Employing system based analysis for comprehension of new discourse definitions

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Использование системного анализа для осмысления новых дефиниций дискурса

Employing system based analysis for comprehension of new discourse definitions

Белан Наталья Васильевна

Bilan Natalia Vasilevna

Аннотация

Успешное функционирование современного социального и культурного дискурса, который является интегрированной и открытой социально-экономической системой, определяется степенью эффективности взаимодействия элементов системы в общей структуре языка с внешней средой. Основная цель исследования заключается в проведении теоретического анализа развития идеи cсистемного анализа в соответствии с эпистемологическими уровнями познания, и применении его в разработке новых определений дискурса, и дальнейшем развитии теории дискурса, которая связана с новыми наработками в теории систем.

Ключевые слова: системный подход, методология, эпистемологические уровни, дискурс-анализ, функциональная парадигма

Abstract

Successful functioning of the modern social and cultural discourse being an integrated and open social and economic system is determined by language system elements interaction efficiency within the general language structure with external environment, both cultural and political. The main objective of the research in question is to carry out theoretical analysis of the SBA ideas development according to epistemological levels of cognition and apply it into working out new definitions of discourse and further develop discourse theory based upon new groundings of systems theory.

Keywords: system-based approach, methodology, epistemological levels, discourse analysis functional paradigm

Successful functioning of the modern social and cultural discourse being an integrated and open social and economic system is determined by language system elements interaction efficiency within the general language structure with external environment, both cultural and political.

System-based approach is the methodological basis of the modern social systems study, the discourse analysis being one of those.

Introducing the system based methods of research into the modern science has been prepared with the entire prior development of philosophical and scientific cognition [1, p. 9].

The concept in question emerged being determined on one hand by the summarizing experience of specialists on the operations research and on the other hand by the development of the general theory of systems, the theory of automated regulation and managing as well as cybernetics which provided methodological tools enabling to combine heterogeneous managerial tasks into integral unity [2, p.272].

It is the system-based approach (SBA) that acquires nowadays the greater popularity in the process of developing and grounding speech act decisions in a greater variety of linguistic based branches in Europe and USA. “It becomes evident and conventional that system-based methodology emerges as the most structured and reliable basis for managing complex spheres of interactional activity enabling to depict and analyze components included into the system and subsequently combine them with one another” [2, p.272.]

Researching into any phenomena of processes is to be started with the study of their springs and sources. Knowing the evolution aspects of events enables us to penetrate into the essence of the phenomena to be studied, to identify the premise of their emerging and development, to ground the truthfulness of treatments.

Chronological principle of the life cycle stages study of the system-based approach (SBA) which has become one of the basic methodologies of the modern science accompanied by the systematization of the confirmed facts of emerging, developing, dissemination of the system targeted methodology provide clearer vision of historical roots of system methods formation within the frameworks of different social and economic structures which preconditioned various directions of system studies usage.

Wide and diverse utilization of the cognitive tools of SBA requires detailed research into the evolution of scientific thinking, ontological and gnosseological foundations of system-based research targeted at understanding the essential content of the SBA to be the methodology of the research in question. SBA evolution is to be considered alongside with the history of society development, the history of philosophy and stages of different natural sciences development (first of all biology, mathematics, physics, chemistry, psychology etc.) and other sciences. The methodology of the SBA had in turn influenced upon the development of the modern applied sociolinguistics and technical disciplines.

Significant contribution into the development of SBA as the general methodology of research has been made by the fundamental works of the Russian and Ukrainian scientists namely V.G. Afanasyiev, A.I. Berg, I.V. Blawberg, A.A. Bogdanov, S.A. Valuyev, V.N.Volkova, D.V. Gwyshiany, E.P. Golubkov, V.M. Glushkov, V.N. Sadovsky, A.I. Uyemov, E.G. Yudin etc and further developed by the scientific school of DonNUET namely professor, Doctor of Economics Simenko I.V.

As far as foreign scientists who started to develop SBA the following are to be mentioned: P. Anoff, Ch. Barnard, D. Klyland [3], L. von Bertalanffy [4], St. Beer, D. Dicson, F. Kast, E. Quade, V. King, E. Kuntz, O. Lange, E. Laslo, S. Optner, H. Simon, J. Forrester, S.Young [5] and many others.

Much has been done, but the issues of staging of development of system-based approach ideas within the scope of discourse as well as the issues of terminology (which) witch manifest themselves within contradicting character and multitude of definitions of the system-based approach (SBA) key concept and discourse itself still require further and thorough study.

