Status of the functional domain of discourse structure

Discourse is the action of producing and understanding a text and the product itself. It has a multi-faceted relation to the language system. The discourse itself is disjunct from the system – language is either discourse or system. However, the linguistic system comprises a text-forming component, here called ‘discourse structure’. Putting it the other way round, discourse uses resources made available by the language system.

A discourse consists of utterances. Viewed in the perspective of discourse structure, these take the form of sentences. Discourse structure is, in this perspective, the composition of a text from sentences. Most of the other functional domains of language operate at or below the sentence level. Above the sentence level, the language system regulates relatively little; many of the strategies used in discourse are universal. Most of the qualities of a discourse depend on the speaker's or writer's elocutionary competence; only a minor part of it depends on the language-specific discourse competence (Lehmann 2007, §3.3.2.1). Still, the cohesion of a discourse is an essential linguistic quality of it; and part of it derives from strategies made available by the particular language system. Likewise, while operations on the universe of discourse are universal, there are language-specific strategies implementing them.

The functional domains of discourse structure and of junction

As several other functional domains, those of discourse structure and of nexion overlap. Both have to do with relations between components of a discourse. They may be distinguished as follows:

• Junction comprises syntagmatic relations between significative components of a discourse which belong to some propositional level.
• Discourse structure comprises relations between significative components of a discourse and the environment. The latter consists of two kinds of entities:
  • the meronymy of a discourse
  • the referential spaces of the speech situation. These contain essentially non-sigificative objects such as referents and presuppositions. In particular, this component of discourse structure comprises information structure and speaker's attitudes to entities of the universe of discourse.