Discourse, speech activity, text
T.V. Milevskaya,
Rostov State University, Rostov-on-Don, Russia
Published: Collected research articles, Bulletin of Russian Communication Association "THEORY OF COMMUNICATION AND APPLIED COMMUNICATION", Issue 1 / Edited by I.N. Rozina, Rostov-on-Don: Institute of Management, Business and Law Publishing, 2002. - 168 p. P. 67-70</i>
The development of general theory of verbal communication as a science of compound interaction of language, thought, culture and society presupposes elaborating common principles and techniques of analysis in the adjacent spheres of humanities - linguistics, sociology, psychology, culturology and others.
No doubt dominant position among the branches, the deal with the systems of communication, is taken the linguistics as a science of leading and universal means of communication - the language. Paradoxically, but linguistic research, carried out before the 60-s of the 20-th century, possess the least explanatory power concerning transferring and receiving information: F. de Sossure, who suggested the antinomy of the language as a system and the speech as an asystemic, occasional, individual phenomenon excluded the situation of communication from the sphere of linguists attention. That the term discourse in modern linguistic researches was confirmed marked turning the science of language to the extra linguistics sphere: the static structural-semantic approach ceded to a dynamic communicative one.
Understanding of discourse as speech immersed in life (Arutunova) is bound up with the notion of communicative situation. It`s considered, that in the most general aspect verbal communicative situation may be determined as a real-life by speech-reflective behaviour of communicants. Psychologists describe speech-reflective behaviour as a peculiar sort of activity - speech activity: specific form of human activity, its independent sort, single-minded, motivational active process of receiving and (or) transferring the message.., through of forming and formulating the thought in communication (Zymnaja).
Thereby discourse activity may be determined as speech-reflective activity of communicants, connected with speaker's knowledge, comprehension and world outlook on the one hand and comprehension, reconstruction of the language picture of the producent`s world by a recipient in the resulting communicative situation on other.
The analysis of discourse as a specific kind of activity, in particular, allows to comprehend anew way one of the most disputable, but at the same time key notions of modern linguistics the notion of text.
From the point of psycholinguistics text is a product of such kinds of speech activities as speaking, writing… the whole complex of psychological conditions of activity and individual-psychological peculiarities of the subject are objectivated in text through utterance (Zimnaja). The notion of text as a product of the discourse activity allows to analyse text as a static phenomenon, the zone of power cancellation. Such an understanding of the text is not common for native linguistics, though Turaeva notices, it is a closed system, for which the state of rest is typical (Turaeva).
Adaptation in linguistics of the postulate of quantum nature of thought as background for science of intellect allows to speak about text as a product of discourse. Chafe`s distinguishing the units (clauses) in the informational flow which are commensurable with thought quantum, leads to the notion of discreet-wave nature of discourse. Hence, we can suggest that discreteness is a priory feature of any discourse, and the dividing informational flow into clauses happens independent on the speaker's intention and communicative situation in general. Involuntary and spontaneous discreteness predetermines the connectedness of an engendered text as a dominant strategy of the speaker: from the point of linguistic structure, the forming adequate speech form may be the process of utterance engendering from structurally relevant units of the lower order and their linking into greater blocks, with the help of which a man is able to consolidate and express his thoughts (Kolshansky).
The necessity of transformation is determined by the incompatibility of discreet structure of the concept and superficial forms of text, it is connected with transforming configuration of mental notion into the kind of a liner structure. This transforming is an essential of successful communication: unconnected text cannot be adequately decoded by the addressee. This transformation occurs through the establishment of global and local connectedness of discourse. Global connectedness, which understood as a unity of topic of discourse, is established by the producent (the author) on the initial stage of elaborating of discourse: relevant ties between the structures of the knowledge are established connecting model of the situation is represented. The establishment of local ties takes place on the stage of text formatting and requires revealing the ties between the proportions and superficial structures revealing of the relationships of cohesion. Author's intentions on this stage assume the choice of adequate superficial structure for explication of ties between the clauses, relevant for the producent.
Our understanding the text as a static immanently connected (and whole) product of the discourse allows to determine it as any length succession of the linguistic marks, which is contained between two stops of communication. Such an approach draws the text together with the utterance and ignores the difference, which is principal for static analysis of the language, between written and oral mode. The dynamic approach allows to answer the question, concerning the units of research, which is significant for the linguistics: the text is the product of the present discourse until the producent (recipient) initiates finishing communication.
If the text is the product of discourse activity, then its result, as said above, is creation of such a communicative situation, which may be appreciated by a speaker and a listener as a successful one.
In the process of interaction a speaker and a listener realise different motives, aims and intentions, which can be represented as oppositely aimed vectors. The communicative situation can not be created by one character and defined from one side or as a situation of comprehension/incomprehension; that is the result of the common discursive activity of the interaction participants. The speaker pursues his most general object to be understood, which is co-ordinated with the discursive purpose of the recipient to understand what have been said. The result achieving of these aims is a communicative situation, which can be assessed as a successful one. The rapprochement of the notions of discourse and speech activity, in our opinion, not only extensively corresponds to epistemic aims of linguistics itself, but has undoubted methodological value in the creation of integrated theory of communication.
References
Zimnaja I.A. Lingual psychology of speech activity.-M.-Voroneg, 2001
Kolshansky G.V. About linguistic method of text outcome// Linguistic questions-1983-No 3-P.44-51
Turaeva Z.J. Text linguistic (Text: structure and semantics). Moscow, 1986
About the author:
Milevskaya Tatyana
Ph.D., Associated Professor, Department of Russian Language, Rostov State University, Rostov-on-Don, Russia, e-mail