Comprehensive Discourse Analysis
and Its Applications
Part 3

© 1983
Dr. Leon James and Dr. Diane Nahl

     The previous section dealt with the vertical dimension of discourse, what I called "the internalization of discourse". This section deals with the horizontal dimension and is called "the externalization of discourse." That discourse has these two dimensions, and what they are, has been presented, in general terms, in the Overview section. Here I present the details of the three externalization phases.

     In a two dimensional plane, such as the diagrams in this article, the vertical dimension of height is graphically pictured by placing the lowest level (or stage) at the bottom and the highest level at the top.

     The horizontal dimension of breadth is graphically pictured by placing the priormost phase on the left and the latest phase on the right. I call this 3 x 3 structure "the ennead matrix" (ennead = 9). The full description of the shape of the ennead matrix is not possible within the confines of this article. Nor is it essential for the purposes envisaged here. Nevertheless I want to add here that the overall shape of the ennead matrix is that of a vortex spiraling downward and outward simultaneously. It might be useful to think of a road winding itself down from the top of a mountains as you ride down the road, round and round the mountain, your path is simultaneously down in height and out in breadth so that when you're near the bottom you're more distant from the center, whereas when you're on top you're right on the center. This two dimensional vortex is flattened into a plane when pictured in a matrix diagram (e.g. on p. 13 and p. 27). Starting from the bottom, zone (1) is the lowest and most external location in the structure. Zone 2 is next, which means that we're starting to climb upward and nearer to the center. Zone 3 is higher and nearer the center than zone 2. Next is zone 4; and so on, until you get to zone 9 which is the highest spot and also the inmost, since nearest to the center. Translating this to discourse, we can say from the diagram on p.13 that "Low-Sensorimotor Discourse" (zone 1) must deal with the lowest (most concrete) and most external domain of human affairs while "High-Affective Discourse" (zone 9) must deal with the highest (most abstract) and inmost domain of human affairs. Let us briefly explore the character of discourse in these nine zones of human affairs.
 

     Discourse can be externalized at three levels of heights: low (3 à 2à 1), mid (6 à 5à4), and high (9 à 8à7). We are concerned here with low-discourse which, as shown in diagram (0/14a), has a communicative function and is carried out through symbols containing conventionalized levels of information. This information may be in the affective domain (zone 3), the cognitive domain (zone 2), or the sensorimotor domain (zone 1). The model used here specifies that the affective domain is prior to the sensorimotor. In other words, since we're dealing with phases of externalization, low-affect (3) is the originating impulse of communicative discourse; this impulse or drive descends to the cognitive domain as low-cognition (2); it then descends still further and becomes directly visible to experience as low-sensorimotor (1). Thus, communicative discourse is a product generated in three phases (3 à 2à 1) of externalization.

     The content of communicative discourse will always pertain to one of the three domains of human affairs: affective (involving human strivings and goals), cognitive (involving ways and means), and sensorimotor (involving esecution and performance). Thus, corresponding to the three successive and corresponding domains of human affairs there are three categories of content in low-discourse. This correspondence is pictured in diagrams 2(5a) and 2(5b). Let us discuss both next.

     Diagram 2(5a) pictures the externalization of discourse in three phases and identifies this activity with sentence production. Thus, the originating condition or impulse for the production of a sentence is the speaker's intentions: this involves other related notions such as the speaker's orientation or, attitude; the speaker's goals, purposes or needs; the speaker's values, cultural premises, and normative rules of behavior -- what they would do and what they would not do. From all this it can be seen that this first phase of sentence production is to be identified in category with the affective domain (A).

     Moving on to the second phase of sentence production we note that what follows the speaker's intention (A) is the speaker's competence and repertoire through which the intention can descend and externalize to the second phase. Of course this involves grammar, speech acts and their rules, but also problem solving and information processing, or more generally, cognitive processes or operation. Thus the cognitive domain in human affairs, which pertains to ways and means serves as the content of this second phase in sentence production.

