p. 180)

while still others, like Widdowson, suggest that 'in written discourse ... there is interactivity without interaction'. (Widdowson

1977: 259)._

Such differences of approach show clearly that the distinction between the terms interactive and non-interactive is far from having been fully elucidated and it is the aim of this article to contribute to that elucidation. Since it is probable that these differences are as much due to differing in­ terpretations of the terms 'discourse', 'oral discourse' and 'written discourse' as they are to the lack of precision in the distinction between interactive discourse and non-interactive discourse, it will be necessary first to recall just what the aim of discourse analysis is. We will then go on to propose a definition, and one that we hope is both clear and precise, of what is meant by

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Discourse analysis i s a relatively new discipline, s o i t i s hardly surprising that the discussions to which it has given rise include ambiguities, inconsistencies and even contradictions, which are due partly to a lack of precision in the definition of some of the basic concepts and partly to the inadequacy of the analytical tools which are used. But though these 'imperfections' may be sources of potential confusion, the problems they pose enable us to clarify and extend the discipline, in other words, to make progress. , One such problem concerns the notion of interaction as it is applied to the distinction between oral discourse and written discourse. For some analysts, of course, this notion is not relevant and they are satisfied to subcategorise discourse into oral discourse and written discourse and leave it at that: but this attitude is becoming increasingly rare. Amongst those who think that this dimension is relevant, there are some for whom only certain types of oral discourse are interactive:

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oral discourse and written dis·course. Finally, some examples will be taken for discussion which seem to throw light on the problem of interactive discourse. 2. D I S C O U R S E

3. O R AL A N D W R IT T E N D I S C O U R S E A second source o f confusion is due t o the lack o f clarity in the distinction between oral discourse and written discourse: this can be seen when we talk about a written transcription of oral discourse as still being oral discourse, or when we say that a written text read aloud is still fundamentally a written text. This shows, at least, that the way we subcategorise discourse intuitively is not based on the differences between the various communicative channels .

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The first source o f confusion which must b e briefly considered, and which may largely explain why the notion of interaction is not universally regarded as relevant, is to be found in the definition of the very object of analysis, dis­ course. There is a triple ambiguity here: I. 'Discourse' is sometimes used as an equivalent of de Saussure's parole to refer to all the realisations of the underlying langue: in this sense, the object of analysis consists of all the utterances which speakers in fact produce, ut­ terances which are then considered in terms of their relationship with langue (e.g., the relationships between langue and oral discourse, or the relationships between langue and written discourse). 2. 'Discourse' is also used to refer to the object of analysis of what British and American linguists call 'suprasentential linguistics': Householder ( 1 972); from this point of view, discourse is any series of utterances which are not simply juxtaposed, but which form part of a higher structure, being linked by semantic cohesion (whether this cohesion is realised grammatically, lexically, non-verbally, etc.). 3. 'Discourse' is also used in a wider sense by linguists who try to analyse the communicative functions of language: Widdowson ( 1977), Sinclair and Coulthard (1975); here it is used to refer to the entity consisting of the text (verbal and non-verbal messages) and of the circumstances in which the text is produced and interpreted (who is the speaker, whom is he addressing, what is his communicative aim, etc.). For instance, a printed notice saying 'No Smoking' on the wall of a theatre is an example of discourse, but the same message, put away in a drawer, would be merely a text. From this point of view, then, the object of analysis is the text-in-situation (or the message in context and in situation) and the aim of t;1e analysis would be, for example, to identify and describe the relationships between a text and the circumstances in which it is produced, or to define the structures of texts containing several messages. In this third approach extra-textual parameters are also taken into account: indeed, the text is regarded as the product, realised verbally or non-verbally, of the psychological and sociological constraints and conventions which enter into a given situation. It is this approach alone that includes the idea of 'in­ teraction', describing the collaborative production of a text by several dif­ ferent speakers. This, then, is the approach which will be adopted in what follows, the term 'discourse' being used to desi�ate the verbal and non-verbal lext used by an actor to address his interlocutor for communicative purposes.

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However, the distinction is not easy to make with precision. 1 . It is not possible to define the distinction in question by taking actual examples of the two types and by describing those features which are characteristic of Type A and those which are characteristic of Type B, to avoid oral and written for the moment. This impossibility arises because of one of

