Features of Discourse in the Interaction Among Market Women in the Oba Market, Benin
Chapter One
Purpose of the study.
Based on Sinclair and Coulthard’s method of analysis, this work is intended to investigate the features of discourse in the interaction among market women. First by seeking to find out the following:
- The effective use of language in a business transaction
- The functional use of language both verbal and non-verbal language to achieve transactional goals
- Various methods and techniques employed by market women to ensure sales
- Common features of language used in business transactions most peculiar to the market woman
- Lastly, the researcher looks into market exchanges, social relationships that take place during business transactions, and sales are made possible through these exchanges.
CHAPTER TWO
LITERATURE REVIEW
Introduction
The present research is designed to describe both the structure of one form of spoken discourse – the way in which units above the rank of clauses are related and patterned and the way in which such language functions as statement, question and command are realized through grammatical structure and position in the discourse. This chapter puts the present study “An Investigation of the Features of Discourse in the Interaction Among Market Women” into perspective against other studies in the area of Discourse analysis.
Discourse Structure
Human beings daily engage in discourse; that is in interactional talks or conversation. In other words, life is a constant flow of discourse- language functioning in one of many contexts that make up a culture. In fact, it is difficult to conceive of effective functioning of social life in any human society without interactional talk. This kind of talk is often referred to as discourse. Brown and Yule (1) defined Discourse Analysis as:
…..the analysis, is necessarily the analysis Of LANGUAGE IN USE As such, it cannot be restricted to the description of linguistic forms independent of the purpose, or function which their forms are designed to serve in human affairs. Simply put, discourse is language in use both written and spoken discourse. For instance, if one wants to apply for a job and writes an informal letter to the office concerned, there will be no reply unless he or she writes it in accordance with certain requirements for written discourse analysis. But for spoken discourse analysis, which is the interest of the present study, if a pastor in his church wants to preach, may be on fund raising for a church project, he needs to mind the context and setting requirements, and also his congregation.
Discourse analysis means placing language in the situation it should be in order to get the message or meaning across to the intended audience Stubbs (1) has observed that;
….. discourse analysis is a conglomeration of attempts to study the organization of language and therefore to such larger linguistic units, such as conversational exchange or written text.
It follows that discourse analysis is also concerned with language in use in social contexts and in particular dialogue between speakers. On the whole, one may say that discourse analysis is concerned with a thorough examination of the different social contexts, how they are organized, and how meaning is encoded in a particular social situation(s) through interactional talk or written texts.
According to Sinclair and Coulthard (9-10) in their text, Towards An Analysis of Discourse- The English Used by Teachers and Pupils, there are distinctive discourse for each of the situations they have investigated. Their work was primarily sociolinguistics although it differs remarkably from most other works on sociolinguistics. Fisherman, cited in Sinclair and Coulthard (9) captures the total essence of discourse analysis with regards to the sociology of language in four simple questions who speaks what? To who? When? And to what end?
CHAPTER THREE
METHODOLOGY
Introduction: The System Of Analysis
This research has been very much text based which will follow the model of Analysis of Discourse Features built by Sinclair and Coulthard in 1975. According to them, they started with few preconceptions but the descriptive system has grown and has been modified to cope with problems thrown up by the data. The system they produced is hierarchical and their method of presentation is closely modeled on Halliday’s Categories of a Theory of Grammar. All the terms used – structure, system, ranks, level, delicacy, realization, marked, unmarked – are Halliday’s Sinclair and Courthard (24)
Also in order to ensure clarity and consistency of the data collected in pidgin English and rendered in correct English, the rendition has been based on Akaruese, C.U.O (2006) in his research titled ‘An Analysis of Basic Nigerian Pidgin Syntax’ submitted to the Department of English Language and Literature Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, for the award of MA degree.
Explanation of the System of Analysis
This section begins at the lowest rank of speech Acts and discusses the realization and recognition of acts. It then moves on to discuss the structure of moves, exchange and transactions.
CHAPTER FOUR
TEXTUAL ANALYSIS
Introduction
The layout of texts follow the conventions developed in chapter 3. The major points are:
- Transaction boundaries are marked by a double line, exchange boundaries by a single line, when one exchange is bound to a preceding exchange this is indicated by a broken
- The page is divided into five columns until one reaches a horizontal line across the page, then reads down the second column to the line down the third
CHAPTER FIVE
DICUSSION OF THE FINDINGS
Introduction
This chapter discusses the findings, recommendations, suggestions for further studies and summary of the study.
Discussion of the findings
In this market discourse, meaning is simply decoded by both the buyer and the seller through interactional talk for instance, Buyer: How much is this shoe? This one is size what?
