80 Advances in spoken discourse analysis
that the more extensive ranks in discourse were relevant not only to language,
but had a status in social systems also. In any case the exchange proved
fascinating enough.
The speech acts of the philosophers would be acts or moves in discourse;
acts if there were other acts in the move. The linguistic model led naturally
to a notion of structure which was absent from Austin. Instead of prescribing
states of affairs in the world that enabled the speech acts to have their
effect, there was a recognition of higher structures within which the acts
had a predictable place. The exchange, and its characteristic three-part structure
of initiation, response and follow-up, gave a linguistic context for the
understanding of speech acts.
There is one major omission in the original account of formative influences
on the study of discourse. That is C.C.Fries, whose introduction to his book
The Structure of English is a forgotten landmark. The shaping influence of
this book must have been subliminal because it was not consciously acknowledged
or referred to; but Fries, struggling to vindicate received grammar using
recorded telephone calls, made major advances in description. Sadly, he
abandoned his insights when he came to the meat of his book, which is an
unsuccessful attempt to provide objective criteria for a grammar.
At the end of the original study the research team was aware of a number
of unresolved problems. A few of these are dealt with in the following
sections of this chapter.
GENERALIZABILITY
The study focused on upper primary school classrooms, and it was not clear
how much of the discourse patterning was ascribable to the genre and the
situation, and how much was of more general validity. Subsequent work
confirmed much of it, but showed that classroom discourse was not specially
representative, and indeed had a number of unusual features. (A short review
of classroom discourse may be found in Sinclair 1987.)
Despite the lack of general applicability, the model was widely used as
a descriptive system for spoken interaction, and the following four years
brought a large number of suggested improvements. Most of these consisted
of additions to the list of acts—not surprising since the original list was
specific to the classroom data. Very few were supported by data-oriented
arguments.
A generalized and fairly comprehensive descriptive framework was prepared
by Amy Tsui (1986) and it is to be hoped that a version of this research will
shortly be published.
SITUATION
The description depended in part on features of the non-verbal situation.
Perhaps it will never be possible to describe discourse without such