20/10/2022

Discourse Analysis

Lecture One
Discourse Analysis and Language Teaching

Lecturer
Prof Albashir Ahmed

Autumn 2022/2023

Introduction: The Interface of Discourse

Analysis and Language Teaching
• Communicative approach….
Focus on communicative features of language use.
Goal … enable learner to communicate.
 Method … enable learner to experience and
practice communication.
• Thus discourse analysis is important ….
provides frame of reference for decision-making.
• Discourse analysis and pragmatics are relevant to
language teaching and language

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Discourse analysis represents intended meaning

transmitted within context.
Pragmatics explains interpreted meaning resulting
from linguistic processing and social interaction.
• Language teaching needs to focus on…
1. strategies of message construction to facilitate
learner production of the communicative intent.
2. strategies of interpretation, to ensure learner ability
to process the speaker/writer’s intent.
• In the first half of the 20 th century, focus was on the
sentence (decontexulized language practice).
• In recent approaches, discourse or text has
become the basic unit of analysis.

• Thus, focus should be directed to sociolinguistic

features of natural interaction, and classroom
activities should represent real-life interaction.
• Accordingly, age, social status, and other personal
characteristics of interactants cannot be ignored.
• Learners are expected to develop awareness of the
linguistic choices which are related to such features.
• Language users exhibit linguistic, cultural, and social
identities in a real-life interaction.
• These features affect the teacher’s choice of
simulated or designed classroom interactions.
• The teacher has to be a sociolinguist, aware of and
interested in various aspects of discourse analysis.

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Shared Knowledge: The Basis for Planning

the Teaching/Learning Continuum
• Discourse perspective in language teaching places
particular importance on shared knowledge.
• Interaction Participants appeal to shared knowledge
before, during, and after a communicative event
• The extent to which the participants share such
knowledge will affect the degree to which the
communicative interaction will be effective.
Speakers assume shared knowledge when
addressing others and plan their utterances
accordingly;

Listeners appeal to prior knowledge while

interpreting the flow of speech;
Writers plan their texts according to what they
presume their intended audience knows.
Readers appeal to their prior knowledge while
processing written texts.
• Shared knowledge must include both general
knowledge of the world and sociocultural
knowledge related to the target speech community.
• Prior knowledge plays a very central role in reading
and writing.
• It enables interactants to communicate
with one another via the written or spoken text.

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• Marr and Gormley (1982) define prior knowledge as

“knowledge about events, persons, and the like
which provides a conceptual framework for
interacting with the world.”
• Alexander et al. (1991) develop a conceptual
framework of knowledge including:
– domain and discipline knowledge as part of
general content knowledge, and
– knowledge of text structure, syntax and rhetoric
as part of one’s discourse knowledge.
• Effective communicative interaction requires a
basic sharing of prior content and discourse
knowledge between producers and interpreters.

• There needs to be a matching of three types

of background knowledge:
– prior factual or cultural knowledge;
– prior work or life experience; and
– prior familiarity with relevant discourse
community.
• For spoken language the interlocutors need to be
familiar with sociocultural conventions and
interaction management including considerations:
of politeness norms,
of turn-taking conventions,
of forms of address

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• For written language, writers and readers need to

share writing conventions, familiarity with genre
types, and rhetorical traditions.
• Modern language classroom needs to
take into account cross-cultural differences that
might interfere with successful communication.
• Learners should be enabled to both experience and
reflect on cross-cultural differences.
• Students’ maturational development and their
world knowledge should also be considered.
• Planning lessons should consider accommodating
learner’s prior knowledge to build up the shared
knowledge necessary for successful interaction.

• Classroom pedagogy has to expand its activities and

planning to include sociocultural and pragmatic
considerations.
• Using language effectively requires having
knowledge of various factors that impact human
communication.
• A discourse-based model for language pedagogy
perceives shared knowledge as consisting of…
– Content knowledge,
– context knowledge,
– linguistic knowledge,
– discourse knowledge, etc. ( Johns 1997).

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Discourse in the Language Classroom: The Basis

for Creating the Context for Language Learning
• Discourse community is a group of people who
share:
– a considerable body of knowledge,
– a specific group culture,
– an acceptable code of behavior,
– a common language,
– a common physical environment,
– a common goal or interest .
• Thus, we can easily see how the language classroom
is a unique discourse community.

• Swales (1990) has developed six defining

characteristics of a discourse community:
1. “A discourse community has a broadly agreed set
of common public goals.”
• The public goal of a language classroom is to
promote the students’ acquisition of the target
language.
2. “A discourse community has mechanisms of
intercommunication among its members.”
• The teacher communicates instructions,
knowledge, and guidance to the students and the
students communicate with the teacher via
homework assignments, group activities, etc.

