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From Language as System to Language as Discourse

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Michael McCarthy is Emeritus Professor of Applied Linguistics, University of Nottingham,

Adjunct Professor of Applied Linguistics, University of Limerick, Visiting Professor in

Applied Linguistics at Newcastle University and Honorary Professor of the University of

Valencia, Spain. He is author/co-author/editor of 53 books, including Touchstone, Viewpoint,

the Cambridge Grammar of English, English Grammar Today, Spoken Language and Applied

Linguistics and English Grammar: Your Questions Answered, as well as titles in the English

Vocabulary in Use series. He is co-editor of the Routledge Applied Corpus Linguistics series

and the Routledge Corpus Linguistics Guides. He is author/co-author of 110 academic papers.

He is co-director (with Ronald Carter) of the CANCODE spoken English corpus. He has

lectured in 46 countries and has been involved in language teaching and applied linguistics for

52 years. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Brian Clancy lectures in academic writing and research methods at Mary Immaculate College,

University of Limerick, Ireland. His research work focusses on the blend of a corpus linguistic

methodology with the discourse analytic approaches of pragmatics and sociolinguistics. His

primary methodological interests relate to the use of corpora in the study of language varieties

and the construction and analysis of small corpora. His published work in these areas explores

language use in intimate settings, such as between family and close friends, and the language

variety Irish English. He is author of Investigating Intimate Discourse: Exploring the spoken

interaction of families, couples and close friends (Routledge, 2016) and co-author, with Anne

O’Keeffe and Svenja Adolphs, of Introducing Pragmatics in Use (Routledge, 2011).

From Language as System to Language as Discourse

Michael McCarthy

1
Brian Clancy

1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 Language as a system

When language is viewed as a system, we see it in terms of its component parts and how these

interact. The three basic components are substance, form and meaning. Substance refers to the

sounds the language uses (phonic substance), for example, its vowels and consonants, and the

symbols used in writing (graphic substance). Next, we have three basic types of form:

grammar, lexis and phonology. In the case of grammar, English forms include past-tense

endings, modal verbs and prepositions, along with rules for putting these together (syntax). The

lexical forms consist of words, which follow rules for vowel and consonant combinations, how

they combine with other words in collocations, fixed expressions, etc. and how they interact

with the grammar. Phonology gives us the forms for pronunciation, stress (the syllable with

most intensity) and intonation (e.g. whether the voice rises or falls). The third component,

meaning, refers to what the combinations of form and substance signify (the semantics). In

English, the form was speaking signifies past time, green and blue signify particular colours

and rising intonation often signifies a question. If we reverse this perspective, meaning is what

we intend to say, form is how we assemble the message using appropriate words, grammar and

sounds (or written symbols), and substance is what we actually say or write.

We find information on the system in reference grammars (for English, this includes reference

grammars such as Biber et al. 1999; Carter and McCarthy 2006), in dictionaries (e.g.

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Macmillan 2002; Hornby 2010), which usually give information on pronunciation. Works

describing English intonation tend to be more specialised (e.g. Cruttenden 1997; Tench 2015).

1.2 Language as discourse

The system and its components form the raw material for the teaching and learning of

languages. Every learner expects to be instructed in the pronunciation, grammar and

vocabulary of the target language, and teachers and learners alike expect that major course

books will have grammar charts and target vocabulary, listening and speaking sections where

pronunciation and stress are practised, and reading and writing material where working with

the graphic substance is on offer, for example, learning a new alphabet or learning punctuation

rules. However, the system exists for a purpose, and that purpose is communication. Putting

the system work to enable communication means engaging in discourse, the creation of

meaning in context. Cook (1989: 6) simply calls it ‘language in use, for communication’. Gee

and Handford (2012: 1), in their definition of discourse, refer to ‘the meanings we give

language and the actions we carry out when we use language in specific contexts’. The

language we access within the system is transformed into language as discourse (McCarthy

and Carter, 1994). This approach to language, therefore, is distinct from language as system,

and may represent quite a new perspective on the raw material of their trade for trainee teachers.

Language does not take place in a vacuum. However, language as system, often presented at

sentence level and isolated from real world contexts, can be studied as if it does, and, at least

up to the recent past, was the starting point from which many teacher education programmes

approached the language elements of their syllabuses.

