Planned & Unplanned
Discourse
Spontaneous talk and polished
writing differ syntactically
Discourse Mode
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The language of oral and written modes differ.
In school, students and teachers must use the L of
academic life.
What is the language of academic life?
Reading, writing and oral.
The term planned and unplanned dichotomy came
about.
Spoken or written could possibly be planned or
unplanned.
Life requires expertise with highly planned (eg. writing,
refined speech) or unplanned (eg. oral or written)
discourse modes.
Prepared lectures share many features with written L;
some written L (eg. Notes) share features with spoken L
Six Features
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Clausal or phrasal versus sentential
organization
Left dislocation & topic-comment
structures
Nextness
Parallelism
Repair
Conjoined versus embedded clauses
Clausal or phrasal versus
sentential organization
Interactive talk is clausal or phrasal in
structure
 Example: T: Could you’all get in your
group+form a circle+face
each other+discuss the
question+group leader take
charge please.
A written version of the oral message should
read……. (Sentential)
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Left dislocation and Topic-comment structures
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In spontaneous talk, we introduce a new topic, shift the focus, or
shade into a new topic by using topic-comment structure
Example:
21:18 S24> Well muslims (T) , we must be true muslims
21:21 S24 > got to read the books y’know about the prophets(T)
21:21 S24 > But, mmmm the muslim ummah (T) don’t do that
21:22 S24 > they watch tv and listen to music
21:22 S37 > yeah, we must follow the Quran and hadith
21:22 S24 > Muslims(T)..they know favorite actress favorite
singer….star
21:23 S24 > i am sure ,many muslims(T) know britney spears
21:23 S24 > but not rasul saw
21:24 S24 > sometimes i cry alone.........
21:24 S24 > not many wants to be real muslim
Convert these utterances to the written version.
Qs for discussion
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Based on your observation, do native
speakers use topic-comment structures?
Do you as adult non-native speaker adopt
topic-comment structures?
Should learners be discouraged to use
such forms?
Why or why not?
Nextness
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In unplanned talk, phrases are often produced one after
another, this “nextness” shows that they are related .
Example: The weekend y’know + I was so very tired +
went to Melaka+ visit my son
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In written discourse, syntactic structures and explicit
cohesive ties can mark these relationships.
Parallelism
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In spontaneous talk, words and phrases are repeated
and words seem to touch off the use of words having
similar sound sequences.
Example page. 241 (Hatch2001)
Repetition of sounds and words, and lexical collocations
across turns, give the extra cohesion.
In written text, we use parallelism while avoiding too
much repetition. Poetry is the ultimate example of
effective parallelism (rhythm, rhyme, alliteration, and
lexical, phrasal and syntactic parallelism.)
Poetry is the ultimate example of planning (Hatch, 2001)
Assignment
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Review one of your favorite poems. List
types of parallelism-phonological, lexical or
syntactic.
How do these parallelisms work with the
rhythm of the poem?
Repair
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Unplanned discourse is marked by repair
Example: All right - I will - I sure will - give you a call – tonight –
later
tonight yeah.
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In written discourse, such repairs are
removed
Question: In which context would repair be
more appropriately used?
Conjoined vs Embedded Clauses
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Unplanned talk is often delivered clause by
clause or phrase by phrase.
Example: When I was in the States +and I was just 18 + you know
I went in the 80’s + I was already very independent +
and
thank God, I decided to wear the ‘hijab’ there+ and no
it
was not fashion then but commitment.
What does the “ands” suggest?
How would this excerpt be written?
Unplanned talk seldom uses subordinating clause markers such as if,
that, because, etc.