So the main objective of the research in question is to carry out theoretical analysis of the SBA ideas development according to epistemological levels of cognition and apply it into working out new definitions of discourse and further develop discourse theory based upon new groundings of systems theory.

The first ideas of a system as regular and whole system go back to antique philosophy. But for a very long time the usage of the “system” term had a clear ontological connotation. What is more important, the formation of the “system” concept being derived from the “system” term went through understanding the wholeness and subdivision of both natural and artificial objects. That is the root of understanding a system to be the whole stuff made up of separate parts.

Exactly in that ontological meaning the understanding of the system to be the integrity of the whole and simultaneously structured objects of the real world penetrates from antique philosophy to the one of the New Times (Rene Descartes, B. Spinoza), French materialists to the natural science of the 19th century being the outcome of the mechanistic vision of the world.

It is worth to mention that gnosseological pathways of system knowledge treatment having made great contribution into the development of the “system” term and a range of essential attributes has been mixed in the XX century with ontological line of system based research. A.D. Hall was the first to make an attempt of methodological summarization of system-based concepts. According to Hall's assumptions “the system is the multiplicity of objects taken together with the links between the objects and their attributes” [6, p. 73].

We can't but mention the greatest achievements of the Renaissance's scientific thought that is the method of analytical thinking developed by the famous R. Descartes, the essence of which being to break up the complex phenomenon into separate parts in order to understand the behaviour of the whole on the basis of those parts properties. It was a great idea but this method fails to take into account links between those parts. Analytical approach breaking the whole into separate parts emerged as rejecting intuitive method of cognition and appeared to be one of the greatest outcomes of the Enlightenment Epoch. “Perceptions of the systematic character of the existence drawn from the ancient Greek philosophers were further developed within Spinoza's concepts and G. Leibniz works as well as within constructions of scientific systematics of XVII-XVIIIth centuries trying to naturally interpret the system nature of the world” [7, p. 144].

Hereby the basic approaches to the study of the complexity of the studied objects were connected with two principal methodological positions. One was presented by elementarizm reflected by classical mechanistic atomism whereas the second reflected different types of modifications of the label concept.

Quite another concept of the integral unity supported the views of impossibility to bring together complex and simple and explain the unity using its simple parts. The concept intended to prove that integral complex object possesses such features and qualities which by no means can be peculiar to its components or parts.

Thanks to further massive support of cybernetics, the concept of system based thinking and the system theory have become an integral part of the conventional scientific language and brought multiple use of new technologies and applications such as: system based technologies, system based analysis, system based dynamics etc.

Nowadays the most significant and well known variants of the system theory are the following: those suggested by W. Ross Ashby, R. Anoff, M. Mesarovitch, O. Lange, V.I. Vernadsky, N.A. Bershtine, L.S. Vygodsky, G.P. Schedrovitsky, A.I. Uyemov, I.V. Blauberg, B.N. Sadovsky, E.G. Yudin and others. The major attention is paid to the development of logical conceptual and mathematical tools of the system based research.

Outstanding scientist who developed the theory of systems A.I. Uyemov in his work “System based analysis and general systems theory” remarked that “availability of many words with rather close meanings very often confuses scientists and make the object of research obscure and ambiguous. The main objective of the methodology of science falls within analysis and clarification that is fine explanation of what is being done in modern science and, what is of major importance, what is to be done”. Roughly speaking if within the methodology of science we are going to use the term “system” the meaning of that term is to correlate with the meaning of this term assigned to it by science and adopted by the majority of scientists. The same is to be said about other terms used including those mentioned above (“system based approach”, “system based analysis”, the general theory of systems, systemology, structural research etc).

Thus, SBA as a methodological tool can provide scientific ground to new approaches of study for different adjoining disciplines such as sociology, applied linguistics etc and to the study of such ambiguous subject as discourse. But befor e applying SBA to discourse study we have to analize different paradigms in linguistics which determine the general pathways of language nature study genesis. And further more SBA can be used for defining new interpretation of discourse as socially emergent product with certain quality characteristics of a product in marketing prospectives.