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One of the major developments in recent decades has been a better understanding of the

differences between speaking and writing, of how there is no one, single difference that

accounts for everything (Chafe 1982; Hughes 1996: 6-15), and how speaking and writing often

cross over or ‘blur’ in contexts such as lectures (often written-to-be spoken) and in the language

of the internet (Crystal 2006; Herring 2010). Until relatively recently, many language courses,

at secondary school and university level, focused primarily on the study of the great literature

of the target language and on essay writing, with perhaps the occasional ‘conversation class’

and an oral examination tagged on. The model of the target language was typically a written

one. Nowadays, thanks to our ability to record and store huge amounts of spoken and written

data in corpora, we can observe significant differences between written and spoken discourse,

and where they meet and create blends such as social media usage. In this chapter, we

exemplify from several corpora of spoken data, for it is only by looking at attested data that we

can begin to be objective about how discourse functions. The corpora we cite are the Michigan

Corpus of Academic Spoken English (MICASE), the Limerick Corpus of Irish English (LCIE)

and the British National Corpus (BNC). For more information on these corpora see Simpson-

Vlach and Leicher (2006), Clancy (2016) or Aston and Burnard (1998), respectively. In all

instances, we focus on spoken discourse to re-balance the past focus on writing and suggest

ways in which pedagogy can move from knowledge of the system to the skills and strategies

needed to create and participate in discourse. In doing so, we argue for language as discourse

as an essential component in both pre- and in-service language teachers’ repertoires. More

specifically, we highlight the importance of a language as discourse approach and how to

practically implement it in the language classroom through a discussion of methods, materials

and classroom practices.

2 BEYOND THE SENTENCE

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In English, the sentence has been for centuries a powerful and dominant notion. Forming

sentences requires attention to the rules as to how phrases and clauses combine in the system.

However, Sinclair and Coulthard’s (1975) pioneering work showed that it was possible to

describe language in use without having recourse to the notion of sentences, while still showing

how spoken language was structured and not randomly put together. They recorded lessons in

English school classrooms and showed how the language of teachers and pupils followed set

patterns during the process of teaching and learning. For example, in this exchange from the

MICASE corpus, the lecturer asks a number of questions, students answer and the lecturer

gives feedback, reinforcing the correct answer.

(1)

[Context: Taken from a Visual Sources lecture. S1 = lecturer, the

other speakers are students. SU-f = unknown speaker, female; SU-m =
unknown speaker, male; parentheses indicate uncertain speech]

S1: listen to this. there is the Nile.

S5: yes.
S1: which is where?
S5: in Egypt
SU-f: Africa.
S1: there's the Ganges.
S4: India.
SU-m: India
S1: India. there's the Danube.
SU-m: Turkey. no?
S1: Danube. <SINGING> da da da da dum, bum bum, bum bum
SU-f: none of us know it so you can just like tell us
SU-f: Germany
SU-m: yeah it's the Blue Danube. we know the song. (just
tell me where it is)
S1: where is the Blue Danube?
SU-f: Austria.
SU-m: (she's) got a correct answer.
S1: Austria. Excellent. [continues]
(MICASE)

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Notably, the teacher’s feedback is withheld until the correct answer is given about the Danube.

The example shows that teacher and students are both adhering to a set of conventions that are

independent of sentences; we need not refer to sentences to understand what has happened. The

pattern of teacher initiation (I), followed by a student response (R), then by teacher feedback,

or follow-up (F), referred to as the IRF pattern, is a powerful and embedded structure which

all the parties involved are accustomed to. The IRF pattern is a useful way of putting knowledge

on public display and reinforcing learning. In non-classroom situations, we can see similar

patterns, as in example (2), taken from family discourse.

(2)

[Context: Two siblings are trying to fix a computer printer. S1 =

male, aged 24; S2 = female, aged 22]

S1: So what's the problem? Initiation

S2: We needed to replace the print head. Response
S1: Oh right. Feedback

(LCIE)

Here (I) is a question, (R) is a response to the question, and (F) acknowledges and accepts the

response. This is what the speakers focus on; they know what to do to complete a satisfactory

exchange. Studying language as discourse is not dependent on the notion of the sentence, or as

Brazil (1995: 15) puts it ‘we do not necessarily have to assume that the consideration of such

abstract notions as “sentences” enters into the user's scheme of things at all.’

