What is discourse analysis?
Study of language use, context, and social communication patterns.
Discourse Analysis for Language Teachers by Michael McCarthy
Spoken discourse: models of analysis
We observe the importance of each step in the overall functional unit.
Conventions can vary culturally and depending on context.
The particular exchange it consists of a question, an answer and a comment, making it a three-part questionnaire.
Heard as giving information
What time is it?
As a command
Question-answer sequence:
Internal trait or labelable forms of speech?
Structured lesson with framing moves, common in various settings.
Limited words
The Birmingham model is a powerful approach to analyzing discourse
The scope of discourse analysis
The objective is to indicate what the speech looks like speaking naturally.
Discourse analysis is interested in the organization of written interaction as well.
Verbal meetings, daily readings:
Recipes
Comics
Billboards
Notices
Instructions
Stories
Letters
Articles
It is not only concerned with description and analysis spoken interaction.
Speech acts and discourse structures
The dialogue is structured in the sense that it can be coherently interpreted and seems to be progressing somewhere.
Discourses have beginnings, middles and ends.
Discourse analysis is thus fundamentally concerned with the relationship between language and the contexts of its use.
Form and Function
One linguistic feature that may affect our interpretation is the intonation.
How we interpret grammatical forms depends on a number of factors, some linguistic, some purely situational.
A brief historical overview
Labov's investigations of oral storytelling have also contributed to a long history of interest in narrative discourse.
Is not entirely separate from the study of grammar and phonology.
Discourse analysis has grown into a wide-ranging and heterogeneous discipline which finds its unity in the description of language.
It grew out of work in different disciplines ( linguistics, semiotics, psychology, anthropology and sociology).
Discourse analysis is concerned with the study of the relationship between language and the contexts in which it is used.
Larger patterns in text
Clause-relational approach to text deals with broader patterns that occur regularly in text:
Problem-situation-response-evaluation.
They are objects of interpretation by the reading author.
They are often marked by the same type of grammatical and lexical resources, such as subordination and parallelism.
They are often marked by the same type of grammatical and lexical devices, such as subordination and parallelism.
Text and Interpretation
Linguistic signals of semantic and discursive functions subject to systematic analysis to reveal underlying meanings, structures and communication strategies.
INTERPRETATION set of procedures and approach to text analysis that emphasizes the mental activities involved in interpretation can be widely understood.
Relate textual segments to each other through relationships such as phenomenon-reason, cause-consequence.
Interaction between reader and text.
Textual pattern recognition: phrases, clauses, sentences or groups of sentences.
TEXT linguistic unit, spoken or written, subject to systematic analysis to reveal meanings, structures.
Written discourse
It is well formed, in a way that natural, spontaneous speech expressions are not.
Compares between languages for translatability and distribution in real texts.
Grammatical cohesion can be enumerated finitely.
Show sentence-to-sentence links in terms of grammatical features.
Organized expression of ideas, thoughts or information through the use of words and text, writing is used as the main means of communication.
Task and a social activity
More natural and fluent conversations.
No forcing the right of turn in conversation.
Adjacent partners develop their characteristics in the conversation.
Influences people's behavior.
Conversations outside the classroom
Outside the classroom
Hierarchical model (from small units to larger units).
Use of descriptive categories.
Depends on conversational features (gestures, intonation, etc.)
There are start-response-follow-up sequences.
According to complexity (simple or elaborated dialogues)
.
They differ according to the acts in which the conversation takes place.
Vary according to the degree of structuring.
Inside the classroom
Defined questions and answers (predictable).
They are structured (easy to perceive).
