ABSTRACT
A discourse is generally defined as “a language unit whose organization supersedes any single word or sentence” (Olness, 2006: 176) or “a unit of language above and beyond the sentence (level)” (Schiffrin, 2006: 169). A discourse has also been defined as an instance of language use in which the classification of types is based on the grammatical and lexical choices as well as the distribution of content and
theme of a message (Crystal, 1985). It is composed of a series of sentences connected for conveying a message (Cherney, 1998) and can be the most elaborative linguistic activity (Ska, Duong, & Joanette, 2004). Clark (1994) provided another approach to study discourse and suggested there are two main categories of discourse: (1) spontaneous oral narrative, in which speakers usually produce an extemporaneous discourse without detailed planning beforehand, such as conversations, and (2) carefully crafted written discourse, which usually involved one’s planned writing, rewriting, and editing, such as novels or newspaper articles. In this chapter, our discussion will be focused on oral discourse.