Sinclair and Coulthard (1975) also showed how teachers marked the transition from one stage

to another by using words and phrases such as Right, Now, Well and Now then, which are

termed discourse markers. Alongside markers which organise phases or sections of a discourse,

other markers point to degrees of shared knowledge (you know, obviously, you see). These

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markers are not part of the structure of sentences; they operate at the level of discourse (for

general discussions, see Schiffrin 1987; Jucker and Ziv 1998: 1ff; Fraser 1999; Fischer 2006).

A marker such as I mean or actually can modify a whole stretch of discourse consisting of a

number of clauses and can exercise influence over not only the speaker’s own turn but the

contributions of others too. An example would be the way speakers use anyway in English to

indicate “I think we’ve both/all said enough on this topic”, used as a pre-closing move, as in

this extract from a radio phone-in show.

(3)

[Context: Participants have been discussing tattoos as identifying

marks for sailors. S1 = presenter; S2 = caller]

S2: But the ehh the ehh they saw the tattoos were used
extensively by sea captains to identify their their
sailors. A lot of sailors and sea going men fell over.
Excuse me I've a frog in my throat.
S1: That's okay.
S2: Emm a lot of sailors were lost at sea of course.
S1: Right so. Obviously it would make an enormous amount of
sense if there was a distinguishing mark like that. John
thank you very much indeed for that. All sorts of other
theories on why, when, where, how etc. Anyway, that's all
from us for today, back with you tomorrow at the usual
time until then a very good day to you.
(LCIE)

Fully to understand how the exchanges work in examples (1) to (3) above, we need to consider

the following questions:

 How do the speakers relate to one another?

 Where are they?

 What are they doing?

 What are their goals?

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We can see how this list of questions involves a complex perspective on how people utilise the

system. We see how different discourse roles will affect what people say, how they respond to

where they are and what they are doing, how they create and maintain relationships through

what they say, and how they achieve their goals through verbal exchanges. To exemplify how

the system can be exploited, we next look at examples of how grammar and lexis can be put to

service in the creation of discourse.

3 CHOICES AT THE DISCOURSE LEVEL

3.1 Grammar as discourse

At the beginning of this chapter, we pointed to the role of grammar within the language system.

English grammar consists of a finite set of rules and conventions that are largely deterministic:

to express a meaning such as third person singular present tense indicative mood, it is

predetermined that a lexical verb must end in -s (she looks, he watches, etc.). Equally, it is

predetermined that in English the definite article will come before, not after, a noun. However,

at the discourse level, grammar can be exploited to realise a variety of purposes, for example,

to create and maintain good relationships or to indicate degrees of familiarity. In extract (4),

from a conversation between friends, we see how ellipsis (the non-use of an element of the

grammar normally considered compulsory), contributes to informality and friendliness.

(4)

[Context: Friends in an Indian restaurant having a meal. S1 =

unknown; S2 = female, student, aged 20; S3 = female, student, aged
20]

S1: You finished? Yeah.

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 S2: <laughing> No.
S3: Can I just finish this chi=?
S2: Huh!
S3: <laughing> Oh my God!
(BNC)
S1 says You finished? rather than Have you finished?, which the rules of English grammar

normally require. Not saying have is a choice; it is not compulsory in the way the third person

singular -s is on present tense indicative verbs. In informal contexts such as that of (4), the

probability of ellipsis is greater than in formal settings (Caines et al. 2017). For this reason,

Carter and McCarthy (2006: 6-7) refer to the ‘grammar of choice’ as being a feature of

discourse. Speakers and writers choose to exploit the available grammatical resources in ways

which are appropriate to their roles and to create the relationships that best enable them to

achieve their goals.

Another, familiar, everyday strategy to exemplify the choices speakers make to create

successful discourse is the telling of stories and anecdotes, where we often find speakers

moving from the canonical past tense to the present tense (the so-called present historic) to

heighten and intensify dramatic elements. In extract (5), a speaker is recounting a story about

someone who bought some very expensive prawns.

(5)

[*name of a well-known supermarket]

A: Tell Dad about the prawns Mary.

B: Grainne bought a small box of prawns for Kieran.
A: You know the prawns?
C: Yeah.
B: Kieran came out and he was like "how much were the
prawns?" She goes "I don't know" and he said "roughly
how much are they?". "About two three or four euros. Two
or three". "They were a tenner. It says a tenner here."
C: And what were they?
B: A tenner. She checked them then when she went into
Roches*.

