Introduction to Discourse analysis
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This document provides an overview of discourse analysis as a research method. It discusses what constitutes a discourse, including language-in-use and how form and function are related. Context is important to discourse analysis. The document also examines speech acts, discourse structure using examples, and differences between spoken and written discourse. It notes some complications that can arise in analyzing unstructured spoken interaction versus more structured settings.
Introduction to Discourse analysis
- 2. What is a discourse? • language-in-use • Form vs. function • Context: Sally & Bob are friends. They were in a café, just the two of them. Text Form Function Sally: I loved you. -d, past tense, “to feel great affection for (someone)” Statement ? Bob: You love me? Sally: I loved
- 3. Discourse • Form grammatical, lexical, phonological • Function interpretation of intention • Complementary Form can be selected to express different functions Function can be interpreted from the form
- 5. What is Discourse Analysis? • The study of the language-in-use Language-in-use contextual • Discourse analysis relationship between language and the contexts • Context written texts of all kinds, and spoken data, from conversation to highly institutionalised forms of talk.
- 6. Speech Acts • What is the speaker doing with the speech? • What are the expected reaction of the listener? • Sally: I loved you. What is Sally doing when she said “I loved you.”? What is the expected reaction of Bob? • But… One sentence is not enough to really decide what it means. Context ? –Yes, but… Structure? – more definitive meaning of the whole speech acts.
- 7. Discourse Structure 1) Sally: We’ve been friends for a long time, Bob. 2) Bob: Yeah. You’re right. 3) Sally: You know what? 4) Bob: What? 5) Sally: I loved you. 6) Bob: Did you really? 7) Sally: I loved you. 8) Bob: You love me? 9) Sally: I loved you. 10) Bob: You love me! 11) Sally: No, I don’t. 12) Bob: C’mon. That can’t be true. You love me. 13) Sally: I don’t know. Maybe. We’ll see. Anyway… beginning middle end
- 8. Spoken Discourse • Birmingham Model (Sinclair & Coulthard, 1975; Sinclair & Brazil, 1982) • Initiation – Response – Follow-up
- 9. Now, let’s practice! • What are the speech acts? 1. Request for information 2. Checking understanding of the concept of ‘time’ 3. Verbal trap • What makes them different?
- 10. What makes themdifferent? • Participants, roles, setting Exchange 1 Exchange 2 Exchange 3 Initiation What time is it? What time is it? What time is it? Response Five Past Six. Five Past Six. Five Past Six. Follow-up Thanks! Good! Clever Girl! No it isn't, and you know it isn't; it's half past and you're late again! Participants Roles Setting Speech Act Request for information Checking understanding Verbal trap
- 11. Complete Birmingham Model 1) Sally: We’ve been friends for a long time, Bob. 2) Bob: Yeah. You’re right. 3) Sally: You know what? 4) Bob: What? 5) Sally: I loved you. 6) Bob: Did you really? 7) Sally: I loved you. 8) Bob: You love me? 9) Sally: I loved you. 10) Bob: You love me! 11) Sally: No, I don’t. 12) Bob: C’mon. That can’t be true. You love me. 13) Sally: I don’t know. Maybe. We’ll see. Anyway… beginning middle end exchang e move act transaction
- 12. Complete Birmingham Model Act Move Exchange Transaction • For quite tightly structured interaction, e.g. classroom, doctor-patient • But, for more informal, casual, and spontaneous contexts? Complications… • Let’s see the next example of interaction
- 13. • Can you identify the exchanges, the moves, and the acts? • Where are the initiation, response, and follow-up? • Any complications?
- 14. Spoken Discourse • Complications in unstructured interaction • natural data – out of class interaction, friends’ talk
- 15. Spoken Discourse • Ethnomethodologists – American phenomenon Natural data Not to build a model, but to observe how people behave and how they cooperate in the management of discourse Some interests: o how pairs of utterances relate to one another (adjacency pairs) o how turn-taking is managed o how conversational openings and closings are effected o how topics enter and disappear from conversation o how speakers engage in strategic acts of politeness o face-preservation, etc.
- 16. Written Discourse • Text Surface level Markers – the linguistic signals of semantic and discourse functions o E.g. in English the -ed on the verb is a marker of past tense o E.g. cohesive marker (it, itu, sebelumnya)
- 17. Written Discourse • Interpretation deeper level Procedural – mental activities for the receiver to understand the text Textual – the patterns in the text o Eg. Clause-relational approach (logical sequencing: phenomenon- reason, phenomenon- example, cause-consequence, instrument- achievement, problem-solution; matching)
- 18. Examples • Can you identify the logical sequence? Phenomenon- reason Cause- consequence Instrument achievement Problem- solution
- 19. Process of doing discourse analysis Text Signal (Surface Level) Supporting Evidence Interpretation (Deeper level)
- 20. Computer-Mediated Discourse • Is it written or spoken discourse? • Medium vs. Situation influencing factors (Herring, 2007)
- 21. Herring, 2007 Medium Situation Synchronicity of participation Participation structure Message transmission Participation characteristics Persistence of transcript Purpose Size of the message buffer Topic or theme Channels of communication Tone Anonymous messaging Activity Private messaging, filtering, quoting Norms Message format Code
- 22. Recommended book/article • Schiffrin, D., Tannen, D. & Hamilton, H. (2001). The handbook of Discourse Analysis. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers. Examples of discourse analysis research Download at en.bookfi.org • Lazaraton, A. (2002). Quantitative and qualitative approaches to discourse analysis. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics , 22, pp. 32-51. Summary of notable discourse analysis research Download at F-Learn
- 23. References • McCarthy, M. (1991). Discourse analysis for language teachers. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Most material of this ppt Download at en.bookfi.org • Herring, S.C. (2007). A Faceted Classification Scheme for Computer-Mediated Discourse. Language@Internet, 4(1). Google it, the author provided it.