DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

2. PRESENTATION THEME:
“DISCOURSE ANALYSIS”
M.PHIL ENGLISH
MID OF 2ND SEMESTER
Presentation
Transcript:
Instructor: DR.
SAMINA
SARWAT(HOD)
Presented By:
Group 4.
Muhammad
Tahir awan ,
Hafiz M.
Umair
Samreen
Qudsia

3. AIM OF PRESENTATION
To introduce the topic and share my
ideas with you about definition
of Discourse Analysis with related
areas.

4. SEQUENCE OF DISCUSSION
WHAT IS
DISCOURSE?
INTRODUCTION
OF DA
STUDY OF
DISCOURSE
TEXT AND
TEXTURE
COHESION
AND
COHERENCE
GENRE
ANALYSIS
DISCOURSE
COMMUNITIE
S
THE OBJECTS
OF DISCOURSE
ANALYSIS
FINAL
THOUGHT
(CONCLUSION
)

5. What is discourse?
An approach to the analysis of language that looks at patterns of
language across texts as well as the social and cultural contexts in
which the texts occur.
• Common Features
• It is a stretch of language longer than a sentence
• It is meaningful and coherent
• It communicates and has a purpose
• It maybe spoken or written

6. INTRODUCTION OF DA
The term discourse analysis was first introduced by Zellig Harris ( 1952 ) as a way of analysing
connected speech and writing. Harris had two main interests: the examination of language
beyond the level of the sentence and the relationship between linguistic and non-linguistic
behavior. He examined the first of these in most detail, aiming to provide a way for
describing how language features are distributed within texts and the ways in which they
are combined in particular kinds and styles of texts.
• And discourse analysts study the ways sentences and utterances go together to make
texts and interactions and how those texts and interactions fit into our social world.
(How words are put together, different features and devices of language are employed to
communicate meanings)

7. Examples of Discourse
• Spoken Discourse
• Conversations
• Lectures
• Sermons
• Interviews
• Jokes
• Speeches
• Written Discourse
• Reports
• Political texts
• Legal texts
• Literature
• Newspaper articles
• Newspaper headlines

8. The relationship between language and context
By ‘the relationship between linguistic and non-linguistic behavior’
Harris means how people know, from the situation that they are in,
how to interpret what someone says. If, for example, an air traffic
controller says to a pilot The runway is full at the moment , this most
likely means it is not possible to land the plane. This may seem obvious
to a native speaker of English but a non-native speaker pilot, of which
there are many in the world, needs to understand the relationship
between what is said and what is meant in order to understand that
he/she cannot land the plane at that time. Harris’ point is that the
expression The runway is full at the moment has a particular meaning
in a particular situation

9. Continue…
(in this case the landing of a plane) and may mean something different
in another situation. If I say The runway is full at the moment to a
friend who is waiting with me to pick someone up from the airport, this
is now an explanation of why the plane is late landing (however I may
know this) and not an instruction to not land the plane. The same
discourse, thus, can
• be understood differently by different language users as well as
understood differently in different contexts (van Dijk 2011 )

10. STUDY OF DA
• Studying discourse analysis, however, can teach you more than that. Since the
way we use discourse is tied up with our social identities and our social
relationships, discourse analysis can help us to understand how the societies in
which we live are put together and how they are maintained through our day to
day activities of speaking, writing and making use of other modes of communicati
on(our bosses use authoritative words and give instructions and orders. otherwise they
would not be able to get the things done)
• It can help us to understand why people interact with one another the way they
do and how they exert power and influence over one
another. It can help us to understand how people view reality differently and why
they view it that way.(we are unique and are treated differently by the world, so we
have different concepts of
reality).The study of discourse analysis, then, is not just the study of how we use
language.

11. STUDY OF DA…,
But a way of looking at language that focuses on how people use it in
real life to do things like joke and argue and persuade and to show
that they are certain kinds of people or belong to certain groups.
This way of looking at language is based on four main assumptions.
• Language is vague.(even then it works)
• Language always exits in the world.(communication is effected by context)
• Language exposes our social identities.(status and position influence our
vocabulary)
• Language alone can not do all the things.(It is supported by body language
etc.)

12. TEXTS AND TEXTURE
• According to the linguist M.A.K. Halliday, meaning is the most
important thing that makes a text a text; it has to make sense.
A text, in his view, is everything that is meaningful in a particul
ar situation. And the basis for meaning is choice (Halliday 1978:
137). Whenever I choose one thing rather than another from a
set of alternatives (yes or no, up or down, red or blue), I am
making meaning.(This thing is having some reason and purpose .If I
say no to anything.it means that I am not interested or I do not need
that thing.so we make meanings clear by our choices)

13. COHESION AND COHERENCE
• The main thing that makes a text a text is relationships or connections.
Sometimes these relationships are between words, sentences or other elem
ents inside the text. These kinds of relationships create what we refer to
as cohesion.(linked and connected text so that it becomes meaningful)
• Another kind of relationship exists between the text and the person who
is reading it or using it in some way. Here, meaning comes chiefly from the
background knowledge the person has about certain social conventions
regarding texts as well as the social situation in which the text is found an
d what the person wants to do with the text. This kind of relationship crea
tes what we call coherence.

