Chapter 1 – What is Discourse Analysis?

This chapter provides an overview of discourse analysis, an approach to the analysis of

language that looks at patterns of language across texts as well as the social and cultural
contexts in which the texts occur. The chapter commences by presenting the origins of the
term discourse analysis. It then discusses particular issues which are of interest to discourse
analysts, such as the relationship between language and social context, culture-specific
ways of speaking and writing and ways of organizing texts in particular social and cultural
situations.

The chapter continues with a discussion of different views of discourse analysis. These
range from more textually oriented views of discourse analysis which concentrate mostly
on language features of texts, to more socially oriented views of discourse analysis which
consider what the text is doing in the social and cultural setting in which it occurs. This
leads to a discussion of the social constructionist view of discourse; that is, the ways in
which what we say as we speak contributes to the construction of certain views of the
world, of people and, in turn, ourselves. The relationship between language and identity is
then introduced. This includes a discussion of the ways in which, through our use of
language, we not only ‘display’ who we are but also how we want people to see us. This
includes a discussion of the ways in which, through the use of spoken and written discourse,
people both ‘perform’ and ‘create’ particular social, and gendered, identities.

The ways in which ‘texts rely on other texts’ is also discussed in this chapter; that is the
way which we produce and understand texts in relation to other texts and have come before
them as well as other texts that may follow them. This chapter, then, introduces notions
and lays the ground for issues that will be discussed in greater detail in the chapters that
follow.
1.1 What is discourse analysis?

Discourse analysis examines patterns of language across texts and considers the
relationship between language and the social and cultural contexts 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. It examines how the use of language is
influenced by relationships between participants as well as the effects the use of language
has upon social identities and relations. It also considers how views of the world, and
identities, are constructed through the use of discourse.

The term discourse analysis was first introduced by Zellig Harris (1952) as a way of
analyzing connected speech and writing. Harris had two main interests: the examination of
language beyond the level of sentence and the relationship between linguistic and non-
linguistic behavior. He examined the first of these in most detail, aiming to provide a way
for describing how language features are distributed within texts and the ways in which
they are combined in particular kinds and styles of texts. An early, and important,
observation he made was that:

“…connected discourse occurs within a particular situation – whether of a person speaking,

or of a conversation, or of someone sitting down occasionally over the period of months to
write a particular kind of book in a particular literacy or scientific tradition….”

There are, thus, typical ways of using language in particular situations. These discourses,
he argued, not only share particular meanings, they also have characteristics linguistic
features associated with them. What these meanings are and how they are realized in
language is of central interest to the area of discourse analysis.

The relationship between language and context

By ‘the relationship between linguistic and non-linguistic behavior’ Harris means how
people know, from the situation that they are in, how to interpret what someone says. If,
for example, an air traffic controller says to pilot The runway is full at the moment, this
most likely means it is not possible to land the plane. This may seem obvious to a native
speaker of English but a non-native speaker pilot, of which there are many in the world,
needs to understand that he/she cannot land the plane at that time. Harris’ point is that the
expression The run way is full at the moment has a particular meaning in a particular
situation (in this case the landing of a plane) and may mean something different in another
situation. If I say The run way is full at the moment to a friend who is waiting with me to
pick someone up from the airport, this is how an explanation of why the plane is late
landing (however I may know this) and not an instruction to not land the plane. The same
discourse, thus, can be understood differently by different language users as well as
understood differently in different contexts (van Dijk 2011).

Van Dijk provides two book length accounts of the notion of context. He argues that
context is subjective construct that accounts not only for the uniqueness of each text but
also for the common ground and shared representations that language users draw on to
communicate with each other (van Dijk 2008). Van Dijk (2009) argues, further, that the
link between society and discourse is often indirect and depends on how language users
themselves define the genre or communicative event in which they engaged. Thus, in his
words, ‘[i]t is not the local situation that influences (or is influenced by) discourses, but the
way the participants define (original emphasis)’ the situation in which the discourse occurs
(van Dijk 2008: x). In his view, contexts are not objective conditions but rather
(inter)subjective constructs that are constantly updated by participants in their interactions
with each other as members of groups or communities.

The relationship between language and context is fundamental to the work of J.R.Firth
(1935, 1957a, 1957b), Michael Halliday (1971, 1989a) and John Sinclair (2004), each of
whom has made important contributions to the area of discourse analysis. Firth draws on
the anthropologist Malinowski’s (1923, 1935) notions of context of situation and context
of culture to discuss this relationship, arguing 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. That is, if you don’t know what the people involved in a text
are doing and don’t understand their culture ‘then you can’t make sense of their text’
(Martin 2001: 151).

