Framing and Perspectivising in Discourse

Book excerpt: In discourse, verbal messages are framed: speakers offer cues on the basis of which hearers are able to anchor the verbal message to the context. Furthermore, speakers cannot contribute to the discourse without at the same time showing their view on the subject matter of the discourse: the content of a discourse is necessarily ‘displayed’ from a certain perspective. Both the framing and perspectivising of verbal messages are not static, but subject to possible changes during the development of the discourse. Both concepts function at the intersection of a psychological-cognitive and a social-functional approach to discourse. In this volume, eight contributions are brought together which offer theoretical tools for describing and explaining framing and perspectivising devices in the production and comprehension of discourse, and apply them to the analysis of several types of discourse such as political satire, letters-to-the-editor, everyday narrations and newspaper reports.