This document summarizes discourse analysis, which is the study of language use in context. It looks at both spoken and written interaction and considers linguistic and non-linguistic factors. Spoken discourse follows patterns of interaction like turn-taking and adjacency pairs. Written discourse allows more planning but relies on cohesion, coherence, and signaling relationships between clauses and paragraphs. Discourse analysis takes an interdisciplinary approach drawing from linguistics, psychology, anthropology, and other fields to understand how language functions in different social settings and contexts.

1. Discourse Analysis
by
Michael McCarthy
Elizabeth Ruiz

2. Harris and Austin.
British discourse with K. Halliday
American discourse Dell Hymes
Conversation analysis
Linguistics, semiotics,
psychology,
anthropology and
sociology.
Interdisciplinary
approach
Study of the relationship
between language
and the contexts
in which it is used
Study of spoken
and
written interaction

3. Factors: linguistic, purely
situational and non-
linguistic
Non-linguistic Factors:
intonation -tone contour, pitch
level, hesitations, gestures.
Form and Function
Doing with the language
(e.g. requesting,
instructing)
FUNCTIONS
SPEECH ACTS
Role of participants
Role of settings

4. SPOKEN LANGUAGE
• Framing move: right, okay, so,
• An exchange: question-
answer-comment (Transaction)
• Patterns: opening –answering
and follow-up move (initiation,
response, follow-up)
• Structured situation and
predictable situations such as
in the classroom

5. Patterns of interaction
Speech acts:
elicitations, replies,
comments
How people behave and
how they cooperate in the
management of discourse
Adjacency
pairs,
turn-taking,
conversational
openings
and closings,
acts of
politeness

6. WRITTEN DISCOURSE
Writers have time to think
about to say and how to
say it, sentences are
usually well formed
in a way that the utterances
of natural spontaneous talk
are not.
• It is possible to find regularities
• In paragraphs and their progression of the
whole text. Links cohesion
(pronominalization, ellipsis and
conjunctions).
• Coherence is the feeling that a text
hangs together, that it makes sense
• Assume cause-effect relationship

7. • Depends on what we as readers bring
to the text as what the author puts into
• A set of procedures and the approach
of analysis
• Role of the readers and their
experience + activate knowledge to
make inferences and constantly asses
their interpretations
• Textural patterns= illocutionary acts
• Textual segments: a clause, sometimes
a sentence, sometimes a whole
paragraph
TEXT AND INTERPRETATION
Phenomenon-reason relationship
Clause-relational
approach
Logical sequence relations
Logical sequencing and matching
are the two basic categories of the
clause-relational approach.
Texts often contain strong clues or
signals. Relationships
between segments
Supporting evidence (deducing
relations)

8. LARGER PATTERNS
IN TEXTS
• Situation-problem-
response-evaluation of
the response
• Problem-solution pattern
• Conjunctions: signaling
devices signposting the
text
FOR TEACHERS:
Teacher should learn to
evaluate their input and
output in the teaching /
learning process