Modes of Discourse

In studying discourse the problem for the linguist is to find a fruitful level of analysis. Carlota Smith offers a new approach with this study of discourse passages units of several sentences or more. She introduces the key idea of the Discourse Mode identifying five modes: Narrative Description Report Information Argument. Smith analyzes the properties that distinguish each mode focusing on grammatical rather than lexical information. The book also examines presentational matters: topic and focus; variation in syntactic structure; and subjectivity or point of view.