• – sometimes this is real communication pertinent to

the situation and at other times this is part of the
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• The students also communicate with one another

within the classroom context.
3. “A discourse community uses its participatory
mechanisms primarily to provide information and
feedback.”
• Within the classroom context, the teacher is in
control of the initiation of the information and
feedback flow, while the students are at the
receiving end.
• In more modern educational contexts, students can
become initiators of the information and feedback
flow

4. “A discourse community utilizes and possesses one

or more genres in the communicative furtherance
of its aims.”
• The instruction and guidance that teachers
direct at their students take on a genre that the
students recognize.
• As part of the interaction, students also learn
which genre is appropriate for their linguistic
production within various classroom activities.
• Many features of these genres may be common to
all language classrooms, since they share common
goals and conventions,

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• Any classroom may also develop its own genre,

which fits the common goals and preferences of the
teacher and their students.
5. “In addition to owning genres, a discourse
community has acquired some specific lexis.”
• School language has its specific lexis, language
learning has its specific lexis, and a particular
classroom may have some of its own lexis.
• Any teacher may have their own preferred words &
phrases, which become the lexis of the classroom.
6. “A discourse community has a threshold level of
members with a suitable degree of relevant
content and discoursal expertise.”

• Classrooms have some universal features which are

part of any school system.
• At the beginning of the school year, only the
teacher is normally considered an “expert”;
• however, each particular group of students is
“initiated” into the discourse code of their class.
• In terms of their participation in their discourse
community, novice students will become experts in
certain skills and areas by the end of the year.
• Language teachers and curriculum developers
should capitalize on the language classroom as a
discourse community.

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• They should exploit the social context of the

language classroom more fully, since it reflects what
happens in society more generally.
• Authentic interactions will enrich the student’s
experience in the target language, leading to more
effective acquisition.
• Students need to show outcomes based on their
learning experiences.
• This will motivate students to engage in reflection
and metacognition, which will facilitate the
conscious learning process.
• A special type of discourse will develop for
each of these three different types of interaction:

Real interaction between students and teacher and

among the students when dealing with real matters
relating to their immediate environment,
Instances of practice that are part of the
learning curriculum, and
Instances of reflection which relate to what has
been learned and are an attempt to mentally
encode the learning experiences for future
encounters.
• Somewhat different discourse rules will develop for
each of these sub-discourses.

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Discourse Analysis and the

Teaching of the Language Areas
• Within the teaching context, discourse analysis has
significant applications in the language areas of
phonology, grammar and vocabulary.
1. Phonology
• The teaching of phonology interacts with the
teaching of oral discourse.
• In any language class the interaction of discourse
and prosody must be highlighted and taught.
• The pragmatic strategy used by English
speakers is to de-emphasize given (known)
information and emphasize new information.

• Contextually appropriate control of rhythm and

intonation are an essential part of oral
communicative competence.
• In the area of interaction between phonology and
discourse it is important to emphasize information
management.
• In oral interactions the difference between new
and old information is signaled via prosody.
• Also, contrast and contradiction are also
marked by a shift of focus in the ongoing discourse.
• Students need to be alerted to these prosodic
features in the target language,

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• They also need to be alerted to similarities and

differences in rhythm & intonation btwn L1 & L2.
• Much more difficult to describe and teach,
however, are the social functions of intonation.
• Discourse analysis of oral interaction is relevant to
the teaching of pronunciation.
2. Grammar
• A discourse-oriented approach to grammar places
importance on the texts presenting grammatical
points and on the connecting roles fulfilled by the
various grammatical forms.
• “grammar is seen to have a direct role in welding
clauses, turns and sentences into discourse.”

• Students need to become aware of the conditioning

role of discourse and context, which guides the
language user in making appropriate choices.
• It is the context-dependent, pragmatic rules of
grammar that play an important role in a discourse.
• Grammatical choices such as passive versus active
voice, sentential position of adverbs, tense–aspect–
modality sequences, are context dependent.
• Producing the form accurately is but part of a much
larger process in which its semantic, pragmatic, and
discourse appropriateness is also judged.

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• Similarly, interpretation can be facilitated or

hindered based on the learner’s understanding of
what functions a given grammatical form plays.
• Some of the structural features of connected
discourse are the type of cohesive ties including
reference, substitution, ellipsis, and conjunction.
• Textual cohesion is achieved by choosing among
and using these cohesive devices appropriately.
• Speakers and writers incorporate them as they
produce texts, and listeners and readers attend to
them as they interpret texts.

