• Discourse analysis (DA), or discourse studies, is a general term for a number of approaches to analyze written, vocal, or sign language use.
• The objects of discourse analysis—discourse, writing, conversation, communicative event—are variously defined in terms of coherent sequences of sentences, propositions, speech, or turns-at-talk. Contrary to much of traditional linguistics, discourse analysts not only study language use 'beyond the sentence boundary', but also prefer to analyze 'naturally occurring' language use, and not invented examples.

• The principal concern of AL is the study of language in use as a goal of education, a means of education and an instrument of social change.
• Discourse analysis enables the applied linguist to analyze and understand real language data i.e texts written by first /second language learners or recordings of language produced by L1 and L2 speakers, interaction between the teachers and learners or among learners themselves.
• The analyses of interactions such as service encounters that students might be exposed to can help language teachers and material writers to evaluate language course books in terms of how close they are to authentic language. The analyses can also reveal what needs to be modified.

1. Sociology--- -------Conversational analysis
2. Sociolinguistics--- Ethnography
• Interactional sociolinguistics
• Variation theory
3. Philosophy -----Speech act theory
• Pragmatics
4. Linguistics--- Structural/ functional---Birmingham school
• --- Systemic functional linguistics
• ----Critical discourse analysis
5. Artificial intelligence

Conversation analysis is a popular approach to the study of discourse. Conversation analysis (CA) is a method for investigating the structure and process of social interaction between humans. It is a way of thinking about and analyzing the pragmatics of ordinary conversation, focusing on the interactive, practical construction of everyday interchanges.

• Turn , Turn-taking and Overlaps
• Floor Management and Backchannels
• Preference Structure and Adjacency pairs
• Conversation openings and closings
• Topic shifting and progression in a conversation

• A “turn” is each occasion someone speaks and ends when another person takes over in a certain conversation. “Turn-talking” is when another person starts speaking in a conversation. “Overlaps” occur when speakers talk at the same time and interrupts each other.
• During a conversation speakers are permitted to take their turns or they are nominated by others. CA refers to this type of selection as “speakers selections.

Caller: if you use your long distance service a lot then you’ll
Mary : uh-uh
Caller: be interested in the discount I’m talking about because
Mary : Yeah
Caller: it can only save you money to switch to a cheaper service
Mary : mmm
• These type of signal (‘uh-uh’, ’yeah’, ’mmm’) provide feedback to the current speaker that the message is being received. They normally indicate that the listener is following, and not objecting to, what speaker is saying.

A: How are you?
B: I’m fine. Thank you.

• When an adjacency pair is governed by the socio-cultural contexts e.g., a greeting gets a greeting back. Preference sequence divides second parts into preferred and dispreferred social acts. The preferred is the structurally expected next act The dispreferred is the structurally unexpected next act.
How is my new suit?
• Preferred: It is so nice.
• Dispreferred: It is old-fashioned.

• Topic refers to what is talked about and how this is talked about across turns. A topic will tend to relate to what has been said previously. A gap between turns usually signals the end of a topic.
• Discourse topic represents an essential level of organization in discourse. Topics play a major role in the establishment of discourse coherence.

• The strength of this approach is that it is always based on actual recorded data i.e
naturally occurring interactions that are well transcribed. This approach has always rejected experimental methods of collecting conversational data such as simulating dialogues or setting up artificial interactive contexts.
• The implication of this for language teachers is that language teachers should be given access to authentic spoken extracts because most examples in textbooks do not resemble real conversation at all.

• Anthropological linguistics and sociolinguistics are concerned with studying not the isolated sentences but how language creates effective communication in the context of everyday life.
• Ethnography: this approach was led by Hymes (1972). It is concerned with situation and uses of patterns and functions of speaking as an activity in its own right. For
Hymes a speaking situation consist of the following elements.
• This framework helped in the recognition of the close relationship between speech events and their social or cultural contexts.

• S Setting – temporal and physical /circumstances
• P Participant :speaker/sender/addressor  hearer/receiver/audience/addressee
• E Ends: purposes and goals  Outcomes
• A Act sequence:  message form and content
• K Key  tone /manner
• I Instrumentalities channel (verbal and non verbal; physical forms of speech drawn from community repertoires .
• N Norms of interaction and interpretation specific properties attached to speaking -- interpretation of norms within cultural belief system .
• G Genre textual categories.