     Finally, the third and ultimate phase of sentence production is directly experienced as the speaker's performance. This is a dramatic presentation or production involving all the senses -- distal, proximal, proprioceptive, and autonomic, and all motor activities -- muscular, glandular, and neuronal. This external or surface phase is thus identifiable with the sensorimotor domain (C). It is to specify that communicative discourse involves sentences that function as symbols or symbol-sentences. When symbol-sentences are articulated silently or sub-vocally they pertain to the sensorimotor domain since they are of the ultimate or last phase of externalizing. "The sentences we say to ourselves" are sensorimotor in their external content and involve symbolic or conventionalized information. However, when inner speech sentences are analyzed, their cognitive and affective antecedents are inferable. This is discussed next.
 

     Diagram 2(5b) pictures the reverse of externalization through an analytic derivation or reconstruction process. This reverse externalization process is identified with discourse comprehension. Starting with the last phase (C. Sensorimotor) of discourse production, we note by looking down the column that the starting point of the analysis is the paraphasing (or translating) of the literal sense, which is carried by the direct speech. In other words, our first step in sentence comprehension is to answer the question, "What did the speaker say?" or, "What words did the speaker utter?" In speech act theory, this external (surface) content of the utterance is called "secondary speech act" when the overt question is actually a criticism, complaint, or proposal (as in, "You mean you just forgot about it?" or "Well how about it?" etc.) The terms "discussing or topic" or "topicalization behavior" or "overt content of discourse" all designate this sensorimotor phase (C).

     The second analytic step of sentence comprehension is pictured as the "things implied;" these are recoverable through derivation and influence. In this phase of analysis we try to answer the question, "What did the speaker mean?" or, "How did the speaker put it?" This is called "the primary speech act" in speech act theory when the implied meaning or indirect speech is to be focused on. For example, if we say, "Well, how about it?" the chief thing implied is the indirect conveyance of a proposal and has the force of an urging or pressure to accept or agree. The implied content of sentences pertains to the cognitive domain since "implied content" is another way of saying "derived implications", and these are clearly problem solving, reasoning, or cognitive operations.

     The final analytic step of sentence comprehension is the reconstruction of the setting or background context within which the sentence originated and was located. Thus, we may ask the question, "Why did the speaker say this?" or, "What was the speaker trying to do?" The content of the answer pertains to things presupposed in the sentence or things implicit in it. To recover this content we must look in the affective domain of human affairs since its content pertains to the details of goal-directed behaviors: the speaker's intention, purpose, need, or other strivings.

     In summary, then, the horizontal dimension of externalization of discourse gives us a model for sentence production (diagram 2(5a) ) and its reverse in sentence comprehension or analysis (diagram 2(5b) ). Let me now illustrate how this schema might work in the discourse analysis of any given sentence. Assume we're told that the following utterance was overheard in a dyadic conversation between two students, "Did he say we're having a quiz on Wednesday?" The details of the analysis are pictured in diagram 2(10a). The reader may wish to inspect the table at leisure trying to confirm the solutions I suggest, and perhaps adding others in their appropriate columns. In this process of confirmation the reader may wish to review earlier diagrams which serve as defining operations. As pictured in the marginals, the solutions pertaining to the sensorimotor domain (C) all involve propositions that cumulatively define the direct, external, and literal content of the sentence. Similarly, the solutions pertaining to the cognitive domain (B) all involve implications that cumulatively define the indirect, inner, and implied content of the sentence. Finally, the solutions pertaining to the affective domain (A) all involve presuppositions that cumulatively define the inmost, presupposed, and implicit content of the sentence.

     This schema or approach to the analysis of a sentence recognizes the ethnomethodological principle of the indefinitely large number of things that may be said of any social act or setting. (Garfinhel) Several years ago I was astounded to realize that a sentence has no determinable meaning; (LAJ context) now I understand this idea much better through the discourse analysis schema evolved since then and presented here for the first time. It seems to me that this fundamental fact -- viz. that a sentence has no determinable meaning, has been insufficiently recognized by sociolinguists. The use of Comprehensive Discourse Analysis might make it easier to deal with this interesting but knotty issue.

The Discourse Analysis of a Sentence: 

  *Two students in class right after the lecture ends. X addresses Y and says this sentence.
 