Halliday (1971) takes the discussion further by linking context of situation with actual texts
and context of culture with potential texts and the range of possibilities that are open to
language users for the creation of texts. The actual choices a person makes from the options
that are available to them within the particular context of culture, thus, take place within a
particular context of situation, both of which influence the use of language in the text (se
Hasan 2009, Halliday 2009a, van Dijk 2011 for further discussion of the relationship
between language and context). The work of J.R.Firth has been similarly influential in the
area of discourse analysis. This is reflected in the concern by discourse analysts to study
language within authentic instances of use (as opposed to made-up examples) – a concern
with the inseparability of meaning and form and a focus on a contextual theory of meaning
(Stubbs 1996). Sinclair also argues that language should be studied in naturally occurring
contexts and that the analysis of meaning should be its key focus (Carter 2004).

Discourse analysis, then, is interested in ‘what happens when people draw on the
knowledge they have about language… to do things in the world’ (Johnstone 2002: 3). It
is, thus, the analysis of language in use. Discourse analysis considers the relationship
between language and the contexts in which it is used and is concerned with the description
and analysis of both spoken and written interactions. Its primary purpose, as Chimombo
and Roseberry (1998) argue, is to provide a deeper understanding and appreciation of texts
and how they become meaningful to their users.

The discourse structure of texts

Discourse analysts are also interested 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. This is something that varies across cultures and is by no means the same
across languages. An email, for example, to me from a Japanese academic or a member of
the administrative staff at a Japanese university may start with reference to the weather
saying immediately after Dear Professor Paltridge something like Greetings! It’s such a
beautiful day today here in Kyoto. I, of course, may also say this in email to an overseas
colleague but is it not ritual requirement in English, as it is in Japanese. There are, thus,
particular things we say and particular ways of ordering what we say in particular spoken
and written situations and in particular languages and cultures.

Mitchell (1957) was one the first researchers to examine the discourse structure of texts.
He looked at the ways in which people order what they say in buying and selling
interactions. He looked at the overall structure of these kinds of texts, introducing the
notion of stages into discourse analysis; that is the steps that language users go through as
they carry out particular interactions. His interest was more in the ways in which
interactions are organized at an overall textual level than the ways in which language is
used in each of the stages of a text. Mitchell discusses how language is used as, what he
calls, co-operative action and how the meaning of language lies in the situational context
in which it is used and in the context of the text as a whole.

If, then, I am walking along the street in Shanghai near a market and someone says to me
Hello Mister, DVD, I know from the situation that I am in that they want to sell me DVDs.
If I then go into a market and someone asks what seems to me to be a very high price for a
shirt, I know from my experience with this kind of interaction that the price they are selling
me is just a starting point in the buying and selling exchange and that I can quite easily and
up buying the shirt for at least half the original price. I know from my experience how the
interaction will typically start, what language will typically be used in the interaction and
how the interaction will typically end. I also start to learn other typical characteristics of
the interaction. For example, a person will normally only say Hello Mister, DVD (or Hello
Mister, Louis Vuitton, etc.) when I am between stalls, not when I am in a stall and have
started a buying and selling interaction with someone.

Hasan (1989a) has continued this work into analysis of service encounters, as has Ventola
(1984, 1987). Hasan and Ventola aim to capture obligatory and optional stages that are
typical of service encounters. For example, a greeting such as Hi, how are you? Is not
always obligatory at the start of a service encounter in English when someone is buying
something at the delicatessen counter in a busy supermarket. However, a sales request such
as Can I have … or Give me … etc. where you say what you want to buy it. Hasan and
Ventola point out, further, that there are many possible ways in which the stages in a service
encounter (and indeed many genres) can be realized in terms of language. For example, a
request for service might be expressed as Could you show me … or Have you got … (etc.).
The ways in which these elements are expressed will vary, further, depending on where the
service encounter is taking place; that is whether it is a supermarket, at the post office or at
a travel agent etc. It will also vary according to variables such as the age of the people
involved in the interaction and whether the service encounter is face-to-face or on the
phone, etc. (Flowerdew 1993). There is, thus, no need one-to-one correspondence between
the structural elements of the texts and the ways in which they are expressed through
languages.

