Is it discourse analysis

Or Text analysis?
 There has been some confusion in the
literature regarding the distinction between
‘discourse analysis’ and ‘text analysis’.

 It is a result of the confusion in the terms

‘discourse’ and ‘text’.
 Some researchers label their analysis
‘discourse analysis’, while others claim they
are doing ‘text analysis’, but the difference
is often inconsistent.
 Some claim to make clear distinctions

between ‘discourse’ and ‘text’, but a closer

look reveals that their distinctions do not
hold.
 Text:  Discourse:
is made up of is the use of such
sentences. sentences.
- A text is made up - A discourse is
of sentences made up of
having the utterances having
property of the property of
grammatical coherence.
cohesion. - Discourse analysis:
-Text Analysis: deals investigates
with cohesion. coherence.
 It contradicts the known and well-
established distinction between ‘sentence’
and ‘utterance’ in the literature.

 Widdowson did not maintain this distinction

himself: In 1978 he argued that ‘discourse’
is made up of sentences having the
properties of cohesion & coherence!
 Text:  Discourse:
 Text is defined in  Discourse is

terms of its being a viewed as a

physical product. process.

 Meaning is not  Meaning is derived

found in text. through the
reader’s
interaction with the
text  discourse.
 There is considerable overlap between the
findings of studies claiming to look at text
as ‘product’ and of those claiming to
investigate discourse as ‘process’.

 Thus, it is not necessary to maintain a

distinction between discourse analysis and
text analysis on the basis of investigating
a process as opposed investigating a
product.
 Text:  Discourse:
 written  Spoken
 Text analysis:  Discourse analysis:

investigates analyzes spoken

written form form.
 Many studies have used models originally
developed for studying spoken form to
investigate written form (Tadros 1981), and
vice versa (Hoey 1983).

 Thus, such a distinction is not necessary.

 Early text linguists concentrated on the
development of various paradigms for the
study of how sentences interconnect. They
have drawn attention to the various linguistic
devices that can be used to ensure that a
text "hangs together" (cf. the concept of
textual cohesion). Such devices include the
use of articles, lexical repetition and personal
pronouns to refer back to entities mentioned
earlier in a text and the use of linking words
to establish a particular logical relationship
of, say, contrast, concession or addition
between two or more sentences in a text.
◦ the study of how sentences functionally
interrelate within particular rhetorical
schemata (e.g. types of textual sequencing
such as top-down and bottom-up methods
of proceeding; an example of the former is a
sequence consisting of a general claim > a
specific application > listing arguments >
giving examples; an example of a bottom-
up way of proceeding is: an example >
analysis > next example > analysis > a
conclusion).
discourse analysis is defined as
a) concerned with language use beyond the
boundaries of a sentence/utterance,
b) concerned with the interrelationships
between language and society and
c) as concerned with the interactive or
dialogic properties of everyday
communication.
Text Analysis
 Needs linguistic analysis
 Interpretation is based on linguistic evidence

 Text analysts need the right ‘knife’ to cut the

right ‘bread’
 Different ‘knives’ for different ‘bread’

Discourse Analysis
 How texts relate to contexts of situation and

context of culture
 How texts are produced as a social practice

 What texts tell us about happenings, what people

think, believe etc.