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the two following reasons: Either (a) the characteristics described in this way are not sufficiently precise for the distinction to be applied with any satisfactory degree of rigour or in any consistent fashion: this is the consequence of faulty methodology, since we start by intuitively separating the various examples of discourse into the two main sub-categories which it is our very purpose to describe, so that when we do later get round to describing them we run the serious risk of attributing significance to features which are not necessarily exclusive to one of the two types. For example, it may be found that a given formal feature occurs in all the texts of discourse type A and is therefore regarded as specific to that type, whereas in fact it cannot be proved that it can never be found in examples of discourse type B: what is improbable has been confused with what is im­ possible. Or (b) the simultaneous description of discourse along a number of different parameters gives us a cline where it is impossible to locate one and only one point where discourse type A can be separated from-discourse type B. The description of particular examples of discourse is not, therefore, especially helpful. In the same way, psycholinguistic analyses of the differences between the encoding and decoding processes, although very illuminating concerning the ways in which texts of the two discourse types are produced and interpreted, do not, as things stand, provide an adequate basis on which to establish the distinction. An examination of the differences between discourse type A and discourse type B in terms of 'why' rather than 'how' would seem to be a more rewarding line of investigation, in that it allows us to consider discourse as a process rather than as a product. We believe then that the distinction between type A and type B can be made acceptably explicit by analysing the conditions in which the discourse is produced. 2. If we take into consideration both the dynamic dimension of the production of discourse (a product being made) and the static dimension of its realisation (a finished product), it is in fact possible to distinguish two types of discourse: (i) There is one type of discourse whose finished product, the text (a set of verbal and non-verbal messages), is constructed in real time and whose production cannot be dissociated from the linear passage of time. The structure of the text and the production of the text proceed 'abreast', con­ comitantly and in real time so that for every 'after' in production there is a corresponding 'after' in the text, the production of the text being continuous and irreversible: in this type of discourse, the text has an internal temporal structure. (ii) In the second type of discourse, the structure of the text is not directly associated with the temporal linearity of the process of production: dissociated in time from the process of construction, the text proceeds parallel to it, but

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4. I N T E R A C T I V E D I S C O U R S E/ N O N - I N T E R A C T I V E D I S C O U R S E 4 . 1 Interaction

(a) The notion of interaction would be of little use as the basis for a descriptive category if all it meant was that discourse is a phenomenon in­ volving two or more participants influencing one another: if this were the case all discourse would be interactive by definition, as indeed would painting, sculpture, music and so on. (b) Nor can the notion of interaction be limited to the fact that one of the participants, the speaker, takes into account the presence of other par-

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not abreast of it nor i n real time, so that a 'before' in the text may correspond to an 'after' in the process of construction: in this case, the production of the text is therefore non-continuous and reversible and the text has no internal temporal structure. In order to understand this fundamental difference between the texts in these two types of discourse, it may be helpful to compare them to pictures being drawn on two strips of paper: in one case, the strip would unwind continuously, while in the second, it would be possible to control the movement (to slow it down, stop it, to rewind, to start again, and so on). The pictures on the first strip would have an internal dynamic structure which would remain even if the strip was later unwound and read. The presence or absence of internal temporal structure has many different effects on texts. For example, to mention only one of these effects-one which is extremely important but which has never been studied systematically-texts in the first type of discourse reflect the limits of human capacities for memorising, anticipating, organising, etc . , in real time, which is obviously not the case in discourse of the second type: consequently, the content of texts of the first type tends to be organised gradually as the discourse proceeds,-very often on the basis of chronological development,-with frequent repetition, switching back etc. , and the longer the text, the more noticeable all this is. Texts of the first type are usually, but not necessarily, realised acoustically as regards their verbal component and visually as regards their non-verbal component. When this is the case, we find, in addition to the characteristics related to their temporal structure, characteristics which derive from the ephemeral nature of acoustic and visual signals. For example, the limitations on human capacities mentioned above are made even tighter in this way. Similarly, texts of the second type are usually but not necessarily realised graphically (i.e., by some lasting visual signals). One of the effects of this is an increase in the number of ways in which the text can be controlled. In addition to the freedom from temporal constraints there is the fact that the material realisation is spatial in nature (which makes it possible, for example, to begin the realisation of the text by the end as well as by the middle or the beginning). 1 3 . Consequently, to us the term 'oral' to refer to the first type of discourse and the term 'written' to refer to the second is neither arbitrary nor incorrect, but simply insufficiently explicit to prevent ambiguity and misunderstanding. Since it is not possible simply to do away with such widely-used terminology, we will have to be satisfied with underlining the fact that by 'oral discourse' we mean discourse whose text is constructed in real time, and by written discourse we mean discourse whose text is not subject to this constraint. 2

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'By interactive discourse, we mean discourse which is the collaborative construct of two or more participants mutually engaged in other-directed communicative behaviour.' (Riley, 1979)

