The Role of Communication in the Formation of Discourse
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.69760/gsrh.0260304001Keywords:
discourse, communication, communicative functions, context, participant roles, text analysisAbstract
This article examines the role of communication in the formation of discourse, focusing on the relationships among linguistic form, communicative purpose, context, and participant roles. It adopts a descriptive conceptual approach, drawing on foundational scholarship and recent studies of interaction and digital discourse and using constructed examples to clarify distinctions rather than report empirical findings. The discussion addresses three questions: how discourse differs from its textual record, how communicative functions operate within discourse, and how addressee relationships shape spoken, written, and literary communication. The analysis proposes that discourse is best understood as situated meaning-making rather than as either an isolated text or the simple transmission of information. Informative, regulatory, expressive, and phatic functions are treated as overlapping analytical categories, while monologue and dialogue are distinguished by their organization of participation rather than by the presence or absence of communication. Particular attention is given to the difference between an addressee and a person mentioned in an utterance, and to the layered audiences of literary discourse. The article concludes that communication provides an organizing basis for discourse analysis when linguistic choices are examined alongside purpose, audience, medium, and context. Its contribution is a compact conceptual framework for interpreting these relationships, with the limitations of a non-empirical study explicitly acknowledged.
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