 How texts represent ideology (power struggle

etc.)
 Text analysis is the study of formal linguistic
devices that distinguish a text from random
sentences.
 Discourse analysts study these text-forming
devices with reference to the purposes and
functions for which the discourse was produced,
and the context within which the discourse was
created. The ultimate goal is to show how the
linguistic elements enable language users to
communicate.
 The term discourse analysis is very ambiguous.
 It will be used here to refer mainly to the
linguistic analysis of naturally occurring
connected speech or written discourse.
 Roughly speaking, it refers to attempts to study
the organisation of language above the sentence
or above the clause, and therefore to study larger
linguistic units, such as conversational exchanges
or written texts.
 It follows that discourse analysis is also
concerned with language use in social contexts,
and in particular with interaction or dialogue
between speakers.
 Discourse is a term that can be described in a
number of ways. In language studies, it refers to
the speech patterns and how language, dialects,
and acceptable statements are used in a particular
community. Discourse is a subject of study
particularly in peoples who reside in secluded
areas and share the same speech conventions.
 Sociologists and philosophers use the term
discourse in a different way. They use it to
describe the conversations and its underlying
meanings by a group of people who have common
ideas.
 This is one definition forwarded by the
philosopher Michel Foucault. He maintains that
discourse is the acceptable statements that are
formed by a particular kind of discourse
community.
 A discourse community is explained as people
who have the same thoughts and ideas. The fans
of a particular book series can be considered as
what might constitute a discourse community.
Within this group there will be some attitudes
that will be seen as unacceptable and considered
contradictory to what the community believes in.
 The ideology defines what is allowed to be
discussed.
 Discourse seen in this light is able to exist

over time and represent all of the thoughts

that the community has adopted or is
attributed to it. When the discourse is
applied to a more expansive philosophical
ideal, all of the exchange of ideas, systems
of thought, analysis and history will become
part of the community.
 Discourse is:
 language above the sentence or above the clause
 a continuous stretch of spoken language larger
than a sentence, often constituting a coherent unit
 a stretch of language perceived to be meaningful
unified, and purposive; language in use
 (viewed) as social practice determined by social
structures
 In the study of language, discourse often
refers to the speech patterns and usage of
language, dialects, and acceptable
statements, within a community. It is a
subject of study in peoples who live in
secluded areas and share similar speech
conventions.
 Sociologists and philosophers tend to use the
term discourse to describe the conversations
and the meaning behind them by a group of
people who hold certain ideas in common.
Such is the definitions by philosopher Michel
Foucault, who holds discourse to be the
acceptable statements made by a certain
type of discourse community. This
explanation will primarily consider the
definition pertaining to sociology.
 Structural or textual definition of discourse:

Discourse is a particular unit of language

(above the sentence).
 Functional definition of discourse: Discourse
is a particular focus of language use.
 Find the constituents that have particular
relationships with each other and that can occur
in a restricted number of arrangements;
 Problems: units in which people speak do not

always look like sentences, or grammatically

correct sentences.
Example 1
(From “The Colour Purple”, Alice Wharton)
Jack is tall and kind and don't hardly say
anything. Love children. Respect his wife,
Odessa, and all Odessa Amazon sisters (Celie’s
Diary)
 Examples, like Colourless green ideas sleep
furiously (Chomsky);
 Solving the problem: adopt Lyons’s distinction
between system-sentences and text –
sentences. System sentences are well-formed
abstract theoretical sentences generated
according to the existing grammar rules; text-
sentences are context-dependent utterances or
parts of utterances which occur in everyday life.
 The discourse analysis will be concerned with
text-sentences.
 Roman Jakobson: language performs six
functions:
Addressor(emotive);
Context (referential)
Addressee (conative);
Contact (phatic);
Message (poetic);
Code (metalinguistic).
 If in traditional studies discourses were
analysed in relation to social processes that
form them, then recently researchers started
talking about bidirectional and complex
relations between discourses and social
practices:

Discourses of food Social

Practice
“Healthy Food” Healthy
lifestyle
 The study of how stretches of language used
in communication assume meaning, purpose
and unity for their users: the quality of
COHERENCE