Two paradigms in linguistics provide different assumptions about the general nature of language and the goals of linguistics. These paradigms are sometimes differently labeled: what Newmeyer (1983) calls a formalist paradigm is similar to Hymes's (1947) structuralist paradigm and to what Hopper (1988) [7] calls a priori grammar; the functionalist paradigm is sometimes also called emergent (Hopper) or interactive (Mey et al. 1992). The two paradigms make different background assumptions about the goals of a linguistic theory, the methods for studying language, and the nature of data and empirical evidence. These differences in paradigm also influence definitions of discourse: a definition derived from the formalist paradigm views discourse as “sentences”, a definition derived from the functionalist paradigm views discourse as “language use”. A third definition of discourse attempts to bridge the formalist - functionalist dichotomy. The relationship between structure and function in general is an important issue that is related to other issues central to discourse analysis.

Discourse is often defined in two ways: a particular unit of language (above the sentence), and a particular focus (on language use). These two definitions of discourse reflect the difference between formalist and functionalist paradigms. After briefly reviewing the two paradigms, we discuss discourse as structure and discourse as function.

Hymes suggests that the following qualities contrast structural (i.e. formalist) with functional approaches.

social cultural discourse cognition

Leech (1983) suggests other ways that formalism and functionalism are “associated with very different views of the nature of language”, including the following:

1. Formalists (e.g. Chomsky) tend to regard language primarily as a mental phenomenon. Functionalists (e.g. Halliday) tend to regard it primarily as a societal phenomenon.

2. Formalists tend to explain linguistic universals as deriving from a common genetic linguistic inheritance of the human species. Functionalists tend to explain them as deriving from the universality of the uses to which language is put in human society.

3. Formalists are inclined to explain children's acquisition of language in terms of a built-in human capacity to learn language. Functionalists are inclined to explain it in terms of the development of the child's communicative needs and abilities in society.

4. Above all, formalists study language as an autonomous system, where-as functionalists study it in relation to its social function.

At the risk of great simplification, we can say that functionalism is based on two general assumptions: (a) language has functions that are external to the linguistic system itself; (b) external functions influence the internal organization of the linguistic system. These shared assumptions contrast functionalism with approaches that are not concerned with how external processes impinge upon language (or view such a relationship as irrelevant to the goals of linguistic theory). They also contrast functionalism with the views of earlier linguists who largely restricted their analyses to functions within the linguistic system (e.g. Sapir's view that speech sounds are functionally organized did not go outside of language per se) and with the views of contemporary linguists who view functions as the role a category may play within a sentence (e.g. relational grammar: Perlmutter 1983) and / or as mathematical representations from names to values (e.g. lexical-functional grammar: Kaplan and Bresnan 1982).

Although scholars often articulate formalist / functionalist differences in terms that are mutually exclusive, Bates and MacWhinney (1982) suggest that differences within the functionalist paradigm bring functionalism either closer to, or further from, the formalist assumptions of autonomy and modularity. The most radical functionalist position, for example, would be that external functions (such as communicative concerns) define primitive categories, such that there would be no need to posit independently definable, autonomous grammatical categories (Bates and MacWhinney 1982 [11, p.188]), e.g. DuBois's (1987) suggestion that ergativity is discourse based (also Hopper and Thompson 1980) [7]. A more conservative position would allow an interaction between form and function, such that external functions would work in tandem with the formal organization inherent in the linguistic system - influencing it at certain points in the system, but not fundamentally defining its basic categories. (This actually seems to be the position taken by Newmeyer (1983), although he presents his work as a strong defense of formal theory.)

Related to the difference in the degree to which external functions condition the system is a difference in the degree to which the linguistic system itself is open to functional influences. An extremely useful way of differentiating degrees of openness of the system is Bates and MacWhinney's (1982 [11, p.178-190]) differentiation of four levels of correlation between form and function. The weakest correlation (a diachronic form - function relation) requires minimal assumptions about how open the system is to functional influence (and further suggests that certain points are only open for limited time periods, i.e. when in change). The strongest correlation (a form - function relation in adult competence) entails maximal assumptions about the openness of the system to functional influence.

The two definitions of discourse prevalent in the field reflect the differences between formalist and functionalist paradigms. After describing these definitions in the next two sections, I suggest an alternative definition that attempts to avoid some of the pitfalls of taking either a strong formalist or strong functionalist approach to the definition of discourse.

The classic definition of discourse as derived from formalist (in Hymes's 1974b terms, “structural”) assumptions is that discourse is “language above the sentence or above the clause” (Stubbs 1983). Van Dijk (1985) observes: “Structural descriptions characterize discourse at several levels or dimensions of analysis and in terms of many different units, categories, schematic patterns, or relations.” Despite the diversity of structural approaches noted by van Dijk, there is a common core: structural analyses focus on the way different units function in relation to each other (a focus shared with structuralism in general (e.g. Levi-Strauss 1967; Piaget 1970), but they disregard “the functional relations with the context of which discourse is a part”. Since it is precisely this relationship - between discourse and the context of which discourse is a part - that characterizes functional analyses, it might seem that the two approaches have little in common.