Seller: Take two thousand and five hundred (N2, 500). It is size forty (40)
As the market exchange goes on, both the buyers and sellers use the discourse features of analysis from Sinclair and Coulthard model for instance;
Buyer: Good morning, earrings how much? These small ones, I will buy many. Good morning in this context serves as an introduction of the business exchange which Sinclair and Coulthard called boundary exchange with opening, frame and focus, having their acts as metal statements (ms) starter (s) markers These are the features for both introduction and end of each transaction. There are other discourse features we made use of in the analysis of this work from Sinclair and Coulthard model of analysis for instance, in chapter four of this research, from the various texts used “A to D” features like;
Recommendations
A thorough investigation has been carried out on discourse feature of Market women business interaction in Oba market, Benin. The raw data were collected in pidgin English and rendered in correct English and analyzed using Sinclair and Coulthard model of analysis.
Based on the findings of this study, the researcher makes the following recommendations,
Both teachers and students of English language should find this research very relevant because discourse analysis of spoken language has only recently gained attention in Linguistic analysis. The written language has a long history of analysis while spoken language has not gain much attention not until recently, so this work serves as one of the basis interested scholars should have a footing.
The study and analysis of discourse features of any language should put into consideration, the natural setting and social cultural context before it should be carried out just as this work is based on the interaction among market women in Oba market Benin in Ovia L.G.A of Edo state.
The raw data must be collected from the natural setting of the study. This makes the research more authentic to be used at any time and everywhere.
Participant observation is very important in carrying out a research of this nature. This will enable the student or anybody carrying out the research to account for every detail of analysis carried out on the findings.
Sinclair and Coulthard features of discourse analysis covers the analysis of all natural languages both spoken and written discourse therefore can be very useful for future researchers who might find this work interesting as a base for their own research.
In a nutshell, discourse analysis of spoken Language has come to stay, so everybody, students, scholars and even educational administrators should consider this area of great importance because life itself cannot continue to flow normally without this Interactional talk.
Finally, Education planners should make discourse analysis a compulsory subject right from primary school so that students should know their discourse ability and channel their attention to such work in life as early as possible.
Suggestions for Further Research
- Further researchers can carry out discourse analysis using other social cultural context of spoken language apart from market discourse used in this research like:
- Classroom discourse
- Place of
- Doctor patient’s interaction
- Court
- other areas of discourse analysis like adjacency pairs, turn- talking can be researched
- Further research can also be carried out on written discourse since this one is on spoken
- This research can be carried out again using discourse features from another model apart from Sinclair and Coulthard model of discourse
Summary of the Study
This study has carried out an investigation of discourse features of interaction among market women and their customer in Oba market Benin. The raw data were collected in pidgin English and rendered in correct English and analysed using Sinclair and Coulthard model of analysis built in 1975. Based on the findings, it becomes clear that in market discourse, meaning is decoded by both buyers and sellers through interactional talk. There are many discourse features of analysis in Sinclair and Coulthard model built for the analysis of natural languages based on different situation but the ones mostly used in this research are boundary exchange with opening, frame and focus having their acts as metal statements (ms) starter (s) markers. Others are; select (sel), Accept (Acc), non- verbal (NV) communication, information (inf), Acknowledgement (ack) direction (Dir), reaction (rea), reply (rep) prompt (p) and clue (cl).
Right from the beginning to the end of the textual analysis we discovered that verbal and non- verbal means of communication contributed towards the overall goal of market women interaction with their customers which simply is to buy and sell commodities. According to the data used, there are various linguistics approaches mostly used by market women to ensure sales and that is what Sinclair and Coulthard labeled prompt and clues.
WORKS CITED
- Akaruese C.U.O, An Analysis of Basic Nigerian Pidgin Syntax: An Unpublished MA Thesis, Unizik, Awka, 2006.
- Akmajian, Adrain et al. Linguistics. An introduction to Language and Communication England: M. T. Press Cambridge, London, 2004.
- Allerton, D.J Essentials of Grammatical Theory, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd, 1976.
- Brown, G. and G. Yule Discourse Analysis, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1983.
- Collinge, N.E. An Encyclopedia of Language, London: Routledge, 1990.
- Crystal, David, Cambridge Encyclopedia: Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 2000.
- Givon, T. Syntax: A functional- Typological Introduction vol. I. Amsterdam John Benjamin 1984.
- Grice, H.P. “Logic and Conversation” In Syntax and Semantics, vol. 3, Peter Cole and Jerry Lee Morgan, eds. 1975 pp 41-58.
- Hutchinson, T. and A. Waters English for Specific Purposes; A Learning Centered Approach. London; Cambridge University Press, 1987.
- Lyons, J. Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972.
- McCarthy, Michael. Discourse Analysis forLlanguage Teachers, London: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
- Mey, Jacob I. Pragmatics: An Introduction, Boston: Blackman Publishers, 2007.
- Nunan, David. Research Methods in Language Learning, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
- Obi- Okoye, A.F. An Introduction to Applied English Linguistics: From Theory to Practice, Enugu: Frefabag Investment Ltd. 2008.
