Of all the areas of contrastive analysis, cross-linguistic comparisons of discourse are probably the most challenging. As noted in Chapter 3, discourse analysis involves a wide array of nonstructural as well as structural characteristics, and the boundaries between contrastive discourse and other disciplines such as cultural anthropology are not clearcut. Moreover, models of discourse are necessarily complex and are thus quite difficult to test (Section 3.2). Yet despite the lack of comprehensive cross-linguistic descriptions, there has been progress in the study of contrastive discourse. Researchers now have detailed information about specific cross-linguistic contrasts in requests, apologies, monologues, and other forms of discourse. Such information points to some probable cases of discourse transfer.

While there are many difficulties attending the study of discourse transfer, such study is undeniably important. As Richards (1980) has noted, when learners violate norms of conversation in the target language, the violations are potentially much more serious than syntactic or pronunciation errors since such violations can affect what is often termed “the presentation of self.” Two areas of discourse in which effects on the presentation of self can be especially dangerous are politeness and coherence. While politeness is probably a universal notion, the expression of politeness in different societies varies considerably. Similarly, the notion of coherence is applicable to conversations and monologues in every society, but the relations between sentences, phrases, and other units can vary a great deal in the discourse patterns of different languages.