Other researchers have also investigated recurring patterns in spoken interactions, although
in somewhat different way from Mitchell and others following in that tradition.
Researchers working in the area known as conversation analysis have looked at how people
open close conversation and how people take turns and overlap their speech in
conversations, for example. They have looked at casual conversations, chat, as well as
doctor-patient, consultations, psychiatric, interviews and interactions in legal settings.
Their interest, in particular, is in fine-grained analyses of spoken interactions such as the
use of overlap, pauses, increased volume and pitch and what these reveal how people create
to each other in what they are saying and doing with language.

Cultural ways of speaking and writing

Different cultures often have different ways of doing things through language. This is
something that was explored by Hymes (1964) through the notion of the ethnography of
communication. Hymes’ work was a reaction to the neglect, at the time, of speech in
linguistic analyses and anthropological descriptions of cultures. His work was also a
reaction to views of languages which took little or no account of the social and cultural
contexts in which language occurs. In particular, he considered aspects of speech events
such as who is speaking to whom, about what, for 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. How I buy my lunch at a takeaway shop in an English-speaking country is
different, for example, from how I might do this in Japan. In an English-speaking country
there is greater ritual use of Please and Thanks on the part of the customer in this kind of
interaction than there is in Japan. How I buy something in a supermarket in an English-
speaking country may be more similar to how I might do this in Japan. The person at the
cash register in Japan, however, will typically say much more than the customer in this sort
of situation, who may indeed say nothing. This does not mean that by saying nothing the
Japanese customer is being rude. It simply means that there are culturally different ways
of doing things with language in different cultures. The sequence of events I go through
may be the same in both cultures, but the ways of using language in these events and other
sorts of non-linguistic behavior may differ.

A further example of this can be seen when companies decide to set up a branches of their
business overseas. A number of years ago the Japanese department store Damairu opened
a branch in Melbourne. Each year the store has a spring sale and sent out circulars to its
customers to let them know about it. It was interesting to see how differently the company
wrote their promotional materials for their Japanese-speaking and their English-speaking
customers. The Japanese texts commenced with ‘seasonal greetings’ (as in the emails
above) referring to the warm spring weather and the sight of fresh flowers in the gardens
whereas the English texts went straight to the point of the message, the sale that would be
starting shortly. In the Japanese texts, it would have been impolite not to do this whereas
in the English texts it would have been unnecessary and, indeed, may have hidden the point
of the text for the English readers if they had done this.

1.2 Different views of discourse analysis

There are in fact a number of differing views on what discourse analysis actually is. Social
science researchers, for example, might argue that all their work is concerned with the
analysis of discourse, yet often take up the term in their own, sometimes different, ways
(Fairclough 2003). Mills (1997) makes a similar observation showing how through its
relatively short history the term discourse analysis has shifted from highlighting on aspects
of language usage to another, as well as being used in different ways by different
researchers.

Fairclough (2003) contrasts what he calls ‘textually oriented discourse analysis’ with
approaches to discourse analysis that have more of a social theoretical orientation. He does
not see these two views as mutually exclusive, however, arguing for an analysis of
discourse similar view. They do not take these two perspectives to be incompatible with
each other, arguing that the instances of language in use that are studied under a textually
oriented view of discourse are still socially situated and need to be interpreted in terms of
their social meanings and functions.

David Crystal’s (2008) analysis of Barrack Obama’s victory speech when he won the US
presidential election is an example of textually oriented discourse analysis. One of the
features Crystal notes in Obama’s speech is the use of parallelism, where he repeats certain
grammatical structures for rhetorical effect. In the following extract from the opening lines
of his speech Obama repeats ‘who clauses’ (highlighted below) lowering the processing
load of the speech so that listeners will focus on the content of each the clauses that follow.
Crystal also shows how Obama follows the rhetorical ‘rules of three’ in this section of his
speech in a way that mirrors the speeches of former political leaders such as Winston
Churchchill.

“…If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are
possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still
questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer… (CNNPolitics.com 2008)”

Obama also uses lists of pairs in his speech to rhetorical effect, as in:
“…It’s the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican,
black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, gay, straight and not disabled. (ibid.)…”

Higgins’ (2008) analysis of Obama’s speech is an example of more socially oriented

discourse analysis. Higgins traces Obama’s speech back to the oratory of the ancient
Greeks and Romans showing how the use of the ‘tricolon’ (series of threes), as in the
example above, was one of Cicero’s, as well as Julius Caesar’s, rhetorical techniques, as
in Caesar’s ‘Veni, vidi, vici’ (I came, I saw, I conquered). In doing this, Obama recalls
both politics and traditions of ancient Athens where oratory was ‘the supreme political
skill, on whose mastery power depended’ (ibid., online). William (2009) discusses
Obama’s speech within the context of the political (and economic) moment of his victory,
highlighting the central message of optimism in his speech captured in the repetition of the
refrain ‘Yes, we can’. Higgins (2008) also discusses how this ‘Yes, we can’ relates,
intertextually, to the call-and-response preaching of the American church and the power
that effective preachers have on their congregations. Obama’s reference in his speech to
previous leaders, thus, draws on the social stock of knowledge (Luckmann 2009) he share
with his audience and their social and cultural histories.

