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Discourse analysis
1.
What is discourse? It is
written or spoken
_______.
A. Words
B. Sentences
C. Paragraphs
D. Communication
What is discourse analysis? It is a
study of _______.
A. Lexicon and
syntax
B. Cohesive devices
C. Language in context and
situated use
D. Accumulation of words
and sentences
What’s discourse?
• It means either written or spoken communication.
• This term describes a coherent piece of spoken and/or written
language in a specific context. A discourse may be a whole text
(for example, a personal letter or an entire conversation), or it
may be part of a text that conveys related meanings (for
example, several exchanges, within a dialogue ...
• Discourse is a contiguous stretch of language comprising more
than one sentence (text) or utterance (speech).
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What is meant by "discourse analysis"?
• Discourse analysis is the examination of language use by members of a
speech community.
• It involves looking at both language form and language function and
includes the study of both spoken interaction and written texts.
• It identifies linguistic features that characterize different genres as well as
social and cultural factors that aid in our interpretation and understanding
of different texts and types of talk.
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What is meant by "discourse analysis"?
“The analysis of discourse is necessarily, the analysis of language
in use. As such, it cannot be restricted to the description of
linguistic forms independent of the purposes or functions which
those forms are designed to serve in human affairs.” (Brown an
Yule, 1983:1).
“…one must learn more than just the pronunciation, the lexical
items, the appropriate word order,…one must also learn the
appropriate way to use those words and sentences in the second
language.” (Gass and Selinker, 1994:182)
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The study of discourse has developed in a variety of
disciplines.
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Sociolinguistics
Anthropology
Cultural studies
Psychology
Communications
Sociology
Geography
Human-computer interaction
Law
Medicine
Public policy
Business
Tourism studies
Discourse analysis takes different
theoretical perspectives and analytic
approaches. Although each approach
emphasizes different
aspects of language use, they all
view language as social interaction.
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What is meant by "discourse
analysis"?
Analysis of
language in
use
Discourse
Analysis
what the
language is
used for
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Types of discourse analysis
Among the different disciplines there are different types or
styles to do discourse analysis.
• Linguistic analysis
It’s more explicit and sistematic.
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/An%C3%A1lisis_del_discurso
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Topics considered include:
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Reference
Coherence
Cohesion
Connectors
Substitution
Text types (genre, function, organization and style)
Spoken discourse
Analyse language in context
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Discourse Analysis
• It is impossible to analyse or understand a discourse without taking the
whole text, context.
For instance:
Victor:
Oh! Thanks a lot!
Clarence:
Oh dear! I'm so sorry! I'm so sorry! I'm
really sorry about that.
It is hard to understand what happened between the two from the conversation
alone.
The whole conversation becomes reasonable when we know the context, and
interpret the use of language above and beyond the sentences.