Примењена лингвистика у част Ранку Бугарском - Језик у

JEZIK U UPOTREBI / LANGUAGE IN USE
in situational contexts (i.e. language production). Text (spoken or written) is the
result of discourse, a formed and coherent language product.”
Crystal (Kristal 1996: 116) also makes a distinction between discourse
analysis and text analysis. According to him, discourse analysis puts an emphasis
on the structure of natural speech in the types of discourses such as conversation,
inteviews, comments or speeches. On the other hand, text analysis focuses on the
structure of written texts such as essays, notes, traffic signs, or book chapters.
Crystal (Kristal 1987: 69-70) states that there is a significant overlapping of the
two disciplines, such as in the case of cohesion. He mentions, though, that it
would be too early to make a general division between the two disciplines.
However, the situation is not as simple as it may seem.
Kenworthy (1991: 111) says: “Some linguists talk about spoken and written
texts, some about spoken and written discourse”. This further complicates
things regarding the definition of discourse. We also need to mention that German
linguistics under the term text implies spoken discourse too, because both spoken
and written words lead to a text.
Coulthard (1985: 3) makes a distinction between spoken discourse and
written text, but he also mentions that this disctinction is not generally accepted.
He adds that some linguists, such as Widdowson, use the term discourse to refer
to written text too. According to him, pragmatics, as defined by Leech and Levinson,
overlaps with discourse analysis the way he sees it.
Coulthard’s division into spoken discourse and written text seems fully
logical and acceptable, at least on the face of of it. However, Coulthard believes
that spoken discourse and written text are parts of an umbrella discipline – discourse
analysis, which includes conversation analysis or spoken discourse and
text analysis or written text. Some authors, such as Fairclough (1996: 309) have
a similar approach.
While accepting this division, I would argue for slightly different terminology.
Discourse analysis, the way I see it, is the linguistic study of spoken
discourse and written discourse. Both spoken and written forms of expression
belong to discourse. It is still language used in a certain context, with a certain
purpose, and aimed at a certain audience, which are all prominent characteristics
of discourse analysis.
Of course, any existing definition can be accepted as fully viable. It is just
a matter of how one sees things in discourse analysis. Obviously, the terms text
and discourse overlap in the literature, but no matter what terms we use, the context
in which they appear will certainly clarify whether we speak about spoken
or written discourse.
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