9
 (LCIE)
The story moves from the past to the present when the most important statement is quoted (She

goes “I don’t know”), then back into the past. This is a choice; it is not a compulsory element

of the system. The present tense is a marked choice; the past tense is the unmarked, most typical

form in story-telling. Schiffrin (1981) shows how shifts from past to historic present are not

random but are woven into the structure of narratives and relate to particular segments of a

story (see also Rühlemann 2007).

One striking aspect of how grammar operates at the discourse level is the way speakers co-

construct grammatical patterns – in other words, clause combinations which in writing would

qualify to be labelled as sentences may be jointly produced by more than one participant in a

conversation. Speakers can expand on a potentially complete utterance by the addition of a

subordinate clause. This is typically done using conjunctions such as then, when, which, or as

is the case in (6), if.

(6)
[Context: Speakers are discussing having two phone lines in the
house]

S1: But in that case if you're going to have that, then you've
a right to have two lines in the house
S2: Exactly
S1: and use one as a business line
S2: Exactly
S1: and one as a pleasure line
S2: Exactly and that's what I'm gonna do, exactly
S1: if there's anything you can do (unclear)
S2: Yep, I agree, exactly and that's the only way you can do
it …
(BNC)
S2 says Exactly and that’s what I’m gonna do, exactly, which is syntactically complete. S1

then expands on this utterance with if there’s anything you can do, effectively treating S2’s

utterance as a ‘main clause’ to which a ‘subordinate’ if-clause can be attached. This if-clause

10
functions to qualify S2’s statement of intent by suggesting that there may or may not be

something that can be done about the present situation. This modification could prove to be

interpersonally complex given, for example, the politeness issues involved in commenting on,

qualifying or evaluating another speaker’s utterance (see Ferrara 1992). However, S2 responds

to S1’s modification with the unambiguously positive Yep, I agree, exactly. Clancy and

McCarthy (2015) have shown how co-construction is an integral, largely unproblematic part

of the turn-taking system and that, to account for this behaviour, we have to move beyond the

sentence to a view that sees both syntax and meaning as a shared interactional resource (after

Rühlemann 2007). Rather than viewing syntax and meaning as static products of grammars

and dictionaries, we should instead see them as emergent, as interaction unfolds in particular

contexts, a concept which belongs in the realm of discourse and not system.

3.2 Lexis as discourse

What we have said about grammar can also be applied to lexis. Although the vocabulary of a

language like English consists of a huge repertoire of words and phrases, presenting learners

with a daunting task, there are significant areas where we can move away from seeing the

lexicon as a component of the system towards seeing it as a strategic resource for the creation

of discourse.

One such area is the choice of degrees of formality. Formality is concerned with making

choices appropriate to the context and the relationship between the participants. Most words in

English are neutral as to their degree of formality, but many words are conventionally

associated with either formal or informal contexts. For example, phrasal verbs often convey

greater informality than non-phrasal verbs that convey similar meanings. It is more informal to

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say I screwed up, rather than I made a mistake/I did something wrong. Similarly, idioms often

convey a degree of familiarity, offering informal comments and evaluations of people and

events (McCarthy 1998: 131-140). Good dictionaries give guidance as to the level of formality

associated with particular items. An allied question is whether descriptions of formal/informal

language and formal/informal contexts can be applied across cultures or whether different

cultures may view similar situations and relationships in different ways (see Irvine 2009).

While most language teachers will have long been familiar with the notion of formality, it is

only relatively recently that corpus analysis has revealed just how much of everyday discourse

is composed of ready-made, multi-word units rather than single words. These multi-word units

include familiar items such as phrasal verbs, idioms and prepositional phrases (e.g. get up, feel

under the weather, at the moment). From the point of view of lexis as discourse, corpora show

how frequent and important some multi-word strings (hereafter referred to as chunks) are in

the structuring of discourse and the creation and maintenance of relationships. For example,

many of the chunks in Table 1.1 are associated with you and I, demonstrating the interactive

nature of the most frequent chunks.

