308 Ahmed Moutaouakil
discourse world, discourse illocution, discourse tense and discourse topics.
In the section he devotes to discourse coherence, Dik (1997b: 433–435)
mentions ‘Frame’, which he describes as the “organized knowledge con-
cerning what can be done and said within a given institutional setting”.
Given this definition, it is possible, it seems to me, to consider Frame as a
special, highly institutionalized discourse type. This reinterpretation is sup-
ported by the fact that Dik (1997b: 435) exemplifies this notion with a
sonnet, which he mentions as a discourse genre. In the same vein, given the
close interdependence between discourse genre and discourse world (cf.
Dik 1997b: 418) and in order to reduce the number of layers to a minimum,
these two notions can be collapsed into the generic notion ‘discourse type’
and taken as forming together one and the same layer. This collapsing is
supported by the fact that Dik (1997b: 422) does not mention discourse
world when he speaks about “the highest brackets”, which he restricts to
discourse event, discourse genre and discourse style.
In Dik's view, all discourse decisions are subsumed by a single generic
category of ‘discourse settings’. As regards underlying representation, it is
worthy of notice that some of the decisions in question can be coded in the
already existing layers of structure (14), as is the case for illocutionary,
temporal and topical decisions. Consequently, only the remaining features,
i.e. discourse event, discourse type and discourse style, can be included in
the category settings. The values this category can take are, thus, the fol-
lowing:
EVENT
(16) SETTING = TYPE
STYLE
In fact, (16) does not tell the whole story about the underlying represen-
tation of the category at hand, for two major problems remain to be solved.
They can be formulated as follows: first, where must SETTING be located
in the underlying discourse structure; second, what is its exact status there?
Concerning the location problem, it is clear that SETTING should stand at
the opening of this structure. This is indeed Dik's view. In (1997b: 422) he
conceives of the features represented in (16) as opening up “the highest
brackets” involving the discourse as a whole. As for the problem of the
status of SETTING, I think that one of the most reasonable ways to deal
with it is by adding a third level – which we may call by default the “rhe-
torical level” – to the existing ones, i.e. the Interpersonal and the
Representational levels. At this level, three – at least – hierarchically or-