Discourse Analysis

What Is Discourse Analysis?

1.      A brief historical overview

·         Discourse analysis is concerned with the study of relationship between language and the contexts in which it is used. (page:5 lines:1-2)

Discourse analysis emerge in the 1960s and early 1970s, it include some different disciplines such as linguistic, semiotic, psychology, anthropology and sociology.

·         Zellig Harris published a paper with the title “Discourse Analysis”. (page:5 line:8)

Harris was interested in the distribution of linguistic elements links between the text and its social situation. From harris though, discourse analysis emerged and developed till nowadays.

·          British discourse analysis was greatly influenced by M.A.K. Halliday’s functional approach to language, which in turn has connection with the Prague School of linguistics. (page:6 line:6)

Halliday’s framework emphasizes on the social function of language and  the thematic and informational structure of speech and writing.

·         American discourse was dominated by work within the ethno methodological tradition. (page:6 line:17)

It emphasizes the research method of close observation of groups of people communicating in natural settings.

2.      Form and function

·         To interpret grammatical forms depends on a number of factors, some linguistics, some purely situational. (page: 7 line:24)

Discourse analysis is not entirely separate from the study of grammar and phonology. Form can be selected to express different functions and function can be interpreted from the form. The relationships between language forms, and discourse functions, which are the raw material of language teaching, while the overall aim is to enable learners to use language functionally.

3.      Speech acts and discourse structures 

·         The approach to communicative language teaching that emphasizes the function or speech acts that pieces of language perform overlaps in an important sense with the preoccupations of discourse analysts. (page:9 line: 7)

Discourse analysis is thus fundamentally concerned with the relationship between language and the contexts of its use.

·         The dialogue is structured in the sense that it can be coherently interpreted and seems to be progressing somewhere, but we are in the middle of a structure rather than witnessing the complete unfolding of the whole. (page:11 line:17)

The speech acts refers to what the speaker doing with the speech and what is the reaction of the listener or reader. The discourse structure are composed of beginning, middle and ends.

4.      The scope of discourse analysis

·         Discourse analysis is not only concerned with the description and analysis of spoken interaction but also of all our verbal encounters where we consume daily hundreds of written and printed words. (page:12 line 1-3)

Discourse analysis are equally interested in the organization of the written interaction such as newspaper, articles, letters, stories, recipes, instructions, comics, billboards and so on.

5.      Spoken discourse: models of analysis

·         The Birmingham model is certainly not the only valid approach to analyzing discourse, but it is a relatively simple and powerful model which has connection with the study of speech act. (page 12, line 4)

In conducting conversation in the classroom,  it involved question and answer. Question and answer sequence can be called a transaction, capture the feeling of what is being done with language. In questions and answer forms there are exchanges that consist of three moves: initiation – Response – Follow up.

Example :

          Move               Exchange 1

          Initiation         A: What time is it?

          Response         B: Six-thirty.

          Follow-up        A: Thanks.

Move               Exchange 2

          Initiation         A: Tim’s coming tomorrow.

          Response         B: Oh yeah.

          Follow-up        A: Yes.

Move               Exchange 3

          Initiation         A: Here, hold this.

          Response         B: (takes the box).

          Follow-up        A: Thanks.

      In these exchanges we can observe the importance of each move in the overall functional unit. Every exchange has to be initiated, whether with a statement, a question or a command; equally naturally, someone responds, whether in words or action.

6.      Conversation outside the classroom

·         Conversation outside the classroom refers to a peculiar place where teachers ask questions to which they already know the answer, where pupils have very limited rights as speaker and where evaluation by the teacher of what the  pupils say is vital mechanism in the discourse structure. (page: 19 line: 6)

It is varied in “real world” the structures used in the conversation. Sinclair and Coulthard’s model is very useful for analyzing pattern of interaction where talk is relatively tightly structured.

7.      Talk as a social activity

·         Due to the rigid conventions of situations such as teacher intervention and talk between doctor and patient, teacher and student, we can predict easily who will speak, when he will speak, who will ask, who will respond, who will interrupt, who will open and close the talk, and so on. (page:22 lines:1-4)

In among more casual, and among equals, everyone will have a part to play in controlling and monitoring the discourse, and the image will be significantly more complicated.

8.      Written discourse

·         Writers has usually had time to think about what to say and how to say it, and the sentences are usually well formed. (Page : 25 line : 3-4)

From the written discourse, the reader can easy to understand the information directly. We do not have to contend with people all speaking at once, the writer has usually had time to think about what to say and how to say it, because the writer should  consider some grammatical regularities observable in well-formed written.

·         Insights of written discourse analysis might be applicable in specificable ways to language teaching. (Page :25 line : 12-13)

Insights of written discourse analysis might be applicable in specificable ways to language teaching. When the writer want to make a written discourse, he should make a consideration for some grammatical regularities observable in well-formed written texts, and how the structuring of sentences has implications for units such as paragraphs, and for the progression of whole texts. The writer also look at the grammar of English offers a limited set of options for creating surface links between the clauses and the sentences of a text, in order that, the writer also have to pay attention with the cohesive and the cohesion of the text, so that way, the written discourse are ready to use.

9.      Text and interpretation

·         Interpretation can be seen as a set of procedures and the approach to the analysis of text that emphasizes the mental activities involved in interpretation can be broadly called procedural. (page: 27 line: 6-8)

The approach to text analysis that emphasizes the interpretive acts involved in relating textual segments one to the other through relationships such as phenomenon-reason, cause-consequence, instruments-achievement, and suchlike is a clause-relational approach.

10.  Larger patterns in text

·         The sequence situation-problem-response-evaluation may be varied, but we do normally expect all the elements to be present in a well formed text and they are extremely common in texts. (Page : 30 line : 14-15)

In generally, a good written text must be consist of four elements , they are situation, problem, response, and evaluation. Larger pattern also may be found in the text, they are the object  of interpretation by the reader, just as the smaller clause relation were, and in the same way, are often signaled by the same sort s of grammatical and lexical devices such as subordination and parallelism.