3. Vocabulary
• In the teaching and learning of vocabulary the
discourse perspective stands out very clearly.
• Vocabulary cannot be taught or learned out of
context; it is only within discourse that the intended
meaning of words becomes clear.
• Most content words have one or more basic
“dictionary” definition.
• But the intended meaning can only be derived
from combination of a dictionary meaning and the
contextual frame within which the word appears.
• Vocabulary can be literal or figurative including
idiomatic use and metaphorical use.

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• For instance ‘he got the axe’ may have a literal or a

figurative meaning.
• The interpretation one arrives at may well depend
on the context.
• If the discourse continues, “and he chopped down
the tree,” the literal interpretation takes hold.
• If the subsequent discourse is “so now he’s looking
for another job,” the figurative interpretation is the
coherent one.
• A specialized field such as biology or physics may
have three types of vocabulary:
1. a core vocabulary it shares with all sciences and
technologies;

2. a specific vocabulary for its own branch of science;

3. an even more specific vocabulary known primarily
to those in a specific subarea (e.g. microbiology or
plasma physics).
• Discourse analysis can identify the most frequent
vocabulary items of each type,
• This is useful information for the teacher working
with L2 learners who study these disciplines.

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Discourse Analysis and the

Teaching of the Language Skills
• When using language for communication, we are
faced with two major types of processes:
1. transmitting our ideas and intentions to an
addressee or interpreting .
2. understanding the text or message produced by an
interlocutor.
• When producing discourse, we combine discourse
knowledge with strategies of speaking or writing,
while utilizing audience relevant contextual
support.

• When interpreting discourse, we combine discourse

knowledge with strategies of listening or reading,
while relying on prior knowledge as well as on
assessment of the context at hand.
• The language skills can be grouped in two ways:
1. Productive versus receptive skills.
2. Spoken language versus written language.
• For productive skills, learners need to develop
effective communication strategies based on either
oral or written production.
• For receptive skills, learners need to develop
interpretation skills related to either listening to or
reading a text.

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• Yet for each skill the language user requires unique

strategies.
• For interactive listening, learners need to develop
strategies that elicit clarifications, repetitions, and
elaborations from the speaker when having
interpretation difficulties.
• In a face-to-face exchange, it is necessary to resort
to compensatory skills to overcome lack of language
resources in order to maintain the flow of speech.
• Prior and shared knowledge for receptive skills
involves activation of schematic and contextual
knowledge:

• Schematic knowledge is generally thought of as

two types of prior knowledge:
1. Content schemata: background information on the
topic and relevant sociocultural knowledge,
2. Formal schemata: knowledge of how discourse is
organized with respect to different genres, topics,
or purposes.
• Contextual knowledge is the perception of the
specific listening or reading situation.
listeners observe who the participants are, what
the setting is, what the topic and purpose are;
readers consider the place where the text
appeared, who wrote it, and for what purpose.

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• Listeners and readers also make use of their

understanding of the ongoing discourse or context:
Listeners remember what has already been said
and anticipate what is likely to be said next,
Readers consider the title of the text and
subtexts, the larger framework within which the
text appeared, etc.
 In teaching language, the teacher should exploit
the processing features that listening and reading
skills share.
• Language teachers can provide learners with a
variety of listening activities which will engage
them in listening practice at the discourse level.


• During such activities it is important that learners

have the opportunity to combine the following:
1. recognition of phonological signals, such as stress,
pause, and intonation;
2. recognition of lexicogrammatical signals, such as
discourse markers, lexical phrases, and word
order;
3. knowledge of content organization; and
4. incorporation of contextual features.
• A variety of activities can be developed to
accommodate the changing environment within
which listening becomes crucial.

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1. Voice-mail systems and telephone answering

machines are important instances of authentic
listening to which students should be exposed.
2. Recordings of interactive telephone conversations,
during which students are asked to listen and then
interpret and sum up what they have heard.
3. It is useful for second language learners to listen to
recorded segments of radio or TV news broadcasts
as well as to short lectures on a variety of topics.
• In order to process a written text, the reader has to
perform a number of simultaneous tasks:
1. decode the message by recognizing the
written signs,

2. interpret the message by assigning meaning to the

string of written words, and finally
3. figure out the author’s intention.
• In this process there are at least three participants:
the writer, the text, and the reader.
• The reading task requires readers to choose, select,
and apply what they know to each new text.
• It seems that “good” readers do this very effectively
while poorer readers encounter many difficulties.
• A well-written text exhibits two important features
which facilitate its interpretation during the reading
process: coherence and cohesion.