 A general consensus: COHERENCE does not

derive solely from the linguistic forms and
propositional content of a text, though these
may contribute to it.
 COHERENCE derives from an interaction of
text with given participants (context)
 Context: participants’ knowledge and
perception of paralanguage, other texts, the
situation, the culture, the world in general
and the role, intentions and relationships of
participants.
 COHERENCE derives from an interaction of
text with given participants (context)
 Context: participants’ knowledge and
perception of paralanguage, other texts, the
situation, the culture, the world in general
and the role, intentions and relationships of
participants.
 Discourse analysis examines how stretches of
language, considered in their full contextual,
social, and psychological context, become
meaningful and unified for their users.
There's two types of favors, the big favor
and the small favor. You can measure the
size of the favor by the pause that a person
takes after they ask you to" Do me a favor."
Small favor - small pause. "Can you do me a
favor, hand me that pencil " No pause at all.
Big favors are, "Could you do me a favor, .."
Eight seconds go by. "Yeah? What?" ". . .
well " The longer it takes them to get to it,
the bigger the pain it's going to be.
Humans are the only species that do favors.
Animals don't do favors. A lizard doesn't go
up to a cockroach and say, "Could you do me
a favor and hold still, I'd like to eat you a
live," That's a big favor even with no pause.
Jerry Seinfeld (1993)
 In the study of language , some of the most
interesting questions arise in connection with the
way language is 'used', rather than what its
components are. We were, in effect, asking how it
is that language-users interpret what other
language-users intend to convey. When we carry
this investigation further and ask' how it is that
we, as language users , make sense of what we
read in texts, understand what speakers mean
despite what they say, recognize connected as
opposed to jumbled or incoherent discourse, and
successfully take part in that complex activity
called conversation, we are undertaking what is
known as discourse analysis.
 When we concentrate on the description of a particular
language, we are normally concerned with the accurate
representation of the forms and structures used in that
language. However, as language-users, we are capable of
more than simply recognizing correct versus incorrect
form and structure. We can cope with fragments such as
“Trains collide, two die,” a newspaper headline, and
know, for example, that a causal relation exists between
the two phrases. We can also make sense of notices like
“No shoes, no service,” on shop windows in summer,
understanding that a conditional relation exists between
the two phrases ('If you are wearing no shoes, you will
receive no service').
 Moreover, we can encounter examples of texts,
written in English, which appear to break a lot of the
'rules' of the English language.
 The following example, from an essay by a Saudi
Arabian student learning English, contains all kinds of '
errors', yet it can be understood.
My Town
My natal was in a small town, very close to Riyadh
capital of Saudi Arabia. The distant between my town
and Riyadh 7 miles exactly. The name of this Almasani
that means in English Factories. It takes this name
from the people's career . In my childhood I remember
the people live. It was very simple, most the people
was farmer.
 This example may serve to illustrate an interesting
point about the way we react to language which
contains ungrammatical forms. Rather than simply
rejecting the text as ungrammatical, we try to make
sense of it. That is, we attempt to arrive at a
reasonable interpretation of what the writer intended
to convey. (Most people say they understand the 'My
Town' text quite easily.) It is this effort to interpret (and
to be interpreted), and how we accomplish it, that are
the key elements investigated in the study of
discourse. To arrive at an interpretation, and to make
our messages interpretable, we certainly rely on what
we know about linguistic form and structure. But, as
language-users, we have more knowledge than that.
 Once the general theoretical notion of discourse has
been achieved, attention turns to specific discourses
in which socially established sense is encountered
and contested. These range from media discourses
like television and news, to institutionalized
discourses like medicine, literature and science.
Discourses are structured and interrelated; some are
more prestigious, legitimated and hence 'more
obvious' than others, while there are discourses that
have an uphill struggle to win any recognition at all.
Thus discourses are power relations.
 It follows that much of the social sense-making
we're subjected to - in the media, at school, in
conversation - is the working through of
ideological struggle between discourses: a good
contemporary example is that between the
discourses of (legitimated, naturalized) patriarchy
and (emergent, marginalized) feminism.
 Textual analysis can be employed to follow the
moves in this struggle, by showing how particular
texts take up elements of different discourses
and articulate them (that is, 'knit them together').
 However, though discourses may be traced in
texts, and though texts may be the means by
which discursive knowledges are circulated,
established or suppressed, discourses are not
themselves textual.
 Many researchers have come to this
conclusion:
 Discourse analysis includes all studies

investigating the supra-sentential structure

of any stretch of language, spoken or
written.
 The terms ‘text’ / ‘text analysis’ lead to

confusion.
 Therefore, the term ‘text’ should be

abandoned unless it is used to refer to the

physical arrangement of linguistic signals on
paper (Tadros, 1981).