What is discourse analysis by Brain Poltride

1. What is discourse
analysis?
B. Paltridge 2006. Discourse Analysis.
Continuum.

2. Discourse Analysis
• The term discourse analysis was introduced
by Zellig Harris in 1952 as a way of analyzing
connected speech and writing. In this sense,
Harris had two main interests:
• 1.examination of language beyond the level
of sentence
• 2.the relationship between linguistic and
• non –linguistic behaviour. (people know
from the situation how to interpret what
someone says)

3. Discourse Analysis
focuses on knowledge beyond the word,
clauses, phrase and sentence that is needed
for successful communication.
looks at patterns of language across texts
and considers the relationship between
language and the social and cultural context
in which it is used.

4. Discourse Analysis
considers the ways the use of language
presents different views of the world and
different understandings.
examines how the use of language is
influenced by the relationships between
participants as well as the effects the use of
language has upon social identities and
relations.

5. Discourse Analysis
considers how views of the world and
identities are constructed through the
use of discourse
examines both spoken and written texts.
Spoken discourse (e.g., conversational
exchanges, TV interviews, phone-calls)
Written discourse (e.g., an article in a
newspaper, a letter or an e-mail you
wrote to a friend, a poem, a novel)

6. Discourse Analysis and
Relevant Concepts
Context
Pragmatics
Cultural ways of speaking and writing
Communicative competence
• Why?
• How do you relate these terms to the
“concerns” of discourse analysis?

7. Language-Context
• The runway is full at the moment
• 1. Air traffic controller says it to a pilot: instruction
• 2. A woman says it to her friend waiting for someone
to pick up from airport: simple statement
Discourse analysis is the language in use. It
considers the relation between language and
contexts in which it is used and concerned with the
description and analysis of spoken and written
interactions.

8. Discourse analysis-Pragmatics
Brian Palridge (2006) tackles Discourse
Analysis from a pragmatic perspective.
Pragmatics is concerned with how the
interpretation of language depends on
knowledge of the real world.
It is interested in what people mean by
what they say.

9. Cultural Ways of Speaking & Writing
❑ Different cultures often have different ways of
doing things through language. For example:
❑ English speakers do greater ritual use of
‘please’ & ‘thanks’ when they’re buying or
selling than Japanese do.

10. Communicative competence
• 4 underlying components of communicative
competence:
grammatical competence : mastery of language codes
sociolinguistic competence: knowledge of appropriate
language use
discourse competence: knowledge of connection
utterances in a cohesive and coherent text
strategic competence: mastery of strategies that speakers
use to compensate for breakdowns in communication and
the strategies to enhance the effectiveness of the
communication.

11. Discursive competence
• It includes not only language-related and text-level
knowledge but also complex factors outside of the text
which need to be taken account for effective communication.
Textual competence: ability to produce and interpret
contextually appropriate texts. To do this we draw on our
linguistic, textual, contextual and pragmatic
knowledge of what typically occurs in a particular text,
how it is typically organized and how it is typically
interpreted.
• Eg. Internet communication (MSN Messenger), term
paper, seminar, etc.

12. Discursive competence
Generic competence describes how we are able to
respond to both recurring and new communicative situations
by constructing, interpreting, using and exploiting
conventions associated with the use of particular kinds of
texts, or genres. Eg. e-mail to a lecturer or a text message to
a friend.
Social competence describes how we use language to
take part in social and institutional interactions in a
way that enables us to express our social identity, within
the constraints of the particular social situation and
communicative interaction.

13. Different Views of Discourse Analysis
Cazden (1998): analysis of the stretches of
naturally occurring language; considering
different ways of talking and understanding
Fairclough (2003) : textually oriented discourse
analysis vs. social theoretical orientation
Cameron and Klucik (2003): instances of
language in use that are studied under a
textually oriented view of discourse are still
socially situated and need to be interpreted in
terms of their social meanings and functions.