The clarity of this distinction notwithstanding, the analysis of authentic discourse does throw up a number of problematic borderline cases. For in­ stance, since the degree of participation varies from individual to individual, how are we to handle discourse involving a number of participants but in the realisation of which-in terms of speaking turns-only two actually take part: is such discourse less interactive than a discourse in which all present share the task? And what about the type of discourse which involves two participants but to which one participant makes only a single contribution, as is the case in certain interviews where the interviewer sets the ball rolling with a question and then makes no other contribution other than a brief expression of thanks at the very end. And does it make" any difference if this contribution is very long-or very short? At a more general level, is it possible to talk in terms of degrees of interaction, non-interaction being just an extreme point on the scale? Only by analysing numerous examples of authentic discourse can we hope to answer these questions. The distinction between interactive and non­ interactive as it has been defined above is important, even crucial in some ways, in the analysis and description of discourse, and it is this distinction which we are going to refine by applying it to both oral and written discourse: can both these types of discourse be both interactive and non-interactive? 4.2 Oral, non-interactive discourse There is no need to show that oral discourse can be interactive; the majority of oral discourses are, which is hardly surprising since this type of discourse is usually realised in face-to-face communicative situations which, for psycho­ social reasons, generally require the interactive participation of all present (at least in Western cultures). In certain situations, however, the oral discourse

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ticipant(s), his interlocutor(s), either in the sense that he is guided by feedback or by his own construing of the situation: if such were the case, all discourse would be interactive and the most one would be able to do would be to analyse degrees of difference along the same parameter (type and/or degree of in­ teraction); in any case, there would no longer be grounds for the distinction between interactive and non-interactive. (c) A definition of interaction, if it is to be used in discourse analysis, should be based on an analysis of the types of role played by participants. In certain cases, the discourse is the mutual responsibility of all the par­ ticipants, each contributing in turn 3 to its realisation and collaborating with the other participants to produce a coherent series of contributions. This means that each participant constructs and realises only part of the text, contributing a number of fragments in alternation with the other participants; the stretches of discourse which are realised by these fragments of text are usually, though perhaps incorrectly, called 'speaking turns'. In other cases, a single participant is responsible for the whole of the discourse. In the first case, we are dealing with interactive discourse; in the second, non-interactive discourse.

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which i s produced i s non-interactive: an example would b e a political speech or a lecture. As an example, then, let us take the following passage from a lecture:

There is no doubt as to whether this is oral discourse or not; the text is being constructed in the here-and-now along with the discourse; it is also non­ interacti�e. since the teacher was the only participant to take the floor during this extract (and during the three-quarters of an hour which followed it-the last 1 5 minutes of these lectures being regularly given ovrr to a discussion separated from the lecture by a long pause.). The differences between a text like this and a text from a written non­ interactive discourse on the same subject (e.g., a lesson in a textbook on linguistics or a chapter in an introduction to descriptive linguistics) are so obvious that there is no need to enter into further detail here, except, perhaps, to note that this extract is essentially a recommendation to the students to do the exercises without outside help and that this would probably have been omitted in written discourse, or would appear in a general introductory chapter on working methods. To illustrate more clearly these differences between oral non-interactive discourse and written non-interactive discourse, let us consider the two examples reproduced below. The first is an extract from a didactic discourse, showing how to use a video-cassette recorder, which we will regard as non­ interactive, since it has aU the relevant characteristics (this example is taken from Hutchinson 1 978, p. 15):4 the second is an extract from the instructions for use booklet provided by the manufacturer.

Example I First of all, of course, we must put the cassette of tape into the machine.Well on the machine the frrst button here is labelled EJECf and this means that it ejects the cassette in its holder here.We press this button we see the cassette holder comes up out of the machine and this now enables us to put the cassette into the machine. We take the cassette with the label uppermost and simply feed it into the slot which is so exposed.We push the lid down firmly, make sure it goes right down and the cassette is now ready to play.

Example2 Extractfrom the instructionsfor use.

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Cette fois-ci encore, hm, nous allons travailler sur un corpus, hm ... un corpus a, er, elucider ...et ya un theine et une version assortis ...Cette fois-ci c'est du turc ...hm ...Pour le theme et Ia version ne vous ....documentez pas sur Ia question, hein, faites �tout seuls ... sans grammaire, sans ... parce qu'on peut toujours trouver des ...des gens de nationalite turque dans Ia region, hein ...alors faites �a seuls, hein, c'est pour votre ...si vous faites �seuls, pour votre formation personnelle c'est bien preferable, hein, que de ... ne pas chercher, que de vous faire communiquer des reponses ... Alors vous faites comme si vous ne ..., hm, si vous connaissez deja le turc y aura done des choses que VOUS n'aurez pas a deviner, a decouvrir par VOUS-memes .... Je vais deja vous donner le ...�a c'est le debut ...(distribue les textes polycopies) ....

HENRI HOLEC 0 Press EJECT

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(with power on).

6 Insert cassette.

Finally, let us consider a third example, this time an extract from an oral interactive discourse on the same subject:

Example3 C. A. C. A. C. A. C. A.

Dis, tu me montres comment ca fonctionne? Quoi. . . � a Ia, le magnetoscope? Oui, j'sais plus comment on installe Ia cassette (rire) Eh bien, c'est pas difficile, eur, Ia cassette se met la-dedans, eur, dans ce compartiment. . .