Discourse Analysis

Research Methods

What is a discourse?

• language-in-use• Form vs. function• Context: Sally & Bob are friends.

They were in a café, just the two of them.

Text Form Function

Sally: I loved you.

-d, past tense, “to feel great affection for (someone)”

Statement ?

Bob: You love me?

Sally: I loved you.

Bob: You love me!

Discourse

• Form grammatical, lexical, phonological• Function interpretation of

intention• Complementary

Form can be selected to express different functions

Function can be interpreted from the form

Let’s practice!

What is Discourse Analysis?

• The study of the language-in-use Language-in-use contextual

• Discourse analysis relationship between language and

the contexts• Context

written texts of all kinds, and spoken data, from conversation to highly institutionalised forms of talk.

Speech Acts

• What is the speaker doing with the speech?• What are the expected reaction of the listener?• Sally: I loved you.

What is Sally doing when she said “I loved you.”? What is the expected reaction of Bob?

• But… One sentence is not enough to really decide

what it means. Context ? –Yes, but… Structure? – more definitive meaning of the

whole speech acts.

Discourse Structure

1)Sally: We’ve been friends for a long time, Bob. 2)Bob: Yeah. You’re right. 3)Sally: You know what?4)Bob: What?5)Sally: I loved you. 6)Bob: Did you really?7)Sally: I loved you. 8)Bob: You love me?9)Sally: I loved you. 10)Bob: You love me!11)Sally: No, I don’t. 12)Bob: C’mon. That can’t be true. You love me. 13)Sally: I don’t know. Maybe. We’ll see. Anyway…

beginning

middle

end

Spoken Discourse

• Birmingham Model (Sinclair & Coulthard, 1975; Sinclair & Brazil, 1982)• Initiation – Response –

Follow-up

Now, let’s practice!

• What are the speech acts?1. Request for information2. Checking understanding of the concept of

‘time’3. Verbal trap

• What makes them different?

What makes them different?

• Participants, roles, settingExchange 1 Exchange 2 Exchange 3

Initiation What time is it? What time is it? What time is it?

Response Five Past Six. Five Past Six. Five Past Six.

Follow-up Thanks! Good! Clever Girl! No it isn't, and you know it isn't; it's half past and you're lateagain!

Participants

Roles

Setting

Speech Act Request for information

Checking understanding

Verbal trap

Complete Birmingham Model

1)Sally: We’ve been friends for a long time, Bob. 2)Bob: Yeah. You’re right. 3)Sally: You know what?4)Bob: What?5)Sally: I loved you. 6)Bob: Did you really?7)Sally: I loved you. 8)Bob: You love me?9)Sally: I loved you. 10)Bob: You love me!11)Sally: No, I don’t. 12)Bob: C’mon. That can’t be true. You love me. 13)Sally: I don’t know. Maybe. We’ll see. Anyway…

beginning

middle

end

exchangemove

act

transaction

Complete Birmingham Model

Act

Move

Exchange

Transaction

• For quite tightly structured interaction, e.g. classroom, doctor-patient

• But, for more informal, casual, and spontaneous contexts? Complications…

• Let’s see the next example of interaction

• Can you identify the exchanges, the moves, and the acts?• Where

are the initiation, response, and follow-up?• Any

complications?

Spoken Discourse

• Complications in unstructured interaction• natural data – out of class

interaction, friends’ talk

Spoken Discourse

• Ethnomethodologists – American phenomenon Natural data Not to build a model, but to observe how

people behave and how they cooperate in the management of discourse

Some interests:o how pairs of utterances relate to one another

(adjacency pairs)o how turn-taking is managedo how conversational openings and closings

are effectedo how topics enter and disappear from

conversationo how speakers engage in strategic acts of

politenesso face-preservation, etc.

Written Discourse

• Text Surface level Markers – the linguistic signals

of semantic and discourse functionso E.g. in English the -ed on the verb

is a marker of past tenseo E.g. cohesive marker (it, itu,

sebelumnya)

Written Discourse

• Interpretation deeper level Procedural – mental activities for the receiver to understand the text

Textual – the patterns in the texto Eg. Clause-relational approach (logical sequencing: phenomenon- reason, phenomenon-example, cause-consequence, instrument-achievement, problem-solution; matching)

Examples

• Can you identify the logical sequence? Phenomenon-

reason Cause-

consequence Instrument

achievement Problem-

solution

Process of doing discourse analysis

Text

Signal (Surface Level)

Supporting Evidence

Interpretation (Deeper level)

Computer-Mediated Discourse

• Is it written or spoken discourse?• Medium vs. Situation

influencing factors (Herring, 2007)

Herring, 2007

Medium SituationSynchronicity of participation Participation structureMessage transmission Participation characteristicsPersistence of transcript Purpose Size of the message buffer Topic or themeChannels of communication Tone Anonymous messaging Activity Private messaging, filtering, quoting

Norms

Message format Code

Recommended book/article

• Schiffrin, D., Tannen, D. & Hamilton, H. (2001). The handbook of Discourse Analysis. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers. Examples of discourse analysis research Download at en.bookfi.org

• Lazaraton, A. (2002). Quantitative and qualitative approaches to discourse analysis. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics , 22, pp. 32-51. Summary of notable discourse analysis

research Download at F-Learn

References

• McCarthy, M. (1991). Discourse analysis for language teachers. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Most material of this ppt Download at en.bookfi.org

• Herring, S.C. (2007). A Faceted Classification Scheme for Computer-Mediated Discourse. Language@Internet, 4(1). Google it, the author provided it.