14. Genre Analysis
Different patterns of texture are associated with different types of
texts. Newspaper articles, for example, tend to favor particular
kinds of cohesive devices and are structured in a conventional
way with a summary of the main points in the beginning and
with the details coming later.
To understand why such textual conventions are associated with
this type of text,
however, we need to understand something about the people
who produce and consume it and what they are doing with it.
The study of the social functions of different kinds of texts is
called genre analysis.

15. • Mitchell ( 1957 ) was one the first researchers to examine the
discourse structure of texts.
• He looked at the ways in which people order what they say in buying
and selling interactions. He looked at the overall structure of these
kinds of texts, introducing the notion of stages into discourse analysis;
that is the steps that language users go through as they carry out
particular interactions. His interest was more in the ways in which
interactions are organized at an overall textual level than the ways in
which language is used in each of the stages of a text.
Discourse Structure of texts

16. Some Instances of Texts
It’s the fact that all texts are basically instances of people doing things with
or to other people:
a newspaper article is an instance of someone informing someone else about
some recent event;
a recipe is an instance of someone instructing another person how to prepare
a particular kind of food;
and a job application letter is an instance of someone requesting that another
person give him or her a job. As Martin (1985: 250) points out, ‘genres are
how things get done, when language is used to accomplish them.’
Thus, the ways different kinds of texts are put together is inseparable from the
things the text is trying to ‘get done’ in a particular historical, cultural and
social context.

17. Discourse Communities
•
It should be clear by now that at the center of the concept of genre
is the idea of belonging. We produce and use genres not just in
order to get things done, but also to show ourselves to be members
of particular groups and to demonstrate that we are qualified to partici
pate in particular activities.
• Genres are always associated with certain groups of people that have
certain common goals and common ways of reaching these goals. Doctors
use medical charts
and prescriptions to do the work of curing people. Solicitors use contracts
and legal briefs to defend people’s rights.
• As a student, you and your teachers
use things like textbooks, handouts, PowerPoint presentations and
examinations .

18. Discourse Communities
• John Swales calls these groups discourse communities. In
his book Genre Analysis (1990) ,he describes a number of featur
es that define discourse communities, among which are that
they consist of ‘expert’ members whose job it is to socialize
new members into ‘how things are done’, that members have
ways of regularly communicating with and
providing feedback to one another, and that members tend to
share a certain vocabulary or ‘jargon’.

19. The objects of discourse analysis
• Discourse analysis (DA), or discourse studies, is the approaches to analyze
written, vocal, or sign language use, or any significant semiotic (the study of signs
and symbols and their use or interpretation).
• The objects of discourse analysis (discourse, writing, conversation,
communicative event) are variously defined in terms of coherent sequences of
sentences, propositions(a statement or assertion that expresses a judgment or
opinion),
• speech(the expression of or the ability to express thoughts and feelings by
articulate sounds), or turns-at-talk. Contrary to much of traditional linguistics,
discourse analysts not only study language use 'beyond the sentence boundary'
but also prefer to analyze 'naturally occurring' language use, not invented
examples.
• Text linguistics is a closely related field. The essential difference between
discourse analysis and text linguistics is that discourse analysis aims at revealing
socio-psychological characteristics of a person/persons rather than text structure.

20. TEXT AND DISCOURSE VS DA AND CDA
• What is the difference of text and discourse?
• A text is necessarily non-interactive while discourse is necessarily
interactive. Therefore, a text does not necessarily indicate an agent
whereas the agent is a crucial element in a discourse. This is the main
difference between text and discourse
• What is the difference between discourse analysis and critical
discourse analysis?
• Critical Discourse Analysis is a school of thought that tries to analyze
discourse critically. While DA is a general term, CDA is specific, to a
method, vision, set of tools which allow analyzing discourse in a
certain way. ...

21. TYPES OF DISCOURSE
• Generally, scholars talk about four main types of discourse:
• Argument or Persuasion,
• Narration,
• Exposition/Explanation,
• and Description.

22. Aim of Discourse Analysis
• The four primary aims of discourse are
• to persuade,
• to inform,
• to discover for one's own needs,
• and to create.
.

23. How is discourse analysis different from other
methods?
• Unlike linguistic approaches that focus only on the rules of language
use, discourse analysis emphasizes the contextual meaning of
language.
• It focuses on the social aspects of communication and the ways
people use language to achieve specific effects (e.g. to build trust, to
create doubt, to evoke emotions, or to manage conflict.

24. Questions investigated by Discourse Analysis:
• Who are the participants in the discourse?
• What is their relationship? •
• Are there differences in power or knowledge between the
participants?
• What are their goals ?
• What does the text mean?
• What knowledge of context is needed?

25. 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.

26. FINAL THOUGHT( CONCLUSION)
• Discourse analysis is widely for the study of usage of language in texts
and its contextual meaning. The various levels or dimensions of
discourse, such as sounds (intonation, etc.), Gestures, syntax, the lexicon,
style, rhetoric, meanings, speech acts, moves, strategies, turns, and other
aspects of interaction.
• Areas of written and spoken discourse looked at in language include
various feature of cohesion and coherence.
• DA can be used to study different situations and subjects. It allows public
relations researcher to uncover deeply held attitudes and perceptions
that are important in an organization’s image and communication
practices that might not be uncovered by any other methods.