American Journal of Multidisciplinary Research & Development (AJMRD)

Volume 2, Issue 12 (December- 2020), PP 09-11

ISSN: 2360-821X
www.ajmrd.com

Research Paper Open Access

Discourse Analysis: Way of Dealing Written and Spoken

Discourse
Uzma Akram1
1
Department of English Language and Literature, University of Lahore, Sargodha Pakistan

ABSTRACT: This article discusses the discourse analysis as a way of dealing written and spoken discourse.
Discourse can be described in two deferent ways i.e. written and spoken. Both domains differ in manner of
production, representation and form. There are two main pillars of discourse. First, a language beyond
sentences. Second, meaning and the language in context. Three main approaches are discusses to analyse the
discourse: Formal linguistics discourse analysis, empirical discourse analysis and critical discourse analysis.
Critical discourse analysis deals with the social injustices in written or verbal form while conversation analysis
only deals with spoken mode because it follows social activity completed by talk.

Keywords – CDA, CA, Discourse Analysis, Spoken Discourse, Written Discourse

I. INTRODUCTION
Language is a system of thoughts and thoughts take place within a mental language. Apart from all the
assumptions made by various studies that either language is utilized to express thoughts or language structures
thoughts. There is no such thing as well-known fact, as truth and learning rely upon authentic historical and
cultural data. This means when a few people talk about militants, others may discuss them as freedom fighters.
Psychological oppressor implies an individual who participates in fear mongering and opportunity contender
implies an individual who use savagery to expel an administration from power. One is negative, yet alternate
has a positive significance. One is negative, but the other has a positive meaning. Differences in ideas about
truth/knowledge such as these words are often caused by differences in social and historical situations. The
duality of meaning or the meaning hidden within the words or sentences both in written and spoken languages is
the main area of interest in the study of discourse analysis.
The modern-day research identifies discourse analysis (aka DA) as a multidisciplinary method of
analyzing languages beyond sentences or with in lines. The aim is to drain out dominant discourses which help
the researchers to know how realities are socially constructed through a language. Defining the
multidisciplinary nature of discourse analysis, McCarthy, (1991, P. 6) [1] pointed out that “discourse analysis
grew out of works in different disciplines, including linguistics, semiotics, psychology, anthropology, and
sociology”. Discourse analysis aims to understand the interaction in language by focusing on the coherent
schema of texts analysis in order to make it helpful for the researchers to grasp the meaning from different
perspectives because language has been studied in other disciplines by focusing on just words and sentences,
but this field of linguistics focuses on enabling the practitioners to go deep within the lines and protract the
thinner ideologies that are not uttered through the words.
Coherence is an integral property of DA which may vary to a certain degree in light of the fact that the
way toward the interpretation of meaning is incompletely impacted by each individual reader's understanding
power, knowledge, experience, background, and social context. Coulthard, (2014, P. 25) [2] introduces the
statement of Firth: “language is fundamentally a way of behaving and making others behave and therefore
ultimately the linguist must concern himself with the verbal process in the context of situation”. Similarly,
McCarthy, (1991, P. 7) [1] concluded in his paper that discourse analysis is “a wide-ranging discipline which
finds its unity in the description of language above the sentence and interest in the contexts and cultural
influences which affect language in use”.

II. SPOKEN OR WRITTEN?

Moreover, the beauty of this field of study lies not only in its physicality with a language use but when
it touches the real soul of a language and find out what is really conveyed in a context through a discourse both
written or spoken. A discourse is described in two ways by Schiffrin, (1994) [3] that discourse is amenable to
functionalist approach because this approach deals both with form and function of language in comparison to its

Multidisciplinary Journal www.ajmrd.com Page | 9

 Discourse Analysis: Way of Dealing Written and Spoken Discourse

counterpart structuralism (which rather take care of the form of a language). According to Yule and Brown,
(1983) [4] written and spoken medium of discourse differ in manner of production, representation and form. In
terms of production speaker has available to him full range of ‘voice quality’ effects and he has to monitor the
demands of his production with his intentions. Simultaneously, he has to plan his next utterance and fitting that
to overall pattern of discourse while having no permanent record of what he has said earlier. The writer, on
contrary, can look over what he has already written, without pressure of keep going, have time to choose
particular word, reorder and even can change his mind about ideas.
A text may be presented differently in different editions, with different type-face, on different sizes of
paper and in one or two columns. While spoken texts, what Yue and Brown call it, can be best preserved in tape
recording of communicative act. Although, it can also preserve some extraneous factors as, coughing, chairs
creaking, buses going by; but do not constitute part of text. Similarly, Parker, (1992) [5] defined discourse as a
set of statements which construct an object. And these discourses can be found in pictures, texts, and talks.
Moreover, a discourse can be also defined as; anything beyond sentences, the language in use and a boarder
range of social practice that includes non-linguistics and non-specific instances of languages.

III. MAIN PILLARS OF DISCOURSE

It is utmost necessary to comprehend “discourse” in terms of its main pillars; firstly, a language beyond
sentences: the relation between the words and action. Sometimes there is more than words we read and listen.
The human doesn’t speak/comprehend a coded language. They either communicate more than the definitions of
our words would suggest. And we decode more than the words spoken to us. This is an inferential
communication, and it implies that we comprehend the words expressed, as well as the setting in which they are
produced. Human language is increasingly ambiguous in correlation with its partner creatures. A human can
adjust in an alien place without being acquainted with the language spoken around but acknowledge the
surrounding by perceiving and making inferences based on the context. Similarly, discourse analysis is an
important tool in unveiling these hidden meaning within a discourse.
Secondly, meaning and the language in context: meaning is created not just through what speakers
communicate to one another yet in addition through what they do with words to fulfill the necessities of their
social condition. Meaning includes phonetic and situational factors where the setting of language use is
fundamental. This relevant utilization of a language is the thing that makes a language e unique to us. Context
means a variety of things. A context/setting can be semantic, including the etymological condition of a language
in use, and situational including additional phonetic components that help in the construction of meaning.
Discourse analysis forefronts a language in use as a social activity, an arranged execution, language use as
concerned with social relations and personalities, power, disparity and social struggle, language use as basically
a matter of "rehearses" as opposed to simply "structures", and so on." Social practice is reflected through a
language behavior too.

