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Discourse Analysis 1

Discourse/text analysis is the study of language use above and beyond the sentence level. It examines how people use language in context through longer stretches of communication, including conversations, stories, and written texts. Discourse analysis considers context such as participants, shared knowledge, and place/time. It also looks at relationships between language and context, and how meaning can change based on these factors. Discourse analysis draws from various fields like sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, and computational linguistics to understand language use.

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Saman Othman
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47 views9 pages

Discourse Analysis 1

Discourse/text analysis is the study of language use above and beyond the sentence level. It examines how people use language in context through longer stretches of communication, including conversations, stories, and written texts. Discourse analysis considers context such as participants, shared knowledge, and place/time. It also looks at relationships between language and context, and how meaning can change based on these factors. Discourse analysis draws from various fields like sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, and computational linguistics to understand language use.

Uploaded by

Saman Othman
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Text & Discourse Analysis

Introduction
What is discourse/text?
Context
What is discourse/text analysis?
Introduction
• What is discourse/text?
When we use language, we:
- Combine words to form phrases, and
- Combine phrases to form clauses and sentences, and
- Combine sentences to form larger stretches of language known as
discourse (= text).

A discourse, or a text, is a stretch of language that may be longer than


one sentence. For example, conversations, stories, jokes, letters, etc.

Longer than one sentence (= consists of a string (set) of sentences).


Discourse/text is the use of language above and beyond the sentence:
How people use language in context.

Discourse is the language use.

Beyond and above are features (aspects) of discourse:

Above the sentence means (context).


Beyond the sentence means (language and context)
Context
• What is a context?
That which occurs before and/or after a word, a phrase, or even a longer
utterance or a text.

The context often helps in understanding the particular meaning of the


word, phrase, longer utterance, etc.
- What time does it get dark in the summer?
(dark is understood as meaning having no light.)

- Her husband's sudden death was the start of a dark chapter in her
life. (dark is understood as meaning sad).

- I've just been promoted, but keep it dark - I don't want everyone to
know just yet. (dark means secret).
A context includes all of the following:

1- Substance: the physical material which carries or relays text.

2- Music and pictures

3- Paralanguage: meaningful behavior accompanying language, such as,


voice quality (breathy or creaky), gestures, facial expressions, and touch
(in speech).

4- Co-text (= linguistic context): the actual words and sentences that


precede or follow an utterance, they belong to the same discourse.

5- Participants (= speaker and hearer): their intentions, beliefs, feelings,


knowledge, attitudes. Participants are usually described as:
speaker: (= sender and addresser)
hearer: (= receiver and addressee).
A context includes all of the following:

6- Levels of formality: the relation between speaker and hearer.


teacher and student, captain and soldier, doctor and patient
father and son, brother and sister, two friends
7- Shared knowledge of the world (= cultural and social knowledge):
It helps the participants understand the meaning of a text.

8- place and time of speaking


Discourse enables information to be communicated in particular
contexts.

A: Would you like tea or coffee?


B: Coffee keeps me awake.

B’s answer might be interpreted as:


1- a request for tea in certain contexts (e.g. late at night before
going to bed).

2- a request for coffee in other contexts (e.g. late at night while


studying for an exam).
What is Discourse Analysis?
• Discourse analysis is a branch of linguistics that focuses on language
use above and beyond the sentence.

Discourse analysis is the study of language use. (the study of discourse)

- D.A goes above the sentence, by examining units larger than a


sentence such as conversation exchange, written and spoken texts.
A: I have run out of petrol.
B: There is a petrol station around the bend. Conversation exchange

- D.A goes beyond the sentence, by examining the relationship


between the language and the context.
• D.A is at the intersection of psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics,
stylistics, philosophic and computational linguistics. D.A is a branch
where all these sciences meet.

Sociolinguistics
Computational linguistics D.A Psycholinguistics

philosophic linguistics
Stylistics

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