Table 1.1: The ten most frequent 2-, 3- and 4-word chunks in the spoken component of the BNC
BABY
N 2-word chunks 3-word chunks 4-word chunks
1 you know I don’t know I don’t know what
2 I don’t do you want do you want to
3 do you I don’t think no no no no
4 in the you have to I thought it was
5 I mean a lot of what do you want
6 I think what do you are you going to
7 is it I mean I I don’t know whether
8 it was I think it’s thank you very much
9 on the do you think have a look at
10 you got you want to I don’t think I

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The table contains a number of ‘fragments’ indicative of the syntactic system, e.g. in the, it

was, what do you and you want to. However, it is interpersonal meaning that accounts for many

of the items in the table. For example, you know, I mean, I think and I don’t know are associated

with linguistic politeness (see Fox Tree and Schrock 2002). As table 1.1 demonstrates,

individual items like know and think provide us with the building blocks for different structures

with interpersonal import, e.g. I think → I don’t think → I don’t think I → I don’t think I have,

etc. These ‘frames’, to which content is attached, demonstrate the routine nature of everyday

spoken language which facilitates fluent, successful discourse.

Also common in everyday spoken discourse are chunks such as and things like that, that

sort/kind of thing and or whatever, which operate beyond the sentence. These vague category

markers are particularly significant in the way they project common ground among

participants. The speaker who says, “There’s a whole new grammar for text messages and that

sort of thing” assumes the listener(s) will mentally fill in the rest of the possible referents of

that sort of thing (e.g., social media, blogs, emails, etc.) and does not need to have them

explicitly listed. Vague category markers have been extensively studied and are seen as central

to normal, efficient discourse, especially conversation (see Channell 1994; Cutting 2007;

Vaughan et al. 2017). Vague language items and the other interactive chunks already discussed

are best seen as ‘big words’ and should be considered as much a part of the vocabulary of a

language as the thousands of single words needed to talk about people and things, and their

place in the syllabus should be central if we are to move from system-based teaching to a

discourse-based approach.

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A further feature of lexis as discourse is seen in the way speakers pick up one another’s

vocabulary for strategic acts such as agreement or the negotiation of meaning. Carter and

McCarthy (1988: 181-200) observed how speakers exploit features of the system such as

synonymy and antonymy to show engagement with one another (see also Buttery and

McCarthy, 2012). In extract (7), we can see how S1 not only co-constructs the message by

using a which-clause, but also uses a lexical strategy, picking up on the notion of ‘difficulty’

by using a synonym to agree with another speaker. This is an example of how meaning is

negotiated rather than being fossilised in the semantic system.

(7)

S3: So I've no lectures. I've to do the research myself.

S2: You've to do it yourself.
S3: Which is harder like.
S1: Which would be very difficult I'd say.
S3: Yeah
(LCIE)

Teachers and learners may occasionally ponder why a language like English often seems to

have more than one way of expressing the same idea, and many learners make notes to help

them remember the meaning of a new word by listing any synonyms or antonyms they know.

Here teaching can capitalise on a feature of the system and turn it into a useful strategy for

communication. Simple pair-work activities where students agree with one another’s

statements using synonyms, or challenge one another using antonyms, are a natural context for

putting the system into service to create discourse.

One final area where we see the lexicon serving the creation of discourse is in turn-taking

behaviour. We know, from classic studies of turn-taking (e.g. Sacks et al. 1974), that speaking

14
turns proceed smoothly, with one speaker ceding the turn to another as conversation unfolds.

Corpus analysis enables us to see just how consistently and with what degree of regularity the

vocabulary plays a role in smooth, natural turn-taking. McCarthy (2003 and 2015) showed, for

example, that a relatively small number of lexical items are repeatedly used in different

varieties of English to express reactions to, and engagement with, incoming talk without taking

over the full speaking turn. These lexical items we refer to as response tokens, which often

occur singly as in extract (8), e.g. Absolutely! Great! No way! or often with that (That’s awful!

That’s wonderful!).

(8)

S1: Hi Ann (pause) had a good

S2: Hello.
S1: week?
S2: Yeah lovely.
S1: Great.
(BNC)

Corpora often show that a large proportion of occurrences of words like great and absolutely

do not come in the form of adjectives modifying nouns, or adverbs modifying verbs and

adjectives, but are used to react to and engage with whole stretches of discourse. As such, they

represent an important bonding mechanism between speakers. Tao (2003) and McCarthy

(2010) also looked at turn-taking, this time considering how speakers begin their turns, and

found that a relatively small number of items typically occurred as turn-openers (e.g. well, so,

right and some of the response tokens already mentioned). Turn-openers attend primarily to

what the previous speaker has just said, creating a smooth link between speaking turns, what

McCarthy (ibid.) calls confluence, the feeling that a conversation is flowing, with a jointly

constructed fluency.