We can see, then, 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. Discourse
analysis considers how people manage interactions with each other, how people
communicate within particular groups and societies as well as how they communicate with
other groups, and with other cultures. It also focuses on how people do things beyond
language, and the ideas and beliefs that they communicate as they use language.

Discourse as the social construction of reality

The view of discourse as the social construction of reality see texts as communicative units
which are embedded in social and cultural practices. The texts we write and speak both
shape and are shaped by these practices. Discourse, then, is both shaped by the world as
well as shaping the world. Discourse is shaped by language as well as shaping language
that people use. Discourse is shaped, as well, by the discourse that has preceded it and that
which might follow it. Discourse is also shaped by the medium in which it occurs as well
as it shapes the possibilities for that medium. The purpose of the text also influences the
discourse. Discourse also shapes the range of possible purposes of texts (Johnstone 2007).

Wetherell’s (2001) analysis of the BBC Panorama interview with the late Diana, Princess
of Wales (BBC 1995) provides an example of the role of language in the construction (and
construal) of the social world. She shows how, through the use of language, Diana
‘construes’ her social world, presenting herself as a sharing person and Prince Charles as
‘a proud man who felt low about attention his wife was getting’ (Wetherell 2001: 15). That
is, as she speaks, the Princess creates a view of herself and the world in which she lives in
a way that she wishes people to see. As Wetherell points out:

“…As Diana and others speak, on this and many occasions, a formulation of the world
comes into being. The world as described comes into existence at that moment. In an
important sense, the social reality constructed in the Panorama interview and in other
places of Diana’s happy marriage bucking under media pressure did not exist before its
emergence as discourse. (16)…”

A further example of this social constructivist view of discourse can be seen in the text on
the cover of the December 2004 Asian edition of Business Week:

“…The three scariest words in U.S. industry: ‘The Chine price’…”

The feature story in this issue discusses China’s ability to undercut production costs to the
extent that, unless US manufacturers are able to cut their prices, they can ‘kiss their
customers goodbye’. This special report states that for decades economists have insisted
that the US wins for globalization. Now they are not so sure. China, a former US trade
representative says, ‘is a tiger on steroids’. A labor economist from Havard University says
in this series of articles that the wages of white collar workers in the United States have a
right to be scared that they may lose their jobs as they are displayed by this ‘offshoring’.
Ultimately, the report argues, more than half the 130 million US workforce could feel the
impact of this change in global competition (Engardio and Roberts 2004).

Harney (2009) in her book The China Price continues this discussion, showing how this
reality is changing with regional labor shortages and rising wages. While ‘the China Price’
has become a brand that means the lowest price possible, there are Chinese factories that
have had to close, have moved their business to other parts of China where labor costs are
lower or have sent their work outside of China because they have not been able to maintain
their earlier level of pricing (ibid.). This outsourcing of work has led to increases in
manufacturing in neighboring countries such as Malaysia where some regions have
increased their productivities enormously. Penang, for example, increased its
manufacturing in 2010 by 465 per cent compared to 2009 because of this, due to what is
now being called ‘the China effect’ (Chowdhury 2001). For someone reading about this
for the first time, this becomes not just part of their social stock of knowledge but also part
of their social reality, a reality constructed (in part) through discourse.

Smart’s (forthcoming) discussion of climate change provides an example of the use of a

term, climate change, and accompanying arguments to create different realities for different
people. He demonstrates how both advocates and sceptics of climate change draw on their
own particular take on the work of the same person, Dr. James Hasen, an outspoken climate
change researcher to argue both for (the advocates) and against (the sceptics) climate
change. Smart shows how advocates draw on Hasen’s credentials as a leading climatologist
with NASA and the standing of the journal in which he has published, Science, to support
his argument for the irreversibility of climate change. The sceptics, however, make
connections between Hasen’s arguments, fiction and horror movies to argue against his
point of view. Here, we have opposing discourses on the same person’s work to make cases
both for and against the same phenomenon.
Cameron and Kulick (2003: 29) in their discussion of the history of the terms ‘gay’,
‘lesbian’ and ‘queer’ provide a further example of the connections between words and the
meanings that become associated with them. As they argue:

“…words in isolation are not the issue. It is in discourse – the use of language in specific
contexts – that words acquire meaning.