     I present three more illustrations in diagrams 2/12a, 2/12b, and 2/12c. The reader may want to study these at leisure, especially to see if you can confirm or agree with the solutions I offer, and perhaps add still others.
 

     The height and breadth of discourse corresponds to the height and breadth of human affairs. This is an essential feature of human speech and thought. Speech and thought, viz. discourse, is an index of human affairs. Comprehensive Discourse Analysis is an analytic activity of human consciousness or awareness. It is a systematic cataloguing and ordering of human strivings, plannings, and executions; of standards, norms, and meanings; of premises inferences, and translations. The height dimension of variation has been identified as the developmental activity of life called internalization. The breadth dimension of variation has been identified as the phasal operation in the sequential existence of any activity called externalization. Thus, internalization is ontological, diachronic, and evolutionary or historical; externalization is etiological, synchronic, and generative or productive. These few assumptions (or operational/rational definitions) of Comprehensive Discourse Analysis allow us to apply the method to the investigation of the ontology and etiology of any human act. For social or community psychology, Comprehensive Discourse Analysis becomes a systematic methodology of self-witnessing. This will now be detailed.  

*Patricia Neal, well known public personality, in an Anacin commercial and using her
characteristic (innuendos) tonal emphases.

  *Charles Darwin, in The Origin of Species, Chapter 4 (page 61)
 

*Opening sentence of an unsigned article in the October 1982 (page 9) issue of the APA Monitor, the official news magazine of the American Psychology Association, and its lobbying arm in Washington D.C.
 

     Comprehensive Discourse Analysis is conceived and proposed as an analytic method for investigating human affairs. It is not a theory as such though it involves certain assumptions one must be willing to adopt as an orientation in its use and application. I believe that there is general agreement among contemporary scholars regarding a few traditional values about humans and society. It is this agreement that can form the basis of an interdisciplinary methodology. In this section I want to show how this shared commonality can be forged into a shared orientation for the investigation of humans and their affairs. I hope it will be evident that this method can be shared by behavioral scientists, biographers, theologians, or philosophers, social workers and political scientists. In my thinking multidisciplinary sharing of a method and orientation is of great value and utility because it is likely to yield more comprehensive theories and accounts of human affairs.
     The height of discourse was defined by the operational terms symbol, title, and idea (see diagrams). Justifications were given for subdividing the height continuum into three zones called stages or levels. Briefly, these justifications were as follows. For the lowest level, called communicative discourse (I. Symbol), the function is the exchange of information in some domain of human affairs; also, its storage and retrieval. For the second level, called pragmatic discourse (II. Title), the function is the evaluative ranking of information; this necessarily involves knowledge and use of group norms regarding what is logical or commonsensical. For the third and highest level, called synergetic discourse (III. Idea). The function is the personal confirmation or appropriation of values and ideals that form and organize the two lower levels.
     This is then the logic of internalization and therefore, it must also be the logic of mental development and growth. To apply these assumptions to the development of the self, let us equate the height dimension of discourse to the height dimension of the self. The following might be one possibility worth exploring.
     Keeping in focus that we want three zones of height for the stages of self-development, we may define the lowest zone as involving the external person as a socio-legal entity. The law of the land sometimes extends its protection to the individual even while in utero (as in abortion laws) and always from birth onwards. This protection covers the full range of the external person: people's bodies, their deeds in act and speech, their, reputation, possessions, rights, and their freedom to pursue their own happiness. Traditionally, the external person is identified with the natural world: body and mind. The natural body is an object of medical treatment and study; its natural behavior is the study of psychology and other disciplines. The laws and principles governing the natural body and the natural mind have been known and explored by writers of human affairs since antiquity. Contemporary community practices show what we believe these laws and principle to be. For example, in education, the external child is taught by exposure, repetition, and social reward systems. Our judicial system apprehends and incarcerates the lawbreakers; the punishment of fines, imprisonment, or death is a relation of the State to the external, natural person. There is not necessarily an attempt to reform the ethics, religion, or life philosophy of convicts, though many have argued that we ought to do it.