• Variation theory : This theory was developed by Labov (1972) and has contributed a lot to discourse analysis. He describes the structure of spoken narratives which has been very influential in language teaching.
• Labov notes the following as the overall structure of a fully formed narrative of personal experience.
Abstract (summary of story with its points)
Orientation (place /time and situation)
Compilation ( temporal sequence of events, culminating in a crisis)
Evaluation (narrator’s attitude towards narrative)
Resolution (protagonist’s approach to crisis
Coda (point about narrative as a whole)

• Birmingham school discourse analysis, though not normally referred to as genre analysis, in fact is so; Sinclair and Coulthard’s (1975) original account of classroom discourse in terms of social purposes, macro-structure, lexico-grammatical choice, etc. is a notable example.
• In this type of class, knowledge was typically transmitted by pupils answering the teacher’s questions. The analysis of the data led to the building of a typical classroom exchange structure known as IRF. Initiation - Response- Feedback.

• I: Good Morning pupils what is the color of the blackboard
• R: Black
• F: Very good
• Sinclair and Coulthard (1975) also proposed the organisation of a lesson in levels- A rank scale.

• The Sinclair and Coulthard model was devised in 1975 and slightly revised in 1992. It, like Halliday’s model, is also a rank scale model and consists of five ranks. These are
‘lesson; transaction; exchange; move and act, and these are related to one another in a
‘"consists of" relationship.’ Willis (1992: 112). The ranks are hierarchical in nature with
lesson being the largest unit and act being the smallest. A number of these exchanges combine to make transactions, which combine to make the lesson.

• SFL and Critical Discourse Analysis are essentially concerned with describing the relationship between language, text and social life. The functional descriptions of language try to explain the nature and organization of language according to what it has to do (McCarthy 2002:66).
• For example, (Excuse me, do you know the way to---?). This serves the function of asking for direction. The central concern of SFL is on the analysis of texts considered in relationship to the social context in which they occur especially spoken discourse.

• This is concerned with the relationship between language ideology and power
(Fairclough (1992). This approach is influenced by Halliday’s Systemic Linguistics.
McCarthy notes that genres in critical discourse analysis are seen as social actions occurring within particular social and historical context.
• What distinguishes critical discourse analysis (CDA) in its approach to language and power is that it:

• For example, in Searle’s speech act theory “having the authority to do so” is one of the felicity conditions for issuing an order; in Brown and Levinson’s politeness theory, difference in power between speaker and hearer is one of the factors in choosing a strategy to manage a face threatening act; and the mere fact that most forms of discourse analysis invoke, in one way or another, the relationship between language use and social structure ensures that issues of power must always be on the agenda.

• It aims to lay bare the “hidden effects of power,” the kind of effects which may stigmatize the vulnerable, exclude the marginal, naturalize privilege and, through the simple contrivance of presenting ideology as common sense, define the terms of reference of political debate and subvert resistance.
• It concerns itself with issues of identity, dominance and resistance, and with seeking out evidence in text – especially (to date) media and advertising texts, and political documents and speeches – of class, gender, ethnic and other kinds of bias.

one of the goals of education and discourse is to acculturate children to new registers and genres – both spoken and written. Discourse will help them to develop their communicative competencies.

• Take 10 Min.
• Read and Summarize

• Discourse analysts try to take note of patterning in language use and the circumstances surrounding such patterns (in terms of participants, situations, purposes, outcomes) of events associated with the language use
• Discourse analysis is a multidisciplinary field and has diversity of interests
• McCarthy et al (2002:59) note that discourse analysts come from a number of different academic disciplines and the field is a wide one

• Conversation analysis is concerned with the detailed organisation of everyday interaction
• McCarthy et al. notes that anthropological linguistics and sociolinguistics are concerned with studying not the isolated sentences but how language creates effective communication in the context of everyday life
• Nowadays, people are aware of the significance of discourse in language teaching, reading and writing, intonation and spoken language and for evaluation of students’ communicative competence
• The analyses of interactions can help language teachers and material writers to evaluate language course books in terms of how close they are to authentic language