Discourse Analysis

Discourse Analysis
Definitions:
Discourse analysis: focuses on knowledge about language beyond the word, clause, phrase
and sentence that is needed for successful communication. It looks at patterns of language across texts and considers the relationship between language and the social and cultural context in which it is used. Discourse analysis also considers the way that the use of language presents different views of the world and different understandings. It examines how the use of language is influenced by relationships between participants as well as the effects the use of language has upon social identities and relations. It also considers how views of the world, and identities, are constructed through the use of discourse. Discourse analysis examines both spoken and written texts. (Brian Paltridge 2006)
Discourse analysis: is concerned with the study of the relationship between language and
the contexts in which it is used. It grows out of work in different disciplines in the 1960s and early 1970s, including linguistics, semiotics, psychology, anthropology and sociology. Discourse analysts study language in use: written texts of all kinds, and spoken data, from conversations to highly institutionalized forms of talk. (Michael McCarthy 1991)
Discourse analysis: concerns itself with the use of language in a running discourse,
continued over a number of sentences, and involving the interaction of speaker (or writer) and auditor (or reader) in a specific situational context, and within a framework of social and cultural conventions. Emphasis on the meaning of discourse as dependent on specific cultural conditions and particular circumstances derives from a number of investigators and areas of research. (Meyer Howard Abrams and Geoffrey Galt Iarpham 2012) The analysis of discourse: is, necessarily, the analysis of language in use. As such, it cannot be restricted to the description of linguistic forms independent of the purpose or function which those forms are designed to serve in human affairs t he discourse analyst is committed to an investigation of what that language is used for. (Gillian Brown and George Yule 1983)
A brief historical overview:

The term discourse analysis was first introduced by Zellig harris in 1952 as a way of analyzing connected speech and writing (Brian Paltridge 2006). At a time when linguistics was largely concerned with the analysis of single sentences, Zellig Harris published a paper with the title "Discourse analysis" (Harris 1952). Harris was interested in the distribution of linguistic elements in extended texts, and the links between the text and its social situation, though his paper is a far cry from the discourse analysis we are used to nowadays. Discourse analysis was affected by the emergence and development of many disciplines such a semiotics and pragmatics which is the study of meaning in context. It has been suggested that the mode of analysis which subsequently grew into discourse analysis began in the 1970s with a problem facing Nigel Gilbert and Michael Mulkay who were sociologists interested in scientific disputes. They collected data concerning certain scientific dispute among scientists who seemed to have two different theories. At the outset of the project, they wanted to produce a single, definitive sociological account of the social processes which were at work in the way this community of scientists resolved this dispute. But Gilbert and Mulkay recognized that they were facing a significant methodological problem: variability in the accounts. In their data, they observed that they had a variety of different versions of the same things. They argued that the complexities of accounting practices should themselves be addressed in sociological analysis, and not regarded as a problem to be resolved via various methodological practices. Indeed, they argued that it was necessary to give analytic prominence to variability in discourse, and the conditions which give rise to it, and to abandon the traditional social scientific goal of providing an account of what really happened. Consequently, as an alternative to traditional sociological approaches which overlooked or obscured the variability and context dependence of accounts, Gilbert and Mulkay advocated discourse analysis: a method of analysis which focused entirely on participants language. British discourse analysis was greatly influenced by M. A. K. Halliday's functional approach to language (e.g. Halliday 1973) whose work was followed by the work of others like Sinclair and Coulthard (1975) who developed a model for the description of teacher-pupil talk, based on a hierarchy of discourse units. American discourse analysis has been dominated by an approach that emphasizes the research method of close observation of groups of people communicating in natural settings. It examines types of speech event such as storytelling, greeting rituals and verbal duels in different cultural and social settings.
Conversation analysis can also be included under the general heading of discourse analysis in the American tradition. In conversational analysis, the emphasis is on close observation of the behavior of the participants in talk and on patterns. Conversation analysis is associated with the pioneering research of Harvey Sacks. Schegloff reports in his introduction to the published collection of Sacks lectures (Schegloff, 1992a), based on Sack's study of a corpus of recorded telephone calls to the Los Angeles Suicide Prevention Center (Robin Woffitt). The American work has produced a large number of descriptions of discourse types, as well as insights into the social constraints of politeness and face-preserving phenomenon in talk, overlapping with British work in pragmatics. Also relevant to the development of discourse analysis as a whole is the work of text grammarians, working mostly with written language. Text grammarians see texts as language elements strung together in relationship with one another that can be defined. Linguists such as Van Dijk (1972) Halliday and Hasan (1076) have made a significant impact in this area. The most important contribution of The Prague School of linguists has been to show the links between grammar and discourse. Discourse analysis has grown into a wide-ranging and heterogeneous discipline which finds its unity in the description of language above the sentence and an interest in the contexts and cultural influences which affect language in use. It is also now, increasingly, forming a backdrop to research in Applied Linguistics, and second language acquisition and teaching in particular.
References
Discourse Analysis: An Introduction 2006 By Brian Paltridge Discourse Analysis for Language Teachers 1991 By Michael McCarthy Discourse Analysis 1983 Gillian Brown and George Yule Coveration Analysis and Discourse Analysis 2005 By Robin Woffitt

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