14. Summary
DA is a view of language at the level of text.
DA is a view of language in use. (communicative
goals, acts, present themselves)
DA considers how people manage interactions with
each other, other groups, societies and cultures.
DA focuses on how people do things beyond
language, and the ideas and beliefs that they
communicate.

15. Discourse Structure of Texts
• Discourse Analysts are also interested in how
people organize what they say in the sense of
what they typically say first & what they say next
in a conversation or a piece of writing.

16. Discourse as the Social Construction
of Reality
Texts are embedded in social and cultural
practices.
Discourse is both shaped by the world as well
as shaping the world.
Discourse is shaped by language as well as
shaping the language that people use.

17. Discourse as the Social Construction
of Reality
Discourse is shaped by the discourse that has
preceded or follow it.
Discourse is shaped by the medium in which it
occurs as well as it shapes the possibilties of that
medium.
Discourse shapes the range of possible
purposes of texts.

18. Discourse as the Social Situated
Identities
When we speak or write we use more than just
language to display who we are, and how we
want people to see us.
Dressing, gestures, the ways we think, the
attitudes we display, and the things we value, feel
and believe.
Social competence describes how we use
language to take part in social and institutional
interactions in a way that enables us to express our
social identity, within the constraints of the particular
social situation and communicative interaction

19. Discourse as the Social Situated
Identities
Discourses involve the socially situated identities
that we enact and recognize in different settings that we
interact in: culture specific ways of performing and
culture specific ways of recognizing identities and
activities.
Discourses involve different styles of language.
Discourses involve characteristic ways of acting,
interacting and feeling and showing emotion, gesturing.
Discourses involve particular ways of valuing, thinking,
believing, knowing, speaking and listening, reading and
writing.

20. Discourse and Performace
Discourses are socially constructed rather than
natural. People “are who they are because of the way
they talk” not because of who they already are”
Social identities are not per-given, but are formed in
the use of language and the various other ways
we display who we are, what we think, value and
feel,etc.
Eg. the rap singer

21. Discourse and Intertextuality
Texts may more or less implicity or explicitly cite
other texts, they may refer to another texts, or
they may allude to other past, or future texts.
All texts are intertextual relationship with other texts.
Eg. The movie “Casablanca” recalls film genres such as
adventure movie, the patriotic movie, gangester
movies, action movies, spy movies and romance.

22. Difference between spoken and
written language
Grammatical intricacy and spoken discourse
Lexical density in spoken and written discourse
Nominalization in written and spoken discourse
Explicitness in spoken and written discourse
Contextualization in spoken and written discourse
The spontaneous nature of spoken discourse
Repetition, hesitation and redundancy in spoken
discourse

23. • Grammatical intricacy and spoken discourse:
Written language is more structurally complex and
elaborate than speech. Halliday (1989) argues that
spoken discourse has its own complexity. Grammatical
intricacy refers to the relationship between clauses
in spoken discourse which can be much more
spread out and with more complex relations
between them than in writing.
• Lexical density in spoken and written discourse:
• Written language tends to be more lexically dense
which refers to the ratio of content words to
function words.

24. • Nominalization in written and spoken discourse
• There is a high level of nominalization in written texts. Actions
and events are presented as nouns rather than as verb. They
also include longer noun groups
• Explicitness in spoken and written discourse
• Writing is more explicit than speech. This depends on the
purpose of text and again is not absolute.
• Contextualization in spoken and written discourse
• Writing is more decontextualized than speech. This view based
on the perception that speech depends on a shared situation
and background for interpretation whereas writing does not
depend on such a shared context. Spoken genres determine it.
• For conversations: YES for academic lectures:NO

25. • The spontaneous nature of spoken discourse
• Spoken discourse contains more half completed and
reformulated utterances than written discourse. This is
because it is often produced spontaneously.
• Repetition, hesitation and redundancy in spoken
discourse
• Spoken discourse involves repetition, hesitation and
redundancy than written discourse. It is produced in real time.
• It also involves fillers like “hhh,er, you see”.