Discourse Analysis and Narrative Techniques

Narrative Stylistics

• Narrative Discourse: Connects language patterns to a series of events.
• Narrative Plot: Abstract storyline with sequences, narrated via flashbacks and repetitions, representing realized texts.
• Textual: Physical channel.
• Sociolinguistic Mode: Historical, cultural, and linguistic setting (Time & Place).
• Action & Events: How the development of characters intertwines with the story.
• Point of View: Relationship between narration and narrator's perspective.
• Textual Structure: How narrative units are organized.
• Intertextuality: Reversed allusion.

Metaphor

• Metaphor: Connects two concepts (Target/Source domain).
• Repeating Metaphors: Lead to idioms/fixed expressions.
• Metonymy (Synecdoche): Part represents the whole (e.g., "a fresh pair of legs").
• Producer & Produced: Producer represents the produced (e.g., "Have you read the new Kate Atkinson?").
• Location & Institution: Location/institution represents the whole (e.g., "The Pentagon refused to comment on the story").
• Instrument & User: Instrument represents the user (e.g., "The lead guitar has gone AWOL").
• Meronymic Agency: Part stands for the whole (e.g., "voice" represents the teacher).
• Caricature: Distortion of human appearance, highlighting personality traits or flaws.

Concreteness/Figurative Language

• Concretization: Abstract to tangible (e.g., "She loved him deeply" > "knitting him a warm sweater").
• Mixed Metaphor: Blended idioms (e.g., "burning the midnight oil at both ends").
• Extending: Use of linguistic resources to introduce new conceptual elements from the source domain.
• Orientational Metaphors: Uses space to track human emotion. (e.g., Good is Up).

Dialogue & Interaction

• Dialogue: Interaction on two levels (one discourse within another).
• Contextual Levels:
  • Fictional context (within the play).
  • 'Real' context (framing interaction between author and reader).
• Dialogue Embedding: Breaking down layering pattern; words relayed to reader/audience.
• Assumptions: Assumptions made concerning dialogues in the play and the real world are connected.
• Contexts:
  • Physical context(setting).
  • Personal context (relationships among participants).
  • Cognitive context (knowledge base).

Structure and Interactions

• Axis of Combination: Structural frame for dialogue units.
• Axis or Selection: Connects discourse elements to strategy.
• Exchange: Back-and-forth interaction, usually with one party initiating an inquiry and the other responding.
• Insertion Sequences: Brief interruptions to clarify or add information.
• Directness/Indirectness: Clarity and conciseness; politeness.
• Conventionalized Indirectness: Grammatical form used for questions instead of commands/requests.

Transitivity

• Transitivity: Way meanings are encoded in clauses, different process types represented.
• Components of Process: Process (Verb phrase), participants (Noun phrase), Circumstances (Prepositional/Adverb phrase).
• Types of Processes: Material (doing), Mental (sensing), Behavioral(physiological action), Verbalization(saying), Relational(establishing relationships).
• Existential Process: Existence of something/happening.
• Transmission of Actions/Events: Semantic processes for development through participant roles.

Stylistics and Language

• Stylistics: Method of textual interpretation focusing on language.
• Stylistic Analysis: Techniques to gain insights into linguistic structure/function in literary/other texts.
• Language in Context: Language is context-dependent; utterances (literary and otherwise) are contextually situated.
• Creativity and Innovation: Should not be limited to literary writing.
• Purposes: Explore language use creativity. Tells about language rules(L).
• Principles: Rigorous, retrievable, and replicable analysis.

Foregrounding & Other Methods

• Foregrounding: Textual patterning with literary-aesthetic motivation; examples include rhyme, deviation, repetition within texts & across texts.
• Ostranenie: "Defamiliarization" of familiar concepts by presenting them in unusual ways.
• Internal Foregrounding: Deviation within the text, for example, a sudden tone shift.
• Poetic Function: Conative (persuasion), Phatic (establishing communication), Referential (information conveyance), Emotive (speaker's emotions), Poetic (form/aesthetic qualities).
• Metalingual: Explaining or clarifying language itself. Example: Defining a word or describing a concept metaphor
• Conceptual Metaphor: Understanding an abstract concept through another.

Levels of Language

• Phonology: How words are pronounced.
• Graphology: How language is written.
• Morphology: How words are constructed.
• Syntax: How words combine into phrases.
• Lexical Analysis: Vocabulary of a language.
• Semantics: Meaning of words.
• Pragmatics: Meaning of language within social context.
• Grammatical Constituents (Morphemes): Smaller parts forming words and phrases.

Other Concepts

• Truth Value: Conditions under which a sentence is considered true or false.
• Orientation Function of Language (Deixis): Language related to orientation(location/time/participants).
• Gradability: Degree of intensity in adjectives' qualities, examples include comparative, superlative and equal.
• Classifying Adjectives: Specify relative fixed qualities pertaining to a noun.
• Tautology: Repeating the same thing twice (e.g., "War is war.").
• Accents/Dialects/Register: Distinguishing speech patterns via pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, communication setting & purpose, relationship between speakers, mode of communication (spoken/written).
• Rank Scale (Grammatical Units): Units' hierarchical order based on size (Clause > Phrase > Word > Morpheme).
• Sub/Predictor/Complement/Adjunct: Grammatical constituents' arrangement within sentences.
• Coordination/Apposition/Subordination/Embedding: Grammatical relations between clauses or phrases. (examples: For, And, Nor, But, Or, Yet, and So. Or: makes variable reference)
• Trailing Constituents & Anticipatory Constituents: Structure of constituent placement in sentences

Explore the intricacies of discourse analysis and narrative techniques with this quiz. It covers concepts such as soliloquies, transitivity, and the use of metaphors in storytelling. Test your understanding of how these elements contribute to communication and narrative structure.