Discourse Analysis of Short Story 'The Man of the House'

Abstract

Discourse analysis is considered as an instrument in analyzing elements which influence on our understanding of a particular text. Thus, discourse analysis is a highly coherent model in analyzing any spoken, like conversation, or written, like short story text. The aim of this study is to analyze the discourse analysis of a short story, to show how the discourse is initiated, developed and terminated. How the characters participate, interact and what are the relationships among them, how those characters are introduced in the story; how they interrupt, ask questions, and how turns are distributed. The study also aims at counting the number of topics and how they are interrelated. To know whether the sequence of events is logical or not, and to know the fillers (Ah, Oh) and their functions. Further, the study tries to analyze a short story fro the grammatical point of view for stylistic characterization relying on (A Practical English Grammar) (1986) (Fourth Edition) by A. J. Thomson and A. V. Martinet. Also, to determine the speech acts and their percentages. In order to achieve these aims, the study adopts the discourse analysis of a written text of a short story namely, The Man of the House, by analyzing and describing the different strategies like initiating, developing, and terminating. In this study, the model of discourse analysis is eclectic, comprising of three models; Hymes model (1972) who suggests the category of "speech event", and Sacks model (1968) which proposes interaction analysis based on four categories "conversation", "topic", "sequence", and "turn". Finally Sinclair-and Coulthard’s model (1975) of speech acts classification. The present study hypothesizes that discourse analysis is conducted depending on the text and context and how the two terms complete each other. The meaning of the text is completed by action. Analysis is to be achieved structurally and linguistically. It is also found that the discourse is composed of the cooperating of acts, interaction of the participants, sequence of events, topics, and other units. Throughout the analysis, it has been found that the participants perform different speech acts such as nomination which is the most frequently used. The frequency of nomination is 1156 which represents 52.3% of the total acts, reaction forms 555 which represents 25.1%. Evaluation records 198 which represents 8.9% of the total number of acts. There are other speech acts like comment, obligation, manner, and metastatement mentioned in the story. These acts vary according to their usages and functions, and percentages. In the analysis of speech events, the number of major events is 22 which forms (24.5%), while the number of minor events is 68 which forms (75.5%). It is worth mentioning that the participants in the aforementioned story are of different social classes. The participants sometimes address each other by using terms of address in order to show respect, especially some of them are of higher status. The story is narrated in the first person pronoun ( I ), which means that the writer talks about his personal life. Sullivan did most of the turns, (41) which represents 47.6% of the total turns as he is the protagonist and the most important participant in the story. Dooley had (14) turns so that she came second in order that represents 16.2%. The mother came third in rank and did (13) turns which represents 15.5%. Some of the participants participated in conversations more than others, Dooley and Sullivan for instance participate in 12 turns which represents 29.2%, while Minnie and Sullivan participate in 9 turns which forms 21.9%. Within the grammatical analysis, it is found that the number of content words are 4632 which represents 76.5%, the number of content words is 1420 which represents 23.4%, the number of definite articles is 290 which represents 73.9%, the number of indefinite articles is 102 which represents 26.0% of the total number of articles. The total number of nouns, such as countable nouns, singular nouns, feminine nouns, used by the story author is 2439. Discourse analysis shows when and where the turns and topics are shifted, and changed. The use of fillers, such as (Ah) and (Oh), is important and related to the use of discourse; (Ah) occurs 8 times that is 72.7%, whilst (Oh) occurs 3 times that is 27.2%. Finally, the linguistic analysis of literature has many implications and benefits for language teaching.