15
4 DISCOURSE PEDAGOGY

In this section, we consider how materials, methods and classrooms can be conceived by

language teachers in a way that operationalises the notion of language as discourse and weaves

it into the pedagogical process. Thus far we have discussed discourse from the point of view

of both grammar and lexis, both of which form a large part of day-to-day language teaching

from the viewpoint of language as system. However, introducing the concepts of grammar and

lexis as discourse furthers understanding of not just language form and function, but the

processes, many of them unconscious, which facilitate better and more effective

communication. The more teacher education programmes can create bridges and foster links

across conceptual divides, the greater the level of language awareness teachers in training and

professional development can achieve.

4.1 Discourse roles

One problem with abandoning the sentence as the core unit for teaching and moving instead

towards notions such as discourse marking and responding or following up is that, in the

traditional, teacher-led classroom, it is teachers who get to use markers like Anyway, Right!

and Now then! and responses/follow-ups such as Good! and That’s great! while students may

get little or no opportunity to use them because of their limited, less powerful discourse roles.

This is the kind of challenge we face in moving from language as system towards language as

discourse. It is only one of many challenges, but it represents a prime example of what happens

when we break free from seeing the sentence as the principal unit of communication. If markers

and response tokens are common and central to the organisation of discourse, how can we

create the conditions in the classroom where students themselves can take on roles where the

16
use of markers and other discourse features traditionally the province of the teacher (e.g.

initiating, using follow-up moves) become natural for them to use? Questions such as how to

apportion discourse roles in the classroom affect not only the content of the syllabus, but also

methodology and classroom practices.

4.2 The discourse syllabus

An important question is how to create a coherent syllabus which supports the transition from

system to discourse in areas of language where the available linguistic repertoire is not closed

or as well-described as, say, the tense system, the prepositions, the names of the days of the

week, verbs of the senses, and so on. For example, in the case of discourse markers, scholars’

lists of what to include differ greatly. Some researchers focus more on markers which support

the coherent and logical interpretation of one piece of discourse in relation to another, such as

in other words, conversely or finally (e.g. Fraser 1990; Hyland and Tse 2004), while others

focus on markers we have already mentioned such as well, you know and anyway (e.g. Schiffrin

1987; Aijmer 2002). Furthermore, attempts to clarify exactly what discoursal competence

means in second language contexts is often only vaguely defined (see the critique in Jones et

al. 2018: 112-123). Defining and specifying content are recurring problems for anyone wishing

to incorporate the world of discourse into an organised syllabus.

Another challenge lies in the fact that there is a bewilderingly wide range of contexts in which

language use varies according to the situation and the participants. Sinclair and Coulthard’s

work has been built upon by numerous studies that have looked at how verbal exchanges occur

in contexts other than classrooms. These include service encounters (McCarthy 2000; Félix-

Brasdefer, 2015), workplaces (Vaughan 2007; Koester 2010), domestic settings (Blum-Kulka

17
1997; Gordon 2009; Clancy 2016), academic settings (Farr 2011; Evison 2013), settings where

people are engaged in action, e.g. assembling furniture, cooking (Carter and McCarthy, 1997)

and many other contexts. They have all been examined through a discourse perspective, where

the notion of the sentence has played a minor role, if any at all. In these varied studies, key

features emerge time and time again as central to the creation of discourse. Areas of focus and

insight in existing research where the syllabus can potentially bridge the gap between language

as system and language as discourse include:

 Discourse roles

 Types of verbal exchange that are natural in different contexts;

 Natural turn-taking;

 Discourse marking;

 Creating and maintaining relationships;

 Goal-orientation.

Not all of these points offer ready-made linguistic repertoires that can be written into the

syllabus. All require thought, planning and a reassessment of methods, materials, activities and

classroom practices.

4.3 Materials

Some discourse items, for example discourse markers and response tokens, can be

straightforwardly incorporated into materials as new vocabulary, or as new functions for known

vocabulary, and can be graded in a coherent syllabus. For example, McCarthy et al (2012 and

2014a) offer interactive activities promoting the use of the marker actually at two different

CEFR levels. Its first occurrence in the material is at A2 level, with the functions of ‘giving

new or surprising information’ and ‘“correcting” things people say or think’ (2014a: 7).

