Discourse Analysis

Discourse analysis, is an approach to the analysis of

language that looks at patterns of language in texts as well as the social
and cultural contexts in which the texts occur.
• Discourse analysis examines patterns of language across texts and
considers the relationship between language and the social and
cultural contexts in which it is used. Discourse analysis also considers
the ways that the use of language presents different views of the
world and different understandings. It examines how the use of
language is influenced by relationships between participants as well
as the effects the use of language has upon social identities and
relations. It also considers how views of the world, and identities, are
constructed through the use of discourse.
• The term discourse analysis was first introduced by Zellig Harris ( 1952
) as a way of analyzing 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.
• Discourses, he argued, not only share particular meanings, they also
have characteristic linguistic features associated with them. What
these meanings are and how they are realized in language is of
central interest to the area of discourse analysis.
The relationship between language and
context
•
By ‘the relationship between linguistic and non-linguistic behaviour’
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 .
Van Dijik says that it is not the social situation that influences (or is
influenced by) discourse, but the way the participants define (original
emphasis)’ the situation in which the discourse occurs (van
Dijk 2008 : x). In his view, contexts are not objective conditions but
rather (inter)subjective constructs that are constantly updated by
participants in their interactions with each other as members of groups
or communities.
• Discourse analysis, then, is interested in ‘what happens when people
use the knowledge they have about language . . . to do things in the
world’ (Johnstone 2002 : 3). It is, thus, the analysis of language in use.
Discourse analysis considers the relationship between language and
the contexts in which it is used and is concerned with the description
and analysis of both spoken and written interactions. Its primary
purpose, as Chimombo and Roseberry ( 1998 ) argue, is to provide a
deeper understanding and appreciation of texts and how they
become meaningful to their users.
The 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, and what they say next
and so on in a conversation or in a piece of writing. This is something that
varies across cultures and is by no means the same
across languages. An email, for example, to me from a Japanese academic
or a member of the administrative staff at a Japanese university may start
with reference to the weather saying immediately after Dear Professor
Paltridge something like Greetings! It’s such a beautiful day today here in
Kyoto. I, of course, may also say this in an email to an overseas colleague
but is it not a ritual requirement in English, as it is in Japanese
• 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 carryout 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. Mitchell discusses how language is used as,
what he calls, co-operative action and how the meaning of language lies in
the situational context in which it is used and in
the context of the text as a whole.
• Other researchers have also investigated recurring patterns in spoken
interactions, although in a somewhat different way from Mitchell and others
following in that tradition. Researchers working in the area known as
conversation analysis have looked at how people open and close
conversations and how people take turns and overlap their speech in
conversations, for example. They have looked at casual conversations, chat,
as well as doctor–patient consultations, psychiatric interviews and
interactions in legal settings. Their interest, in particular, is in fine-grained
analyses of spoken interactions such as the use of overlap, pauses,
increased volume and pitch and what these reveal about how people relate
to each other in what they are saying and doing with language.
Cultural ways of speaking and writing
•
Different cultures often have different ways of doing things through
language. This is something that was explored by Hymes ( 1964 )
through the notion of the ethnography of communication.. In
particular, he considered aspects of speech events such as who is
speaking to whom, about what, for what purpose, where and when,
and how these impact on how we say and do things in culture-specific
settings
Discourse as the social construction of
reality
• The view of discourse as the social construction of reality see texts as
communicative units which are embedded in social and cultural
practices. The texts we write and speak both shape and are shaped by
these practices. Discourse, then, is both shaped by the world as
well as shaping the world. Discourse is shaped by language as well as
shaping language. It is shaped by the people who use the language as
well as shaping the language that people us. Discourse is also shaped
by the medium in which it occurs as well as it shapes the possibilities
for that medium. The purpose of the text also influences the
discourse.
• words in isolation are not the issue. It is in discourse – the use of
language in specific contexts –that words acquire meaning.
Whenever people argue about words, they are also arguing about the
assumptions and values that have clustered around those words in
the course of their history of being used. We cannot understand the
significance of any word unless we attend closely to its relationship to
other words and to the discourse (indeed, the competing discourses)
in which words are always embedded.And we must bear in mind that
discourse shifts and changes constantly, which is why arguments
about words and their meanings are never settled once and for all.
• As Firth argued ‘the complete meaning of a word is always contextual’
(Firth 1935 : 37).
These meanings, however, change over time in relation to particular
contexts of use and
changes in the social, cultural and ideological background/s to this
use.
Discourse and socially 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. The way we dress, the
gestures we use and the way/s we act and interact also influence how
we display social identity. Other factors which influence this include the
ways we think, the attitudes we display and the things we value, feel
and believe. As Gee ( 2011 ) argues, the ways we make visible and
recognizable who we are and what we are doing always involves more
than just language. It involves acting, interacting and thinking in certain
ways. It also involves valuing and talking (or reading and writing) in
appropriate ways at appropriate times and in appropriate places.
• Discourses, then, involve the socially situated identities that we enact and
recognize in the different settings that we interact in. They include culture-
specific ways of performing and culture-specific ways of recognizing
identities and activities. Discourses also include
the different styles of language that we use to enact and recognize these
identities; that is, different social languages (Gee 1996 ). Discourses also
involve characteristic ways of acting, interacting and feeling, and
characteristic ways of showing emotion, gesturing, dressing
and posturing. They also involve particular ways of valuing, thinking,
believing, knowing, speaking and listening, reading and writing (Gee
2011 ).
Discourse and performance
• This notion of performance and, in particular, performativity, is taken
up by authors such as Butler ( 1990 , 1991, 1997 , 1999 , 2004 ),
Cameron ( 1999 ), Eckert and McConnell-Ginet ( 2003 ), Hall ( 2000 )
and Pennycook ( 2004 , 2007 ). The notion of performativity derives
from speech act theory and the work of the linguistic philosopher
Austin. It is based on the view that in saying something, we do it
(Cameron and Kulick 2003 )
Discourse and intertextuality
• All texts, whether they are spoken or written, make their meanings against
the background of other texts and things that have been said on other
occasions (Lemke 1992 ). Texts may more or less implicitly or explicitly cite
other texts; they may refer to other texts, or they may allude to other past,
or future, texts. We thus ‘make sense of every word, every utterance, or
act against the background of (some) other words, utterances, acts of a
similar kind’ (Lemke 1995 : 23). All texts are, thus, in an intertextual
relationship with other texts. As Bazerman ( 2004 : 83) argues:
We create our texts out of the sea of former texts that surround us, the sea
of language we live in. And we understand the texts of others within that
same sea.
• People ‘are who they are because of (among other
things) the way they talk’ not ‘because of who they (already) are’
(Cameron 1999 : 144). We, thus, ‘are not who we are because of
some inner being but because of what we do’ (Pennycook
2007 : 70). It is, thus, ‘in the doing that the identity is produced’
(Pennycook 2011).
Social identities, then, are not pre-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.