     Tradition gives us the idea that the external person is but a covering for the internal person. In this notion, internal also means higher: the inner person is spiritual and external, it is the spirit or the soul, the 'psyche' that is an immortal organic entity. If this traditional view is going to be of utility to scientists as well as biographers, philosophers, and theologians, we need a bridging zone between the external self that is natural, and the internal self that is super-natural or spiritual. Such an intermediary zone has already been well elaborated by phenomenologists in philosophy, psychology, sociology, and biography/fiction. One expression used is the activity of "abstracting out" sensory and material concepts or thoughts so that only nonmaterial or rational ideas are left. For example, to explain human behaviors that appear altruistic or prosocial, many have invoked the notion that our outer (lowest) self is operating in accordance to selfishness or reciprocal competition with other outer selves, but that our inner self is operating in accordance to cooperativeness or interdependent life, of which altruism is an expression.

Thus, in this traditional view, the inner/higher self is an immortal spiritual organ and can assume control over the mortal, outer/lower self, which is a natural organ. In between these upper and lower zones of the self there is an intermediate zone which functions to bridge the gap between natural and spiritual: it is the rational self, which is thus a mixture of the natural and the spiritual. This rational self is an organ that accommodates mixed concepts; some "purely rational" -- which is actually "purified natural", others "mixed rational" -- which is the stimulus and beginning of purification of conceptual elevation. Much can be found in the literature of the world regarding these three selves of the human beings: the natural, the rational, and the spiritual. Diagram 3c/8q pictures many of these traditional notions. A further specification of these three ontological stages is possible when the three levels, of height are described each according to their phases of externalization. Thereto I now proceed.

     The breadth of discourse was defined by Comprehensive Discourse Analysis into three externalization phases called. (A) Affective Domain, (B) Cognitive Domain, and (C) Sensorimotor Domain. (See diagrams O/(13a) and O/(14a). These notions can now be combined and applied to a threefold-self model of human behavior, as pictured in diagram (3c/9a).

     The nine boxes of this ennead matrix are to be pictured as an upward spiraling vortex, with box 1 at the outermost bottom and box 9 at the inmost top. The automatic self (3à 2à 1) operates by externalizing built-in and acquired drives (3) through conventionalized methods of information processing (2) until they manifest as performed habit-routines (1). Thus, the discourse that exists at this level is communicative and involves symbols containing information--either affective information (3), cognitive information (2), or sensorimotor information (1). Low affective discourse (3) reveals the why of routine interactions; low cognitive discourse (2) reveals the how of routine interactions; low sensorimotor discourse (1) reveals the what of routine behaviors. For example, if a stranger on the street accosts us and says, "Which way is the beach?", we can specify three phases of externalization at the level of the automatic self, as follows:
 

This analysis indicates how we automatically act upon a want or need through a conventionalized method and its execution.
     Now we can consider how this picture can be elevated or internalized by the reflective self. Consider:
 

The more elevated character of this second-level discourse is visible when we contrast the underlined elements. In phase A of externalization the contrast is wants to vs. is committed to; in phase B, it is thinks vs. expects; in phase C, it is asks vs. requests. Note that wants to, thinks, and asks are expressions belonging to low-discourse and have a communicative function. Similarly, is committed to, expects, and requests are expressing belonging to mid-discourse.
 

The first group belongs to symbols (wanting to, thinking, asking), the second group to titles (committed, expect, request). Symbols involve information processing; titles involve information ranking or evaluation. Information processing with symbols such as wants, thinks, asks, is an automatic algorhythm. Machines and artificial intelligence software are simulations of human information processing routines. A robot is an image of the automatic self. It wants, thinks, and asks (or does). But a robot cannot be committed to, or have an expectation or request. Perhaps the robot may act as the agent or servant of the manufacturer or engineer, so that the robot can be committed to obeying in the name of the manufacturer; or perhaps the robot may appear to have expectations, but these too are in the name of the manufacturer who placed the software into the robot; similarly, the robot may appear to make a request, but again this turns out to be the manufacturer's request placed in the robot. Thus it may be seen what exactly is the character of discourse which the automatic self produces vs. the character of discourse which the reflective self produces.