Whenever people argue about words, they are also arguing about the assumptions and
values that have clustered around those words in the course of their history of being used.
We cannot understand the significance of any word unless we attend closely to its
relationship to other words and to the discourse (indeed, the competing discourses) in
which words are always embedded. And we must bear in mind that discourse shifts and
changes constantly, which is why arguments about words and their meanings are never
settled once and for all….”

As Firth argued ‘the complete meaning of a word is always contextual’ (Firth 1935: 37).
These meanings, however, change over time in relation to particular contexts of use and
changes in the social, cultural and ideological background/s to this use.

Discourse and socially situated identities

When we speak or write we use more than just language to display who we are, and how
we want people to see us. The way we dress, the gestures we use and the way/s we act and
interact also influence how we display social identity. Other factors which influence this
include the ways we think, the attitudes we display and the things we value, feel and
believe. As Gee (2011) argues, the ways we make visible and recognizable who we are and
what we are doing always involves more than just language. It involves acting, interacting
and thinking in certain ways. It also involves valuing and talking (or reading and writing)
in appropriate ways with appropriate ‘props’, at appropriate times and in appropriate
places.

The Princess of Wales, for example, knows in the Panorama interview not only how she is
expected to speak in the particular place and at the particular time but also how she should
dress, how she can use body language to achieve the effect that she wants as well as the
values, attitudes, beliefs and emotions it is appropriate for her to express (as well as those
it is not appropriate for her to express) in this situation. That is, she knows how to enact
the discourse of a Princess being interviewed about her private life in the open and public
medium of television. This discourse, may be different from, but related to, the discourse
she participates in in her role as mother of her children, and the public and private roles
and identities she had as wife of the Prince of Wales. A given discourse, thus, can involve
more than just the one single identity (ibid.).

Discourses, then, involve the socially situated identities that we enact and recognize in the
different settings that we interact in. they include culture-specific ways of performing and
culture-specific ways of recognizing identities and activities. Discourses also include the
different styles of language that we use to enact and recognize these identities; that is,
different social languages (Gee 1996). Discourses also involve characteristic way of acting,
interacting, and feeling, and characteristic ways of showing emotion, gesturing, dressing
and posturing. They also involve particular ways of valuing, thinking, believing, knowing,
speaking and listening, reading and writing (Gee 2011).

Discourse and performance

As Gee explains:

“… a Discourse is a ‘dance’ that exists in the abstract as a coordinated pattern of words,

deeds, values, beliefs, symbols, tools, objects, times, and places in the here and now as a
performance that is recognizable as just such a coordination. Like a dance, the performance
here and now is never exactly the same. It all comes down, often, to what the ‘master of
the dance’ will allow to be recognized or will be forced to recognize as a possible
instantiation of the dance…”(36)

This notion of performance and, in particular, performativity, is taken up by authors such

as Butler (1990, 1991, 1997, 1999, 2004), Cameron (1999), Eckert and McConnell-Ginet
(2003), Hall (2000) and Pennycook (2004, 2007). The notion of performativity derives
from speech a theory and the work of the linguistic philosopher Austin. It is based on the
view that in saying something, we do it (Cameron and Kulick 2003). That is, we bring
states of affairs into being as a result of what we say and what we do. Examples of this are
I promise and I now pronounce you husband and wife. Once I have said I promise I have
committed myself to doing something. Once a priest, or a marriage celebrant, says I
pronounce you husband and wife, the couple have ‘become’ husband and wife.
Performance, thus brings the social world into being (Bucholtz and Hall 2003).

Butler, Cameron and others talk about doing gender in much the way that Gee talks about
discourse as performance. Discourses, then, like the performance of gendered identities,
are socially constructed, rather than ‘natural’. People ‘are who they are because of (among
other things) the way they talk’ not ‘because of who they (already) are’ (Cameron 1999:
144). We, thus, ‘are not who we are because of some inner being but because of what we
do’ (Pennycook 2007: 70). It is, thus, ‘in doing that the identity is produced’ (Pennycook
2011).