IV. APPROACHES TO DA
There are three main approaches to discourse analysis described by Hodges et al. (2008) [6]: Formal
linguistic discourse analysis; it is more descriptive and happens mostly in the field of sociolinguistics. The
sample resources for this type of approach would be written or oral languages and texts. This type of approach
is mainly involved in microanalysis of linguistics, grammatical, semantic uses, and meaning of texts. On the
other hand the Empirical discourse analysis is mainly an approach defined to be helpful in conversation analysis
and genre analysis. The sources for this type of approach would be the samples of the oral and written language
texts and data take place in a social setting. It helps in analyzing the micro and macro ways in which languages
and texts construct social realities. The third and final one is Critical discourse analysis which is an explicitly
issue-oriented critical approach which mainly focuses on the relation between discourse and society to uncover
the abuse of power. The sample for CDA must be written, oral language, texts, and data on the uses of the text
in the social setting, data on the situations of induvial who produces and are produced by the language texts.
CDA is the macro analysis of how discourses (in many forms) are constructed.

V. CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

Moreover, critical discourse analysis covers all the other aspects of discourse such as grammar, style,
rhetoric, speech acts, music, films, and conversations. Critical Discourse analysis aims to find out the injustice
or ideologies hidden or conveyed in the language used by a specific group (such as; elites) in texts or verbal
communications. Analyzing a discourse through the lens of CDA is not an easy task and it requires special
expertise in this field as Dijk (1995, P. 19) [7] stated “theoretically and descriptively we need to explore which
structures and strategies of text and talk to attend to in order to discover pattern of elite dominance or
manipulation in texts, CDA must be focusing on the morally legitimate forms of discursive mind control by the

Multidisciplinary Journal www.ajmrd.com Page | 10

 Discourse Analysis: Way of Dealing Written and Spoken Discourse

powerful, a successful CDA must be effective: its conclusion, recommendations, and other practical
interventions must work”

VI. DISCOURSE ANALYSIS VS CONVERSATION ANALYSIS

Text and conversation are two main genres the discourse analysis deals within. Text linguistics studies
how discourse is structured within a text and discourse analysis tells us how this discourse relates to a social or
cultural context and the actors. For a reader, it is important to identify what to delineate as a situation and what
to make as metal context for meaningful interpretation of the text. In conversational discourse analysis, the
discourse analysis tries to uncover what has said and what has perceived (the relation between the speaker and
listener). Conversational Analysis (aka, CA), is more related to the spoken discourse because it comprehends
social activity as accomplished through the mode of talk in communication. Empirical discourse analysis comes
in to play when CA requires interpretation of spoken discourse. But the thing that apart CA from DA is its
intense love for the speaker. CA will be always found beside the speaker and analyzing what the speaker says in
a proper context. CA had created its place in a wide range of disciplines such as sociology, linguistics, business
administration, psychology and so on. In addition, CA, on one hand, guides us that a language can be analyzed
by looking at how we perform interpersonal activities and how these activities are sorted out socially while DA,
on the other hand, takes in account that description can't be treated as impartial portrayals of a target social
reality. Moreover, CA focuses on the design and location of utterances while DA deals in explicit
conversational exercises and the sequential context. In conversation analysis, the researchers usually hear the
interaction and then transcribed it to text for further analysis.

VII. CONCLUSION
Sometimes it is not important what is heard or read but what is conveyed and perceived. Speaker and
writer have the guts to play with words. And readers unequipped with coherent understanding to interpret
conversations and discourses may not be able to get the real meaning hidden within the text or speech.
Discourse analysis is a field of study fully furnished with such abilities to unveil the truth with the help of
certain tools such as formal linguistics discourse analysis, empirical discourse analysis, critical discourse
analysis, conversational analysis, and so on focusing mainly on the relationship between language use in social
contexts and to crack practice of power abuse in languages both in text and verbal communication.

VIII. ACKNOWLEDGMENT
I want to thank and appreciate my husband’s support he gave me in the publication of this work.

REFERENCES
[1]. McCarthy, M. Discourse analysis for language teachers (Cambridge University Press, 1991).
[2]. Coulthard, M. An introduction to discourse analysis (Routledge, 2014).
[3]. Schiffrin, D., Tannen, D., & Hamilton, H. E. (Eds.) The handbook of discourse analysis (p. 54).
(Oxford: Blackwell, 2001).
[4]. Brown, G., Brown, G. D., Brown, G. R., Gillian, B., & Yule, G. Discourse analysis. (Cambridge
university press, 1983).
[5]. Parker, I. Discourse dynamics: critical analysis for social and individual psychology (London:
Routledge, 1992).
[6]. Hodges, B. D., Kuper, A., & Reeves, S, Discourse analysis. Bmj, 337, a879. 2008
[7]. Van Dijk, T. A, Aims of critical discourse analysis. Japanese discourse, 1(1), 17-28.

Multidisciplinary Journal www.ajmrd.com Page | 11