9/16/2018 Summary of Chapter

No.1
(Discourse Analysis)

Submitted by: Riaz Ahmad

Submitted to: Mr. Sajjad (HOD)
MA 4th (Evening) NUML Peshawar.
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1. What is Discourse Analysis?

Discourse analysis refers mainly to the linguistic analysis of naturally occurring
connected speech or written discourse. It also refers to attempts for studying the
organization of language above the sentence level (context), 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.
According to Brain Paltridge discourse analysis examines patterns of language
across texts and considers the relationship between language and the social and
cultural context in which it is used. Discourse analysis also considers the ways that
the use of language presents different views of the world and different
understandings. The term discourse analysis was first coined by Zellig Harris in
1952.

2. The Relationship between language and context

There are typical ways of using language in particular situations and there is a relationship
between linguistics and non-linguistics behavior i.e. how people know, from the situation
that they are in, how to interpret what someone says. For example, the discourse “The
runway is full at the moment” has different meanings for a pilot and a person waiting for
someone at airport to pick up. The same discourse can be understood differently by different
language users as well understood differently in different contexts.
J.R. Firth introduced the term context of situation and context of culture in discourse analysis.
He argued that in order to understand the meaning of what a person says or writes we need
to know something about the situational and cultural context in which it is located otherwise
you can’t make sense of their texts. Halliday took this discussion further and linked context
of situation with actual texts and context of culture with potential texts.
Thus, discourse analysis in concerned with the description and analysis of both spoken and
written interactions. Its primary purpose is to provide a deeper understanding and
appreciation of texts and how they become meaningful to their users.
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3. The Discourse structure of texts

Discourse analysts are also interesting in how people organize what they say in the sense of
what they typically say first, and what they say next and so on in a conversation or in a piece
of writing. It varies across languages and cultures. An email, for example, by a Japanese
academic may start with reference to the weather but it is not a ritual requirement in English
speaking countries and societies.
Mitchell was the first to examine the discourse structure of texts. He looked at the ways in
which people order what they say in a particular interaction. He also introduced the concept
of stages into discourse analysis. Researchers in this area looked at how people open and
close conversations and how people take turns and overlap their speech in conversations.
They have looked at casual conversations, psychiatric interviews and interactions in legal
settings. Their interest in particular relate to the use of overlap, pauses, increased volume and
pitch and what these reveal about how people relate to each other in what they are saying
and doing with language.

4. Cultural ways of speaking and writing

Hymes for the first time explored that different cultures often have different ways of doing
things through language. He introduced it through the concept of ethnography of
communication. In particular, he considered aspects of speech events such is who is speaking
to whom, about what purpose, where and when, and how these impact on how we say and
do things in culture-specific settings.
There are, for example, particular cultural ways of buying and selling things in different
cultures. In an English-speaking country there is a greater ritual use of Please and Thanks on
the part of the customers while buying and selling than there is in Japan.
From birth we are socialized into our various cultural identities. As with the social context,
this acculturation process is a combination of explicit and implicit lessons. A child in
Colombia, which is considered a more collectivist country in which people value group
membership and cohesion over individualism, may not be explicitly told, “You are a member
of a collectivistic culture, so you should care more about the family and community than
yourself.” This cultural value would be transmitted through daily actions and through
language use. Just as babies acquire knowledge of language practices at an astonishing rate
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in their first two years of life, similarly they acquire cultural knowledge and values that are
embedded in those language practices.

5. Different views of discourse analysis

There are a number of views about what discourse analysis exactly is. Social science
researchers, for example, might urge that all there research is concerned with the analysis of
discourse, yet they often take the term in their own different ways. Fairclough contrasted
two approaches of it i.e. textually oriented discourse analysis with social theoretical
orientation. He urges for an analysis which is both linguistics and social in its nature.
Cameron and Kulick present a similar view.
The writer gives a detailed account of Higgin’s analysis of Barak Obama’s victory speech
when he won the US presidential elections and proves that discourse analysis is a view of
language at the level of text. Discourse analysis is also a view of language in use; that is, how
people achieve certain communicative goals through the use of language, perform certain
communicative acts, participate in certain communicative events and present themselves to
others.

6. Discourse as the social construction of reality

According to this view texts are considered as communicative units embedded in social and
cultural practices. The texts we write and speak both shape and are shaped by these practices.
Discourse, is both shaped by the world as well as shaping the world. It is shaped by the
language as well as shaping language. Discourse is shaped by the discourse that preceded it
and that which might follow it. Discourse is also shaped by the medium in which it occurs
as well it shapes the possibilities of that medium. It also shapes the range of possible purposes
of texts.
Wetherell analyzed the BBC Panorama interview with the late Diana and proved that
language has a role in the construction of social reality. Use of language structures the social
world we live in. Thinking, beliefs, standards and values are defined and supported by
discourse in any society. It may change with the passage of time and words may acquire new
meaning as it travel along the course of history. The complete meaning of a word is always
contextual and can change over time in relation to particular contexts of use and changes in
the social, cultural, and ideological background/s to this use.
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7. Discourse as socially situated identities

We use more than just language when we speak or write, and how we want people to see us.
Dress, gestures and the way we act and interact also influence how we display social identity.
Others factors which influence this include the ways we think, the attitudes we display and
the things we value, feel and believe.
Whenever we speak or pen something down we construct our socially situated identities. A
speaker can construct multi identities in a single stretch of discourse. For example, when a
speaker, in an interview, tells that his son goes to Chicago University, he establishes his
identity of being a father and a husband. In the same very interview if he discloses it to the
audience that he is a high ranking officer in the Army, he constructs his second identity of
being an army office. It includes the way we dress, the way we act and interact influences.

8. Discourse and performance

Sometimes our discourse not only shows the intentions and identities, it actually performs
the intended functions. It’s based on the view that in saying something we do it. For example
when it is said, “I promise and I now pronounce you man and wife” The act has been
performed i.e. the couple has become man and wife.

9. Discourse and intertextuality

All text whether spoken or written, takes meanings from other texts and refers to other texts.
So, this way they are in an intertextual relationship with other texts. Casablanca movie is an
example in which different genre such as adventure, patriotic war, propaganda are mixed up.