Discourse Analysis and Written Discourse Conventions

Abstract

The institutionalized, orconventionalized, properties of human language, somewhat neglected as objects of study in contermporary linguistics, have lately been looked upon with renewed interest. Tannen (1987), for example, synthesizing earlier work by Bakhtin (1981), Becker (1979), and Boliner (1976), has argued for a view of discourse as relatively prepatterned across linguistic domains. Similarly, the notion of “emergent grammer” (i.e., of grammer as “set of …recurrent partials, whose status is constantly being renegotiated in speech”; Hopper 1988:118) has been advanced in opposition to more widely-accepted models of grammatical knowledge. Recent research of this type, as well as a number of older studies, indicates a serious interest among certain linguists in formulating a theoretical basis for the study of conventionalized language.