18
Actually is then recycled at B2 level with its function of giving new information, and, in the

same unit of the material, the functions attributed to actually are repeated in the form of two

new discourse markers, in fact and as a matter of fact (2012: 46-47). This process, from item

to discourse function, then from the same discourse function to new item(s), is one way of

building coherence and progression into the discourse syllabus. The process can be expressed

diagrammatically as:

known item → new discourse function → known discourse function → new item

Perhaps the biggest challenge in connexion with discourse-based materials stems from

teachers’ and students’ expectations as to what materials will contain and how teaching and

learning will be conducted. For many years, the sequence present, practise, produce (often

referred to as PPP) has provided a reliable routine. The materials, mediated by the teacher,

present a structure or a set of new vocabulary, after which students do drills or controlled

practice, followed by production, which could be anything from pair work to writing an essay.

The discourse syllabus demands a different approach, in which building awareness is a central

element. Awareness is fostered by noticing activities, on the basis that noticing is the first step

towards understanding what might not always be familiar concepts for students (e.g. discourse

marking, follow-up moves, co-construction). Noticing occupies a well-grounded position in

research into language learning (see Schmidt 1990). Shifting the emphasis away from PPP to

a more awareness-based approach in materials and student engagement with them is discussed

at length in McCarthy and McCarten (in press).

Presenting items in the context of their strategic use rather than their semantic meanings within

the system is another key element in discourse-based materials. McCarthy et al. (2014b: 70-

19
71) illustrate follow-up questions and follow-up prompts (e.g. Really?), along with using

response tokens, in the context of reacting to new information. The response tokens include

that’s great, that’s interesting, that’s terrible. Students first do a noticing activity, there then

follow listening activities (crucial for building awareness), controlled practice, and free practice

with a partner, asking follow-up questions and responding to personalised items of

news/interest. Students have considerable choice as to how they respond, with no one single

‘correct’ answer. All this is done at A1 level, and is feasible because the lexical items are

simple, often already known, and the contexts are familiar, everyday conversational settings.

Materials are merely tools for the use of teachers and learners, and it is what happens in the

classroom which ultimately underpins their success or failure. We now consider classroom

practices in relation to moving from system-dominated approaches to an environment where

the creation of discourse is a natural part of the teaching/learning process.

4.4 System and discourse in the classroom

Walsh (2006) sees the L2 classroom not as a static entity, but as a series of dynamic and

complex contexts where interaction between participants is essential to teaching and learning.

Through looking at classroom language as discourse, he identified four modes which

characterise the interaction between teacher and learners: managerial mode, materials mode,

skills and systems mode and classroom context mode. Each of these modes presents the teacher

with opportunities to explore language as discourse in the classroom, regardless of the level

the learners are at. The pedagogic purpose of managerial mode is the management of learning

at the different stages of a lesson and is characterised by long teacher speaking turns, transition

markers and little or no learner involvement. It may seem that this mode does not offer many

20
openings to exploit in terms of fostering discourse; however, the teacher can model a range of

frequently used organisational markers (all right, ok, so, now, etc.), as well as models for

feedback of various kinds (that’s fine, excellent) and the discourse role of manager/leader,

which may then be assumed by certain students in pair and group work where tasks demand

management and outcomes. The second mode, materials, is dominated by exchanges that

emerge from language practice opportunities based on a piece of material, which we

exemplified in section 4.3, where the materials cited firstly engage the teacher and students in

dialogue to raise awareness of target items, then offer students opportunities to practise asking

questions, or to react using response tokens, ask follow-up questions and so on, in natural

contexts and where they can ultimately personalise the material and make the transition to

classroom context mode (see below).

In the skills and systems mode, the pedagogical goal is to provide controlled, form-focussed

language practice in both systems (phonology, grammar, etc.) and skills (reading, listening,

etc.). However, we propose that this focussed practice of systems and skills be exploited to also

include engagement in language as discourse. For example, past and present simple tenses

could be explored through story-telling or through the use of tense-aspect choices for politeness

and directness, utilising natural spoken texts. In addition, the teaching of conditionals might be

broadened to include pair work where one participant produces a main clause and the other

adds a subordinate one to model co-construction. This could then be extended to contexts where

lexical strategies are employed to negotiate agreement and disagreement around these co-

constructions. Finally, in classroom context mode, the defining characteristic is interactional

space. In this mode, where the learners themselves co-construct the discourse, the emphasis is

on providing opportunities for genuine communication and for extended, learner-led

explorations of language as discourse. When practising speaking skills in classroom context

21
mode, some prompts for language as discourse will naturally occur, given that the learners

themselves will have control over the turn-taking system, allowing them the freedom to

experiment with strategies such as holding the floor, changing topic and using natural turn-

openers and responses. This, in turn, might be scaffolded by some post-activity feedback from

the teacher that, instead of focussing on language form, focuses on concepts related to discourse

such as (in)appropriacy or (im)politeness, concepts that are often culture- and/or context-

specific and part of communicative, rather than linguistic, competence (Hymes, 1972).