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• Coherence is a feature of the text which

incorporates the ways and means by which ideas,
concepts, and propositions are presented.
• Coherence usually fits a conventionally and
culturally acceptable rhetorical tradition in
terms of sequence and structure.
• In the process of interpreting a written text, the
reader assesses their purpose for reading, and then
recruits their knowledge of the world, previous
experience in reading, and familiarity with writing
conventions and different types of genres.
• Cohesion refers to the overt features of a text which
provide surface evidence for its unity.

• Cohesion is realized linguistically by devices or ties:

elements of language used to form the larger text.
• Deficiencies in the reader’s linguistic competence
may result in having difficulties in the interpretation
process.
• Reading courses should provide learners with
activities that help them develop strategies related
to the interpretation process.
• Personal involvement in such reading activities
would result in the development of effective,
individual reading strategies.
• A discourse-oriented reading course will allow
learners to negotiate their interaction with texts.
•

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• However, in order to ensure the development of

strategic readers the teacher must also devote
attention to reader awareness and metacognition.
• These encourage learners to become independent
readers and to regulate their interpretation
strategies during the reading process.
• Psycholinguistic models of reading have placed
special emphasis on the reader’s ability to combine
personal knowledge with textual information.
• Accordingly, textbook writers recommend that
readers guess the meaning of unfamiliar words by
using clues from the text.

• This practice is useful, very effective, and provides

readers with important shortcuts to increase
decoding speed.
• As for writing, the writer is responsible for creating
a well-written text that has cohesion & coherence,
and takes reader’s background knowledge into
account.
• However, a writer cannot rely on the context to
provide support for interpretation.
• In fact, writing competence develops as a gradual
liberation from the dependence on context for
meaning.

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• This “liberation” is achieved through skillful

mastery of the linguistic repertoire, matched with
effective use of conventional rhetoric through a
revision process leading to the written text.
• Furthermore, successful adult academic writing is
the result of the writer’s autonomous and
decontextualized production process.
• This, in turn, results in texts that are self contained
and communicative to readers who are removed in
place and time from the writing process itself.
• Writing activities should be carried out in order to
enable learners to develop the skills and strategies
which lead to improved personal writing.

• As for speaking, spoken language happens in the

here and now and must be produced and processed
“on line” (Cook 1989).
• In oral communication, there is a room for
misunderstandings, which could derive from:
1. The speaker does not have command of the target
language and produces an unacceptable form.
2. The necessary background knowledge is not
shared by the speaker and the hearer leading to
different expectations to the spoken interaction.
3. The speaker and the hearer do not share
sociocultural rules of appropriateness.

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• The basic assumption in any oral interaction is that

the speaker wants to communicate ideas, feelings,
attitudes, and information to the hearers.
• The objective of the speaker is to be understood
and for the message to be properly interpreted by
the hearer(s).
• It is the speaker’s intention that needs to be
communicated to their audience.
• To ensure proper interpretation by the hearer, the
speaker has to be concerned with the factors of
medium, which are linguistically controlled, as well
as the factors of appropriateness, which are
pragmatically controlled by the speech situation.
•

• The language learner needs to constantly improve

their mastery of linguistic and sociocultural
knowledge.
• Gaining experience in spoken communicative
interactions, in order to develop useful speech
production strategies is also important.
• These strategies are most important in overcoming
linguistic and other types of deficiencies that often
are typical of nonnative speakers.

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Conclusion
• Language teachers should:
• have good grounding in discourse analysis,
• have an awareness of cross-cultural differences,
• be trained in how to impart awareness of discourse
and cultural features to their learners at both the
macro-organizational and micro-structural levels.
• “macro-organizational level” refers to course-
planning and content organization, which should
lead to successful learning and development.

• “microstructural level” refers to more specific

linguistic and pragmatic information that is relevant
to particular communicative exchanges.
• Both teachers and learners need to take
responsibility for the reflective teaching–learning
process.
• The discourse-oriented curriculum, which should be
the basis for language courses with a discourse
orientation, places special emphasis on three areas:
context, text types, and communicative goals.
• Consequently, the delineation of goals, tasks, and
procedures for language learning will always take
contextual features into account:

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1. expectations related to student achievement will

center on the students’ linguistic and cultural
background;
2. texts and other teaching materials will be selected
or designed to be compatible with the student
audience; and
3. classroom activities will simulate real needs
outside the classroom.
• In this respect such a curriculum is different from a
linguistically oriented curriculum, where contextual
features might be viewed as external to the
curriculum (Celce-Murcia 1995b).

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