DawgNotes

The communication triangle that came to be known in later scholarship as the "Kinneavy triangle" is cited by Kinneavy as emerging from classical rhetoric. He demonstrates how the triangle, the “interrelationships of expressor, receptor, and language signs referring to reality," pervades Aristotle's Rhetoric (18). The components of the triangle get different names in different areas of study, but the structure is the same, which gives the grounds for a more unified theory.

Kinneavy draws for other fields of language study to enhance his explanations of discourse. For example, he is careful to establish his disource theory as being "constituted by 'text'" (22), rather than the compenent parts of the speech act:

Discourse, therefore, is characterized by individuals acting in a special time and place (Gardiner, t, 71); it has a beginning, a middle, a closure, and a purpose (cf. Pike 1, I, 9, 39, 44, 64 ff.); it is a language process, not a system, and it has an ‘undivided and absolute integrity,’ (Hjelmslev, p, 36-39, 12); it establishes a verbal context and it has a situational context and a cultural context (Slama-Cazacu, 1, 215-16)….In each case there is a stress on the whole, not just the isolated linguistic part (22).

He also notes the multiple levels of context for the text, including the immediate situation, and the cultural context (ref. Sapir).

This text includes a great chart that breaks the triangle down into multiple levels of study. At level A, the field of English gets broken down into three components: syntactics, semantics, and pragmatics (the study of discourse). Level B breaks down each of those parts, and finally, Level C breaks down the divisions of pragmatics (arts, or signs of discourse, and media, or channels of discourse, modes, aims). These categories for these are:

Arts of Discourse: speaking, writing, listening, reading
Media of Discourse: the channels of the signals under arts (with distinctions for the number of decoders: monologual, small group, large group, mass).

Modes of Discourse: Narration, Description, Evaluation, Classification

Aims: Reference, Persuasion, Literature, Expression

It's interesting to me that the modes portion is so oft repeated in composition texts and the aims portion is not nearly so prevalent. Kinneavy's title emphasizes the Aims. What happened to them after this book? My interest is squarely in the Aims. To me that is the piece that puts discourse education, or rhetorical education, at the center of the liberal arts (including the sciences). Kinneavy shows part of this potential:

emphasis on the encoder or decoder gives person discourse, emphasis on reality to which reference is made gives reference discourse, and emphasis on the discourse product itself gives product discourse. Since person discourse can focus on either the encoder or the decoder, there are two kinds of person discourse; expressive, emphasizing the encoder, and persuasive, emphasizing the decoder. And reference discourse must be further subdivided into scientific, informative, and exploratory (60).

The balance of the book goes on to discuss the aims in detail. I'll follow that part up another time, along with the reception of those ideas in later scholarship.

Meanwhile, in a recent book, James Gee offered a highly efficient little text on discourse theory and method that is long on practicality, if short on detail and explanations. Gee's book is built on lists, beginning with what he calls the "Seven Building tasks" (seven areas or things we use language to build). These include significance, activities, identities, relationships, politics, connections, sign systems and knowledge. The analyst looks at each of these areas and asks how language is being used to enact or build these tasks. His explanation of politics is not just the public realm of legislative arena, but what he calls "the distribution of social goods." The analyst here is looking for the perspective on social goods, which includes values and notions of "right" or "good," that are being communicated. The analysis of sign systems includes recognizing which systems are privileged over what others, as well as what ways of knowing are privileged (11-13).

Gee makes a distinction for what he calls "Capital D Discourse," which is "ways of combining and integrating language, actions, interactions, ways of thinking, believing, valuing, and using various symbols, tools, and objects ot enact a particular sort of socially recognizable identity" (21). The tools of discourse analysis are focused on language-in-use and its effects. "Conversations," which we might think of as the buzz going on across particular communities about different issues, themes, or beliefs, shape the way language is interpreted as always present but not explicit influences. Like Kinneavy, Gee recognizes the social situatedness of discourse, including not only the text but also identity and activities. He says, "Big D Discourses are always language plus 'other stuff'" (26), where "Situated means 'grounded in actual practices and experiences'" (53).

Gee's work synthesizes into a list of 26 questions we ask to analyze discourse. These include identifying the grammars, the social languages, the situated identities and activities, the Discourse(s) involved, the relationships among discourses, the relevant Conversations in play, the role of Intertextuality, the situated meaning of word(s) or phrases both from the point of view of the user (speaker, author) and that of the hearer (interpreter).

Validy for the analysis comes from four criteria: Convergence (the more the answers to all the questions converge, the more reliable the analysis); Agreement (of the speakers with the analysis); Coverage (the more the analysis can be transferred to other data, the more reliable); and Linguistic details (the more tied to details, the more valid).

I don't see Gee's work as a huge departure from Kinneavy's, but rather a succinct and practical set of tools to use in carrying out analysis within the broad framework Kinneavy worked to establish. I still have to work through what came between these two texts, which is a future project, but these make a nicely balanced pair of theory and application.

Works Cited:
Gee, James Paul. An Introduction to Discourse Analysis Theory and Method, 2nd ed.New York: Routledge, 2005.

Kinneavy, James. A Theory of Discourse: The Aims of Discourse. New York: Norton Publishers, 1980.