Structurally based analyses of discourse find constituents (smaller linguistic units) that have particular relationships with one another and that can occur in a restricted number of (often rule-governed) arrangements Grimes 1975; Stubbs 1983: chapter 5 [8]. In many structural approaches, discourse is viewed as a level of structure higher than the sentence, or higher than another unit of text. Z. Harris (1951) [10] - the first linguist to refer to “discourse analysis” - claimed explicitly that discourse is the next level in a hierarchy of morphemes, clauses, and sentences. Harris viewed discourse analysis procedurally as a formal methodology, derived from structural methods of linguistic analysis: such a methodology could break a text down into relationships (such as equivalence, substitution) among its lower-level constituents. Structure was so central to Harris's view of discourse that he also argued that what opposes discourse to a random sequence of sentences is precisely the fact that it has structure: a pattern by which segments of the discourse occur (and recur) relative to each other.

Harris's approach thought to be a theoretical and methodological extension of linguistic structuralism, not only because it extended the notion of linguistic unit to another level, but also because it was methodologically dependent upon lower-level structural analyses for the identification of higher-level constituents: the constituents of discourse were morphemes and morpheme sequences (words, phrases) that were themselves identifiable through “any grammatical analysis” of a sentence [10]. In addition, the only type of structure admissible into analysis was what could be investigated by inspection of the data without taking into account other data, e.g. speakers, context, meanings. However, Harris's intention was that the regular recurrence of constituents would correspond to a semantic interpretation for the discourse - a hope that was quite consistent with the structural focus (at lower levels) on morphemes as sound/ meaning correspondences.

Although structural approaches have been modified by Harris himself (e.g. Harris 1988) and by others (e.g. Grimes 1975; Polanyi 1988) [8], what is still critical to structural views of discourse is that discourse is comprised of units. Although Harris's unit was the morpheme (and their combination into sentences), more recent approaches have identified the clause (e.g. Linde and Labov 1985), the proposition (e.g. Grimes 1975; Mann and Thompson 1988) [8], or the sentence (see below) as the unit of which discourse is comprised. Some scholars also differentiate sources of “connectedness” within discourse and assign different roles to different units. Holker (1989) [9], for example, suggests that the linguistic structures of an expression, including both form-based (morphological and syntactic) and meaning-based (referential and conjunctive) relations, create connexity and cohesion. (Coherence, however, would be a result of the interpreter's knowledge about states of affairs mentioned in a text.) Other structural approaches search for multi-based and/or diversified units: Polanyi (1988), for example, allows structures to be comprised of units as varied as sentences, turns, speech actions, and speech events.

New developments of the system theory such as system based analyses, bifurcation and open system concepts enable us to view the discourse as the social phenomenon emerging as an open system, a microuniverse of sence, occurring within social environment after the actual speech act, where the text as a part of a language is used and becomes an element of the greater open system and by interaction with other elements of social system through synergetic effect emerges as a socially understandable and recognized artifact possessing all attribute of a social product. Those being intangibility, as it can not be seen, tasted or smelled but understood by target group, inseparability, as it is produced and consumed at the actual time and cannot be separated from the situation of speech, variability going from the fact that its attributes may vary greatly depending on who produced the discourse where and when and what social group it was intended for. The 4th characteristic of discourse is its perishahility as it cannot be stored or recorded for later use. After emerging and producing social impact it is lost forever. This understanding of discourse as a social product enables us to analize it and even market it for the sake of interest of different social groups or target audience. It can be even promoted for the same purposes. In this sence we say about political, historical or consumer oriented discourse.

Thus discourse being vage and ambiguous subject acquires new forms and shapes on the basis of the new social science developments.

The study of the genesis of the system based approach as the basic methodology of the system based researches within open system studies enabled us to come to definite conclusions and obtain certain outcomes. They are the following:

- The theoretical analysis of the system based approach development according to epistemological levels of cognition has been carried out. The latter enables us to identify ontological and gnosseological aspects of conceptual content of cognitive tools of system based research in respect of historical stages and philosophical pathways.

- The stages of system concept evolution are identified and structured.

- An attempt to utilize SBA in with the study of Discourse Analysis is presented.

- New interpretation of Discourse, developed on the grounds of SBA, as a socially emergent open language system is presented.

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