A framework for discourse analysis: The components of a discourse, from a tagmemic viewpoint

People have been analyzing discourses, in some sense, for as long as they have been speaking. They have done so without the help of linguists, literary critics, or their theories. But a theoretical framework can still perform a service in making explicit what is normally implicit. In this paper, I will attempt to build a framework for classifying and cataloguing everything that goes on in the production and comprehension of discourses. With minor modifications, the same framework should also be applicable to nonverbal human behavior. It will thus be of interest to semioticians as well as literary theorists, though its roots are primarily in linguistics. Any number of linguists and literary theorists have preceded me in such theory-building. Each presents his own individually tailored list of elements, aspects, components, strata, layers, levels, or facets that together make a discourse what it is. What is the use of still another list? My list or framework aims at three things: completeness, expandability, and justifiability. First, let me discuss completeness. Some of the existing theories choose to concentrate on only certain facets of the life and structure of discourses: those facets of interest to a certain speciality or amenable to formal analysis. In particular, linguists frequently concentrate on sentence structure, ignoring narrative structures, characterization, metaphor, and other distinctly literary concerns. Conversely, literary analysts seldom make much of grammar or phonology. In my analysis I intend to encompass both literary and more linguistic specialties. My second aim is expandability or flexibility. A linguistic theory can aim in at least two directions. It can build an oversimplified but highly formalized and explicit model (the direction chosen for generative models), or it can sacrifice some formality in order to encompass — without exhausting — more complexities and nuances of discourse. A theory can