Computational
Models of
Discourse Analysis
Carolyn Penstein Rosé
Language Technologies Institute/
Human-Computer Interaction Institute
Warm-Up
Look at my analysis (which includes an
overview and a table with the 42 questions)
 Notice which rows and columns various
kinds of observations are placed in
 Evaluate the validity of the analysis in terms
of:

 Convergence,
details
Agreement, Coverage, Linguistic
Review
Building Tasks

According to Gee’s theory, whenever we speak
or write, we are constructing 7 areas of reality

What we build: Significance, Practices,
Identities, Relationships, Politics, Connections,
Sign systems and knowledge
How we build them: Social languages, Socially
situated identities, Discourses, Conversations,
Figured worlds, intertextuality

Evaluating Validity (p123-124)

Note that an analysis is an argument, not just a bottom up “laundry
list” of answers to 42 questions.

Convergence


To what extent do your answers to the 42 questions offer consistent
support for your hypothesis
Agreement

Face Validity: do members of the discourse community you are studying
agree with your analysis
 Interrater-reliability: do multiple analysts agree with your analysis

Coverage


To what extent is your “model” generalizable to more data than what you
specifically looked at or discussed?
Linguistic Details

To what extent is the analysis tied to evidence from specific form-function
correspondences that native speakers agree exist?
Form-Function Correspondence
Range of meanings for the word “sustainability”
Discourse
Environmentalism
Socially Situated Identity
Environmentalist
Social Language
Liberal rhetoric
Figured World
Expected structure of
Conservationist Commercial
Situated Meaning
Meaning of “sustainability” in the commercial
Imagine an environmentalist
commercial
Conversation
Global Warming
Discourse
StatusQuo
Building Tasks







Significance: things and people made more or less significant through
the text
Practices: ritualized activities and how are they being enacted
through the text (for example, lecturing or mentoring)
Identities: manner in which things and people are being cast in a role
through the text
Relationships: style of social relationship, like level of formality
Politics: how “social goods” are being distributed, who is responsible
for the flow, where is it going
Connections: connections and disconnections between things and
people, e.g., what ideas are related, how are things causally
connected, what is affecting what?
Sign Systems and Knowledge: languages, social languages, and
ways of knowing, what ways of communicating and knowing are
treated as standard and acceptable in the context, e.g., that you’re
expected to speak in English in class
Systemic Functional
Linguistics
How is it similar to and different from James Gee’s approach?
What do form-function correspondences look like?
Systemic Functional
Linguistics
“Discourse analysis employs the tools of
grammarians to identify the roles of wordings
in passages of text, and employs the tools of
social theorists to explain why they make the
meanings they do.”
What is a system?
Metafunctions
What is the analogy between
this flag and discourse analysis?

The colors clearly have social significance,
but not everyone would attribute the same
meaning to each color.
Questions?