19) Discourse: hypertext syntax, basic terminology, the influence of context

**Discourse**

A unit of language, usually longer than one sentence (but can be shorter), which is always coherent and represents language in use, consisting of how people communicate through spoken, written, or multimodal texts in social contexts, and including meaning, interaction, structure, and extralinguistic context.

**Discourse analysis**

A linguistic discipline examining how language is organised beyond the sentence level, consisting of considering the text as a process with changing interpretations, and focusing specifically on coherence, politeness, power relations, and social norms, mostly in spoken language.

**Channel (Medium)**

A term used to describe the distinction between speech and writing, reflecting the fact that speaking and writing involve completely different psychological processes.

**Spoken discourse**

A mode of discourse consisting of an unplanned, fairly chaotic structure that involves body language (posture, movement, gaze, distance, facial expressions) and acoustic features (voice and intonation).

**Written discourse**

A mode of discourse consisting of a planned, relatively fixed print-on-paper form where elements like font size, font type, space, and visual images can be analysed.

**Grammatical differences in discourse**

Characteristics distinguishing spoken from written discourse, consisting of variations in grammatical complexity, lexical density, nominalization, explicitness, contextualisation, spontaneity, repetition, hesitation, and redundancy.

**Grey areas**

Specific forms of communication consisting of a mix of written and spoken features, such as text messages, voice memos, chat conversations, online comments, or podcasts with scripts.

**Utterance**

The basic unit of discourse consisting of a part of a sentence with meaning, which can strictly also be an unfinished sentence or a clause conveying information, usually distinguished with pauses.

**Conversational analysis**

A subdiscipline of discourse analysis consisting of examining conversations of two or more people, focusing specifically on the rules of how people behave and take turns during a conversation.

**Adjacency pairs**

Conversational structures consisting of exactly two linked elements where one participant says something to a second one, such as ask + response, act + react, or opening/closing markers.

**Opening and closing remarks**

Conversational elements consisting of greetings, nonverbal cues, noises, and body posture used exactly as ways to open and close a conversation.

**Markers**

Specific conversational elements consisting of words, sentences, or phrases (like "however") included in the text strictly to signal something to the listener.

**Hedges (hedging)**

Remarks of an author added directly to the conversation, consisting of personal comments and explicitly stated opinions (e.g., "To tell you the truth...").

**Text**

Mostly written language logically connected with meaning and purpose, which is always coherent and typically longer than one sentence, though it can consist of just one meaningful word.

**Text analysis**

An older linguistic discipline consisting of considering the text strictly as a finished product.

**Sentence (in text analysis)**

The basic unit of text consisting exactly of a piece of text that starts with a capital letter and ends with a punctuation mark.

**Context**

The words coming just before and after a word, phrase, or statement that fundamentally help to understand its true meaning.

**Linguistic context (narrower)**

A type of context consisting of exactly two elements: the verbal context and the communicative intention of the author.

**Verbal context**

A contextual element consisting of the exact text that precedes and follows a certain word.

**Communicative intention of the author**

An element of linguistic context consisting of the power to completely change the meaning and interpretation of the text (e.g., the word "operation" changing meaning based on whether the context is medical or military).

**Extra-linguistic context (wider)**

A type of context consisting of features not physically written in the text, but reflected "between the lines".

**General (situational) context**

A type of extra-linguistic context consisting exactly of the time, place, physical distance between speakers, and their social position (e.g., employer vs. employee).

**Context of general experience**

A cultural/social background context consisting of opinions, knowledge, historical/political situations, and the education of the reader, which constantly changes as time goes by.

**Pragmatics**

A linguistic discipline developed as a reaction to Chomsky's generative grammar, consisting of the principle that the meaning of sentences strictly changes according to the setting and the specific interpreter.

**Pragmatic factors**

The core elements of pragmatics consisting of exactly three parts: linguistic context, knowledge about the author's intention, and situational context.

**Hypertext syntax (Suprasentential syntax)**

The study of syntactic and semantic relations beyond a single sentence, consisting of examining how sentences connect to form a coherent discourse through cohesion, coherence, sentence connections, and information structure.

**Textuality**

The defining properties making a text meaningful and linked together, consisting of exactly 7 standards: cohesion, coherence, intentionality, acceptability, situationality, intertextuality, and informativity.

**Acceptability**

A standard of textuality consisting of the judgement of whether something is grammatically natural and well-formed.

**Situationality**

A standard of textuality consisting of the specific time, place, social situation, and communicative partner involved in the discourse.

**Intertextuality**

A standard of textuality consisting of our previous experience with other texts of a similar kind, which includes allusions making explicit or implicit references to another text.

**Informativity**

A standard of textuality consisting of the actual content and information value of the text.

**Coherence**

The meaning and logical development of a text, consisting of semantics and extralinguistic knowledge, where a text can be fully coherent and convey a message even if it is grammatically incorrect or lacks formal cohesion.

**Cohesion**

Formal grammatical and lexical links in a text consisting of relations between elements (verbs, nouns, pronouns) that make the text unified and logically connected.

**Grammatical cohesion**

A cohesive system consisting of exactly four main categories: reference, substitution, ellipsis, and conjunctions.

**Reference**

A type of grammatical cohesion consisting of using pronouns or specific expressions instead of repeating nouns, which refer strictly to preceding/following expressions or extralinguistic reality.

**Anaphoric reference**

A direction of reference consisting of a pronoun referring strictly backwards to a preceding noun.

**Cataphoric reference**

A less usual direction of reference consisting of a pronoun referring strictly forwards to a following noun.

**Endophoric reference**

A type of reference consisting of elements found directly inside the discourse.

**Exophoric reference**

A type of reference consisting of elements located strictly outside of the text in extralinguistic reality.

**Substitution**

A cohesive device consisting of replacing words, categorized into nominal substitution (replacing only the noun with "one/ones"), clausal substitution (using "so"), and verbal substitution (using operators in short answers).

**Ellipsis (omission)**

A cohesive device consisting of leaving out a part of the discourse (usually a subject or predicate) completely without substituting it, where readers are still able to identify the missing part thanks to the context.

**Conjunction (as grammatical cohesion)**

Expressions connecting parts of the text or expressing author's remarks, consisting of three specific types: conjuncts, disjuncts, and adjuncts.

**Conjuncts**

Linking words indicating a relation between paragraphs or parts of text, consisting of additive, adversative/contrastive, casual, and temporal categories, which are completely outside the core syntactic structure.

**Disjuncts**

The author's personal comments included strictly at the beginning of a sentence and separated by a comma, consisting of opinions about the text or the way thoughts are presented.

**Adjuncts**

Syntactical adverbials consisting of being a fixed part of the grammatical structure.

**Lexical cohesion**

Cohesion based heavily on repetition, consisting of repeating identical words, synonyms, similar words, general expressions, collocations, structural repetitions, parallelism, and clause chaining.

**Hypernym**

A superordinate general expression used to describe a certain broader group of things, such as "animals" or "furniture".

**Hyponym**

A subordinate specific word belonging directly under a superordinate hypernym, such as "dog" or "chair".

**Collocations**

Standardized lexical links between words in the language, consisting strictly of specific verb-noun or verb-preposition pairings.

**Structural repetition**

A form of lexical cohesion consisting of strictly repeating the exact same phrase and grammatical structure.

**Parallelism**

A broader form of lexical cohesion consisting of repeating longer structures, phrases, and even the exact rhythm (e.g., Martin Luther King's speeches).

**Clause chaining**

A cohesive technique consisting of mentioning information at the very end of one sentence and expanding it immediately as the subject of the following sentence.