A modular approach to discourse structures

Abstract

Recent developments in discourse analysis from different perspectives have given rise to a considerable amount of descriptions and hypotheses on many dimensions of dialogical and monological discourses (see Schiffrin 1994 for a recent overview of six major approaches). As Schiffrin (1994: 18) notes: "We already know a great deal about some very basic discourse phenomena, e.g. turn-taking, repair, topic organization, story telling, discourse markers, conversational inference and style. There now seems to be a need to move from empirical studies of how we use language to a) the development of models and theories that help us organize our knowledge about how discourse works, and (b) links between our discourse models/theories and our models/theories of language in general".