5.1 Who Does Discourse
Analysis, and Why?
Discourse analysts do
what people in their everyday experience of language do instinctively and
largely unconsciously: notice patterning of language in use and the
circumstances (participants, situations, purposes, outcomes) with which these
are typically associated.
Discourse analysis is
part of applied linguistics but does not belong exclusively to it; it is a
multi-disciplinary field, and hugely diverse in the range of its interests.
Jaworski and Coupland
(1999, pp. 3–6) explain why so many areas of academic study have become so
gripped by enthusiasm for discourse analysis in terms:
1.
The question of how we build knowledge
has come to the fore, and this is where issues to do with language and
linguistic representation come into focus.
2.
To a broadening of perspective in
linguistics, with a growth of linguistic interest in analysis of conversation,
stories, and written text.
3.
The postmodern world of service
industry, advertising, and communications media – discourse “ceases to be
‘merely’ a function of word.
5.2 Defining Discourses
Discourse analysis may,
broadly speaking, be defined as the study of language viewed communicatively
and/or of communication viewed linguistically
Jaworski & Coupland
1999: 1–7.) Here instead is a set of definitions in the style of a dictionary
entry for “discourse”.
discourse
1.
the linguistic, cognitive and social processes
whereby meanings are expressed and intentions interpreted in human interaction;
2.
2 the historically and culturally
embedded sets of conventions which constitute and regulate such processes.
3.
A particular event in which such
processes are instantiated);
4.
The product of such an event, especially
in the form of visible text, whether originally spoken and subsequently
transcribed or originally written.
5.3 Ways and Means
5.3.1 Rules and principles of language in use
Table
5.1 Ways and means of discourse analysis
|
Rules and
principles
|
• pragmatics
(including speech act theory and politeness theory)
|
|
• conversation
analysis
|
|
Contexts and
cultures
|
• ethnography
of communication
|
|
• interactional sociolinguistics
|
|
Functions and
structures
|
•
systemic-functional linguistics (SFL)
|
|
• Birmingham
school discourse analysis
|
|
• text-linguistics
|
|
Power and
politics
|
• pragmatic
and sociolinguistic approaches to power in language
|
|
• critical
discourse analysis
|
5.3.2 Contexts and cultures of language in use
The knowledge that members of communities have of
ways of speaking includes knowing when, where and how to speak, what to speak
about, with whom, and so forth. The idea that we need, in addition to a theory
of grammatical competence, a theory of communicative competence (Hymes, 1972)
arises from this fact. Speakers need knowledge not only of what is
grammatically possible but also of what is appropriate and typically done.
Interactional sociolinguistics (Schiffrin, 1994; Gumperz, 2001) aims at
“replicable analysis that accounts for our ability to interpret what
participants intend to convey in everyday communicative practice” (Gumperz,
2001).
5.3.3 Functions and structures of language in use
Grouped here are text-friendly models of language
and grammar-friendly approaches to text.
Text-linguistics (de Beaugrande & Dressler,
1981; Levinson, 1983, p. 288 for the distinction between this and “speech act
(or interactional)” approaches;) is not so much a single approach to discourse
as a somewhat indeterminate set of interests or predispositions. These include:
focus on text, achievement, and a particular concern with the analysis of
written texts.
5.3.4 Power and politics of language in use
“Critical” approaches to discourse analysis do not
hold a monopoly on interest in the power and politics of discourse. Pragmatic
and sociolinguistic approaches necessarily share this concern.
CDA is a political enterprise in the additional and
crucial sense that it is motivated by a particular political agenda –
non-conformist, anti-elitist, neo-Marxist, anti-neo-liberal; it seeks not just
to understand the social world, but to transform it.
By approach I mean the adoption of one, or a
combination, of the ways and means of discourse analysis outlined above. By
focus I mean particular attention to certain aspects of the total discourse
reality, either on grounds of theoretical preference or on grounds of perceived
relevance to particular issues of practical problem solving. By method, I mean
decisions relating to data collection and analysis, quality and quantity,
subjectivity and generalizability, Discourse research is mainly qualitative
because it is inherently interpretive.
