Name : Risqi Sugiarti
SRN
: 2201410006
Rombel: 3 (101-102)
Topics in Applied Linguistics
SUMMARY OF DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
Discourse analysis in applied linguistics is originated in an awareness of the
inability of formal linguistics to account for how participants in communication
achieve meaning.

Discourse can be defined as a stretch of language in use, of any length and
in any mode, which achieves meaning and coherence for those involved.

Discourse analysis can be defined as the use and development of theories
and methods which elucidate how this meaning and coherence is achieved.
DA concerned not only with language but also a wide range of approches to
language beyond linguistics such as pragmatics, schema theory, conversation
analysis, ethnography, semiotics, multimodal analysis, literary theory, rhetoric,
genre analysis, and social theory.
Early AL DA

In the 1950s DA was understood in theoretical structural linguistics as the
potential extension of language analysis beyond the level of single
sentences to discover distributional principles between sentences as well
as within them (Harris 1952).

In descriptive linguistics in the Firthian tradition, it was concerned with
describing stages of interaction as communicative acts in context (Mitchell
1957).

DA was and remains fundamental to the guiding principle of
communicative language teaching and its later developments such as taskbased language teaching.
Text, Context, and discourse

DA work in AL saw text (the linguistic element in communication) as
essentially distinct from context (the non-linguistic elements) and
discourse as the two in interaction to create meaning.

Context is a series of components, with different approaches to DA
tending to emphasise the role of one or another.

Context variously included consideration of such factors as:
the situation or immediate environment of communication;
the participants and their intentions, knowledge, beliefs, attitudes,
affiliations and feelings, as well as their roles, relations, and status;
the cultural and ideological norms and assumptions against which a given
communication occurs;
language which precedes or follows that under analysis, sometimes
referred to as ‘co-text’ (Halliday et al. 1964);
other texts evoked for the participants and affecting their interpretation –
sometimes referred to as ‘intertext’ (Kristeva 1986);
non-linguistic meaningful communicative behaviour, i.e. paralanguage,
such as voice quality, gestures, and facial expressions (in face-to-face
spoken interaction), and choice of typeface and letter sizes (in writing);
use of other modes of communication accompanying the use of language,
such as music and pictures;
the physical medium of communication, such as speech, writing, print,
telephone, computer.
Pragmatics

Pragmatics in DA stated how discourse is structured by what speakers are
trying to do with their words, and how their intentions are recognised by
their interlocutors.
Schemata theory

mental constructs of expected sequences of events or combinations of
elements which discourse participants use to interpret what is said or
written (Cook 1994: 9–23; Semino 2002).

Schemata theory powerful tool in DA as it can help to explain both high
level aspects of understanding such as coherence, and low level linguistic
phenomena such as article choice. For example, the sequence The taxi was
late. The driver couldn’t find our house.
Conversation analysis

CA’s primary interest is in the social act (Seedhouse 2004: 3) and it ‘is
only marginally interested in language as such’ (Hutchby and Wooffift
1998: 14).

CA made use of newly available recording technology to transcribe and
closely analyse actually occurring conversation, seeking to understand
how participants ‘make sense of, find their way about in, and act on the
circumstances in which they find themselves’ (Heritage 1984: 4) and
through this close analysis to understand the patterns of social life (Bhatia
et al. 2008: 4) as realised in talk.

In this sense CA was a branch of ethnomethodology and is determinedly
and uncompromisingly emic (taking the participants’ perspective) rather
than etic (taking the outsider’s/theorists’ perspective).
Etnography, Language ecology, linguistic ethnography

Ethnography seeks an understanding of culture through an analysis of all
details of everyday life in a given context, and does not therefore confine
itself to spoken face-to-face interaction as CA does, or to communication
involving language as DA does.
Semiotic, Paralanguage and multimodality

In talk, a host of paralinguistic phenomena not only carry meaning in
parallel to the words (as the term ‘paralanguage’ suggests), but can be
essential to understanding of the words, or even contradict them.

The exploitation of paralanguage in spoken communication is an instance
of multimodality as it involves visual, non-linguistic sound, and other
sensory stimuli..

Multimodal analysis concerns itself largely with the multiple dimensions
of meaning made possible by modern printing, computer and mobile
technologies, paying attention to the significance of the presentation of the
written words themselves (Walker 2001), in different fonts, colours, sizes,
arrangements, animations, etc., and to the many communicative modes
with which they co-occur, such as still and moving pictures, music,
diagrams, tables, etc.
Larger Structures

Before making generalisations, we should consider communication,
culture and society, they take as a starting point a fine-grained analysis of
language in use, assembling evidence of what happens in instances of
communication.
Genre analysis

a genre, defined as ‘a class of communicative events which share some set
of communicative purposes’ (Swales 1990: 58). Examples of genres are
such events as academic articles, news bulletins, advertisements, prayers,
operas, menus. Genre analysis then seeks, through fine-grained analysis, to
identify the conventions which characterise these different genre
These purposes … constitute the rationale for the genre. This rationale
shapes the schematic structure of the discourse and influences and
constrains choice of content and
style. … In addition to purpose, exemplars of a genre exhibit various
patterns of similarity in terms of structure, style, content and intended
audience. (Swales 1990: 58).
Critical discourse anaysis (CDA)

CDA is concerned with ideology, power relations and social injustices,
and how these are represented and reproduced through language.