discourse prosody

Discourse prosody, according to Stubbs (2001: 65), is a feature which extends

over more than one unit in a linear string. Discourse prosody has a great deal
in common with SEMANTIC PROSODY and SEMANTIC PREFERENCE, although
where
semantic prosody/preference tends to focus on relationships between single
words, discourse prosodies look at relationships between a word and the
context that it is embedded in. For example, the verb swan and its associated
36 discursive competence
forms swanning, swanned and swans collocate with a set of words for places
(shops, town, pub) and countries (France, New York), which suggests a
SEMANTIC
PREFERENCE. However, by examining the fuller context of swan as a verb, we
get
a sense that users of this word disapprove of people they are writing about:
Example 1
When they were swanning around looking pretty, our families were working their
fingers to the bone for virtually nothing. (BNC, CEY)
Example 2
Most organisers swan in at eight-thirty looking important, only to discover
theres a big hitch and they have no time to put it right. (BNC, ADK)
Example 3
So youve opted out of the war effort, he greeted her nastily, to go
swanning all over the Pacific? (BNC, FPX)
Example 4
Needless to say, these mega-rich popsters just swan around in wellies every
other weekend for the benefit of the colour supplements Day In The Life
features and leave all the actual farming to peasants who get up at dawn
and get paid in potatoes. (BNC, CAD)
Example 5
Morrissey ought to get himself a string section and stop swanning about
pretending to be Melvyn Bragg. (BNC, CK4)
From these examples, it can be seen that swan holds a negative discourse
prosody people who swan are constructed as oblivious to their responsibilities
or other people (examples 14) or appear pretentious and delusional
(example 5).
discursive competence
Bhatia (2004: 144) defines discursive competence as a general concept to
cover various levels of competence we all need in order to expertly operate
within well-defined professional as well as general socio-cultural contexts.