Social identities, then, are not pre-given, but are formed in the use of language and the
various other ways we display who we are, what we think, value and feel, etc. The way,
for example, a rap singer uses language, what they rap about and how they present
themselves as they do this, all contributes to their performance and creation of themselves
as a rap singer (Pennycook 2007). They may do this in a particular way on the streets of
New York, in another way in a show in Quebec, and yet another way in a night club in
Seoul. As they do being a rap singer, they bring into existence, or repeat, their social
persona as a rap singer.

Nor are we who we are because of how we (physically) look or where we were originally
born. Otsuji (2010: 189) gives the example of asking a student (in Japanese class) with an
Indonesian name and Indonesian appearance ‘How it is in Indonesia?’ to which the student
simply replied (in Japanese) ‘I am Australian’. Similarly, she asks another student ‘Where
are you from?’ to which the student replies ‘Well, may be China… my parents are from
Shanghai but I don’t know much about China. Cause I grew up here’. Otsuji’s parents are
ethnically Japanese. She was born, however, in the United States. She has lived in Japan,
as well as in Scotland, Singapore, Holland and Australia. When she tells this to a Japanese
person in a casual meeting a frequent reply is ‘Then you are not Japanese’. Otsuji, however,
is Japanese in appearance, she speaks Japanese, she has lived in Japan and she has strong
family connections in Japan. So what, then, does it mean ‘to be Japanese’, or to have a
‘Japanese’ identity? (see Choi 2010, Otsuji 2010 for further discussions of this).

Discourse and intertextuality

All texts, whether they are spoken or written, make their meanings against the background
of other texts and things that have been said on other occasions (Lemke 1992). Texts may
more or less implicitly or explicitly cite other texts; they may refer to other texts, or they
may allude to other past, or future, texts. We thus ‘make sense of every word, every
utterance, or act against the background of (some) other words, utterances, acts of a similar
kind’ (Lemke 1995: 23). All texts are, thus, in an intertextual relationship with other texts.
As Bazerman (2004: 83) argues:

“…We create our texts out of the sea of former texts that surround us, the sea of language
we live in. And we understand the texts of others within the same sea….”

Umberto Eco (1987) provides an interesting discussion of intertextuality in his chapter

‘Casablanca: Cult movies and intertextuality collage’. Eco points out that the film
Casablanca was made one a very small budget and in a very short time. As a result its
creators were forced to improvise the plot, mixing a little of everything they knew worked
in a movie as they went. The result is what Eco (1987) describes as an ‘intertexual collage’.
For Eco, Casablanca has been so successful because it is not, in fact, an instance of a single
kind of film genre but a mixing of stereotyped situations that are drawn from a number of
different kinds of film genres. As the film proceeds, he argues, we recognize the film genres
that they recall. We also recognize the pleasures we have experienced when we have
watched these kinds of films.
Wang’s (2007) study of newspaper commentaries in Chinese and English on the events of
September 11 provides an example of how writers in different language and cultural
settings draw on intertexual resources for the writing of their texts and how they position
themselves in relation to their sources. One of the most striking differences Wang found
was that in the Chinese texts he examined the writers often drew their views from other
sources but made it clear they were not the authors of the texts. They did not attempt to
endorse these views or take a stance towards them, thereby keeping a distance from the
views that he had presented. In the English language contexts, however, the writers tool
the points of view they were presenting as widely held within the particular community
and did not try to distance themselves for them. Wang then discusses how many of the
differences he observed can be traced back to the different sociocultural settings in which
the texts occurred, and especially the role of the media in the two different settings. Thus,
while media discourses are often global in nature, they are, at the same time, often very
local (Machin and van Leeuwen 2007) and draw on other texts for different purposes and
often in rather different ways (see Paltridge and Wang 2010, 2011 for further discussion of
this study).

1.3 Summary

Discourse analysis, then, considers the relationship between language and the social and
cultural contexts in which it is used. It considers what people mean by what they say, how
they work out what people mean and the way language present different views of the world
and different understandings. This includes an examination of how discourse is shaped by
relationships between participants, and the effects discourse has upon social identities and
relations.

Discourse analysis takes us into what Riggenbach (1999) calls the ‘bigger picture’ of
language description that is often left out of more micro-level descriptions of language use.
It takes us into the social and cultural settings of language use to help us understand
particular language choices. That is, it takes us beyond description to explanation and helps
us understand the ‘rules of the game’ that language users draw on in their everyday spoken
and written interactions. There are many ways in which one could (and can) approach
discourse analysis, and the questions that have been asked. The aim of this book is to
provide an introduction to some of these perspectives.