SUBJECT DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

1. DISCOURSE ANALYSIS FOR LANGUAGE TEACHER
AT A DISTANCE EDUCATION MODE
SUBJECT:
DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
STUDENT:
KARINA PÉREZ SÁNCHEZ
TEACHER:
DOLORES ORTEGA ANDRADE

2. CONTENTS
1. What is Discourse Analysis?
1.1 A brief historical overview
1.2 Form and Function
1.3 Speech acts and discourse structures
1.4 The scope of discourse analysis
1.5 Spoken discourse: models of analysis
1.6 Conversations outside the classroom
1.7 Talk as a social activity
1.8 Written discourse
1.9 Text and interpretation
1.10 Larger pattern in text
1.11 Conclusion

3. 1. WHAT IS DISCOURSE ANALYSIS?
A piece of naturally occurring spoken, written, or signed
discourse identified for purposes of analysis. It is often a
language unit with a definable communicative function,
such as a conversation or a poster.

4. 1.1 A BRIEF HISTORICAL OVERVIEW
 Discourse analysis is concerned with the study of the relationship between language and the
contexts in which it is used.
 Discourse analysts study language in use: written texts of all kinds, and spoken data, from
conversation to highly institutionalized forms of talk.
 Harris was interested in the distribution of linguistic elements in extended texts, and the
links between the text and its social situation.
 Linguistic philosophers as Austin and Grice studied language as social action, reflected in
speech-act theory and the formulation of conversational maxims, alongside the emergence
of pragmatics.
 British discourse analysis was greatly influenced by M. A. K. Halliday's functional approach to
language, which in turn has connections with the Prague School of linguists.
 American Discourse: dominated by work within the ethno methodological tradition.
Research method of close observation of groups of people communicating in natural
setting.

5.  Discourse is work of text grammarians; written language.
 The Prague school of linguistics contribute to show the links between grammar and
discourse.
 Language above the sentence and an interest in the contexts and cultural influences which
affect language in use.
 Discourse analysis increasingly, forming a backdrop to research in Applied Linguistics, and
second language learning and teaching in particular.
 Discourse analysis is not entirely separate from the study of grammar and phonology,

6. 1.2 FORM AND FUNCTION
• Discourse analysis is not entirely separate from the study of grammar and phonology.
• Language forms and discourse functions; once we have made this distinction a lot of other
conclusions can follow, and the labels used to describe discourse need not clash at all with
those we are all used to in grammar.
• 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.
1.3 SPEECH ACTS AND DISCOURSE STRUCTURES
 The approach to communicative language teaching that emphasizes the functions or speech
acts that pieces of language perform overlaps in an important sense with the preoccupations
of discourse analysts.
 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.

7. 1.4 THE SCOPE OF DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
 Discourse analysis is not a discipline which exists on its own. It is influenced by
other disciplines and influences them as well.
 discourse analysis examines spoken and written texts from all sorts of different
areas.
1.5 SPOKEN DISCOURSE: MODELS OF ANALYSIS
• Birmingham: discourse in school classrooms, has connections with the study of
speech acts.
• Question and answer sequence can be called a transaction, captures the feeling of
what is being done with language.
• In questions and answer forms there are exchanges that consist of three moves:
opening move, answering move, and a follow-up move.

8. 1.6 Conversations outside the classroom
o The classroom is a peculiar place where teachers ask questions and students know the
answers. Exchange conversations in class limit students responses to the assessment applied
by teachers.
o Vary in “real world” the structures used in the conversations.
o Rank scale can be expressed as follows.
o Sinclair and Coulthard's model is very useful for analyzing patterns of interaction where talk
is relatively tightly structured,
1.7 Talk as a social activity
• Talk is more casual, and among equals everyone will have a part to play in controlling and
monitoring the discourse.
• Turn-taking rights are exercised, with people taking turns at talk when they feel they have the
right to say something.

9. 1.8 WRITTEN DISCOURSE
• Writer has usually had time to think about what to say and how to say it, and the sentences
are usually well formed.
• Insights of written discourse analysis might be applicable, in specifiable ways, to language
teaching.
• grammar of English offers a limited set of options for creating surface links between the
clauses and sentences of a text, otherwise known as cohesion.
1.9 TEXT AND INTERPRETATION
• Cohesive markers créate links across sentence boundaries and pair and chain together items
that are related.
• Interpretation can be seen as a set of procedures and the approach to the analysis of texts
that emphasizes the mental activities involved in interpretation can be broadly called
procedural.
• Patterns in text reoccur time and time again and become deeply ingrained as part of our
cultural knowledge.
• 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, instrument-achievement and suchlike is a clause-relational approach.

10. 1.10 LARGER PATTERN IN TEXT
• Sequence of relations forms a problem-solution pattern, and problem-solution patterns are
extremely common in texts.
• 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.
1.11 CONCLUSION
Discourse analysis is a vast subject area within linguistics, encompassing as it does the analysis
of spoken and written language over and above concerns such as the structure of the clause or
sentence.

11. THANK YOU
FOR YOUR ATTENTION