Discourse
research is mainly qualitative because it is inherently interpretive. 5.4.1
Interaction
It is with the concept of int
5.4.2 Context
The word interaction encodes two of our focal
factors: context (“inter”), the participants, understood in terms of their
roles and statuses as well as their uniqueness as individuals, between whom the
discourse is enacted; and func- tion (“action”), the socially recognized
purposes to the fulfillment of which the interaction is directed; what Gee
(1999, p. 13) calls the whose and what of discourse.
5.4.3 Function
Context and function (Gee’s “socially situated
activity”) are closely inter- connected. Each is at least partly definable in
terms of the other, so that we can recognize a context of situation by the kind
of communicative functions that are typically realized in it (in church,
praying; in the classroom, eliciting, replying, and evaluating) and we can
recognize a function by the kind of contexts required for its performance
(sentencing: the end of a trial, judge speaking, prisoner being addressed;
marrying: wedding ceremony, bride or groom addressing officiating person).
5.4.4 Instrumentalities
Discourse analysis needs a functional model of
language, one that can show how the resources of the language system are
organized to meet the needs of “whos and whats” (context-function) in actual
communication. Two distinct versions of functionalism can be identified here,
which we may call “function- external” and “function-internal.”
5.4.5 Text
Earlier in this chapter I characterized text as the
“verbal record of a speech event,” “the product of [a speech] event, especially
in the form of visible text, whether originally spoken and subsequently
transcribed or originally written,” and a “unit of meaning.” Text is both
something produced by interactants in the process of making discourse and
something consumed by linguists in the process of making analyses.
5.5 Discourse Analysis,
Language in Education, and Education for Language
Discourse analysis figures prominently in areas of
applied linguistics related to language and education. These include both
language as a means of education and language as a goal of education, and both
first language edu- cation and second language education.
5.5.1
Discourse and second language education
Since the beginnings of communicative language
teaching (CLT) and espe- cially the teaching of English for specific (academic
and professional) purposes, second language teaching and learning has come to
be under- stood increasingly in terms of discourse, so that “today it is rare
to find people involved in language teaching who are unaware of the significance
of discourse for teaching reading, writing, intonation or spoken language, and
for the evaluation of students’ communicative competence” (Pennycook, 1994a).
Effectiveness in receptive roles, in whatever mode
of discourse, can be fostered by (amongst other things):
•
activating appropriate knowledge
structures (schemata), both formal (genre) and content (knowledge of the topic)
through pre-listening/reading activities;
•
foregrounding contextually relevant
shared knowledge to help in predicting topic development and guessing
speaker/writer intentions;
•
devising tasks which promote appropriate
use of top-down processing (from macro-context to clause, phrase, and lexical
item) and bottom-up processing (from lexical item, phrase and clause to
macro-context);
•
focusing on meta-discoursal signaling
devices
.
Effectiveness in productive roles can be fostered by
building into the cycle of task work attention to:
·
salient features of context (setting,
scene, the predicted state of knowledge and expectations of the reader/hearer);
·
the means whereby a speaker or writer
projects himself or herself as a certain kind of person, “a different kind in
different circumstances” (Gee, 1999, p. 13);
·
function (communicative goals); the
“socially situated activity that the utterance helps to constitute” (Gee, 1999,
p. 13);
·
appropriate instrumentalities (features of
register and genre); • development of effective communication strategies
appropriate to the mode of communication.
5.5.2
Discourse and first language education
It is, of course, not just second language learners
for whom communicative competence is a goal of education. Education generally
must acculturate children to new registers and genres, both spoken and written,
developing their grammatical, sociolinguistic, discourse, and strategic
competences along the way (Verhoeven, 1997).
5.6 Conclusion
Whether or not discourse analysis can yet be
described as a discipline, it must certainly be recognized as a force. It has
shown, and increasingly shows, that it is necessary – to our understanding of
language, of society and of our- selves as human beings; it is useful