5 CONCLUSION

Walsh (2006) refers to his four modes of classroom talk under the umbrella label of SETT

(Self-Evaluation of Teacher Talk). The choice of that label is not otiose: the teacher is seen as

centrally responsible for the maintenance and monitoring of appropriate discourse in the

classroom. It is important to acknowledge that English language teachers are faced with a

unique teaching context, a ‘unique art’ (Hammadou and Bernhart 1987: 305), where language

is both the medium and intended outcome of instruction. Language teachers, in common with

all teachers, strive to become experts in their field of teaching. However, language itself has

been variously described as ‘slippery and mutable’ (Vaughan, 2008: 1) and ‘as large and as

complex as life’ (Palmer, 1998: 2). Therefore, not everything in language teaching needs to be

about the classroom; aspects of language teacher education, such as the understanding of

language as discourse, should also be concerned with teachers becoming experts in their stock

and trade, language. If our goal truly is to move from system to discourse, teacher education

has to support teachers’ professional development in not only gaining knowledge of discourse,

but in becoming discourse analysts themselves, in their own classrooms, and constantly

22
questioning the degree to which they seize upon and develop opportunities for creating the

conditions that will lead to the emergence of natural discourse, whether it be in their

interactions with students or in the interactions they set up among them. In order to successfully

achieve this, input in the language classroom cannot be confined to language as system because

this ignores the fact that language becomes a living, ambiguous, emergent, negotiated

phenomenon once it leaves the classroom and enters the world beyond the classroom walls or

beyond the screens of the virtual classroom. Indeed, it would be limited and limiting for

language teaching professionals to simply base their teaching on what has been written in

relation to language as system without considering the implications of using language in real

life social and cultural contexts. Therefore, the materials must be supportive of, and reasonably

transparent for, teachers who may not be familiar with discourse-oriented pedagogy, with non-

patronising, helpful explanations and advice in teachers’ manuals which accompany course

materials (see also O’Keeffe and Farr, this volume). Ultimately, analysing language as

discourse is a critical and fundamental part of any teacher education programme. However,

teachers need to feel that time spent on fostering natural discourse is not time wasted and will

pay dividends in greater fluency and higher achievement in assessment contexts, as well as

increased student motivation and satisfaction.

6 KEY TEXTS

Baker, P. (2006) Using Corpora in Discourse Analysis, London: Continuum.

 A comprehensive introduction to the intersection of corpus linguistics and language as

discourse. Particularly strong with regard to the description of the potential of corpus

linguistics for the analysis of authentic texts.

23
Carter, R. and Goddard, A. (2016) How to Analyse Texts, London: Routledge.

 A great textbook and toolkit for analysing language in use. It provides the reader with

a large amount of texts – spoken, written and multimodal – and a number of levels at

which they can be analysed. It is an excellent classroom resource.

O’Keeffe, A., Clancy, B. and Adolphs, S. (2011) Introducing Pragmatics in Use, London:

Routledge.

 One of the first textbooks to apply a corpus approach to examining language in use.

Chapter 8 is devoted entirely to the use of corpus materials to introduce features of

language as discourse into the language classroom.

Gee, J.P. and Handford, M. (eds) (2012) The Routledge Handbook of Discourse Analysis,

Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.

 A comprehensive collection of articles by leading figures in discourse analysis. Parts

III and IV pay particular attention to spoken language and to applications in education,

including the classroom.

Walsh, S. (2011) Exploring Classroom Discourse: Language in Action. Abingdon, Oxon:

Routledge.

 Walsh’s work on interaction in second language classrooms, extensively quoted in the

present chapter, is fully and clearly elaborated in this book, which looks at discourse in

the classroom as a means towards achieving ‘classroom interactional competence’.

24
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Word count = 7,600 words

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