The Analysis of Speaking Discourse: A Review Paper from 1973 to 2014

Abstract

Discourse, written or spoken communication or debate, is important in speakers’
speech. Therefore, shedding light on discourse and better understanding of the speaking
discourse and its characteristics may lead to new empirical techniques for identifying discourse
structure from speech as well as new algorithms for enhancing the naturalness of synthetic
speech. Accordingly, the current review paper summarized the results of many approaches,
distinctions, and studies as to speaking discourse conducted from 1973 to 2014 and from
different scholars’ perspectives. The analysis and justification of all of the reviewed studies
implied that spoken discourse has covered many other elements inside; in other words, the gist of
the matter is that speech is the first draft status which has some distinctive features like
intonation, loudness/quietness, gestures and body language, stress, markers, gender difference.
Furthermore, there are some specific differences between speaking and written discourse. Thus,
every element of speaking discourse should be considered important. To sum, the results
suggested that finding the crucial relations among discourse styles can help scholars understand
how languages work for different people.