     Now to complete the discussion, let us devate the discourse to the synergetic function of the spiritual self and its use of idea-sentences to continue the same example:
 

That underlined expressions entitled to, must be in a way, to be useful, indicate the character of high-discourse. These expressions are in the category of synergetic function since they each function as cybernetic guiding mechanisms. Being entitled to, is determined by cultural premises and fundamental values: culture pre-defines the standards of who is entitled to and who is not, to one thing or another. Similarly with must do in a way that: this denotes a universal necessity or a personal necessity; no other way is acceptable. Similarly with to be useful: this denotes a universal and unconditional act of acceptance and relationship; any other stranger would be entitled to the same treatment. The character of the three zones of discourse by height may be seen through the threefold contrast of the example we've been considering and which is summarized in diagram 3c/14a.
 

3c/14a.  E X T E R N A L I Z A T I O N
	A	B	C
Internalization:	Affective  Domain	Cognitive  Domain	Sensorimotor  Domain
III. Own IDEAS: High-discourse of the   Spiritual Self	IS ENTITLED TO    (9)	MUST DO IN A WAY THAT  (8)	TO BE USEFUL    (7)
II. Own TITLES:  Mid-discourse of the Reflective Self	IS COMMITTED TO    (6)	HAS AN EXPECTATION  (5)	MAKES A REQUEST  (4)
I. Own SYMBOLS:  Low-discourse of the Automatic Self	WANTS TO  (3)	THINKS  (2)	ASKS  (1)

 
     This solution is in accord with the operational definitions given earlier (e.g., see diagrams 3c/9a and 13a and 14a). Solutions of this sort may be used to categorize expressions. The advantages to be gained from this method are several: we may need an empirical method for grouping particular expressions; we may want to measure the distance between two samples of discourse; we may want to prepare a thesaurus of glossary of expressions from which users can draw discourse segments of given levels of height; and so-on. In this case, the illustration may be applied to the issue of self-growth of the threefold self.

     An exercise may be given to you which requires you to monitor your thoughts and feelings in given areas. Let us say that we're interested in the self-modification of behavior on-the-job in a prosocial direction and away from its current antisocial state of frequent and intense stress and negative emotions. You are told to use a self-witnessing method which involves monitoring and writing down thoughts and feelings you have during your exchanges with peers, customers, supervisors. You are given explanations, models, and practice. After this, you collect the data you witness in your exchanges. Your data sheet might look like the example in diagram 3c/16a. Each box carries an entry that corresponds to the thoughts or feelings you had in connection with an angry exchange you've had with a co-worker on that day. These may represent sentences you've actually thought or, they may be reconstructed titles that fit a recurrent theme in your interpersonal conflicts. (see: SCRIPT ANALYSIS)

     A second example may be considered. Let us say that you're interested in training yourself to be a better conversationalist. You may obtain a recording of some of your conversations or, you may review snaches of a conversation you've had from memory. Diagram 3c/(17a) lists the solutions you've come up with to the problem of what to say when the other person appears to refuse your offer to drive them somewhere they need to go. This approach can also be useful in training self and others for better interpersonal relations. Comprehensive Discourse Analysis is an analytic technique that lends itself well to its use for self-examination and self-growth. It is then applied to one's own discourse productions, both external and internal. Because discourse production is a spontaneous activity of the self, discourse analysis  can serve as an investigative tool to obtain data on the self.

 
Self-examination through Comprehensive Discourse Analysis can be used in research or in applied activities, in organized, formal, and experimental research or in self-growth applications, either alone or in the context of a helping or service relationship.

     The elevation of one's discourse through self-witnessing and self-change attempts is an exciting possibility to be investigated. Communities may evolve libraries or information channels which make available to people the categorized discourse of various of its citizens or citizen-groups. These discourse archives can serve as a community resource in that they are the repository of the thoughts and feelings of the community. Comprehensive Discourse Analysis offers an empirically derivable catalogue system for the organization and use of this information without which the information in the archives would quickly become inaccessible.

  Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 (applications)

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