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DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
September 2015
In book: Issues in the study of language and literature (pp.169-
195) · Publisher: Ibadan: Kraft Books Limited.

Authors:

Ikenna Kamalu
University of Port Harcourt

Ayo Osisanwo
University of Ibadan

Citations (3) References (36)

Abstract

Discourse analysis (DA) is a broad field of study that

draws some of its theories and methods of analysis from
disciplines such as linguistics, sociology, philosophy and
psychology. More importantly, discourse analysis has
provided models and methods of engaging issues that
emanate from disciplines such as education, cultural
studies, communication and so on. The vast nature of
discourse analysis makes it impossible for us to discuss all
that the reader needs to know about it in an introductory
work of this nature. However, the chief aim of this chapter
is to introduce the reader to some of the basic terms and
concepts involved in discourse analysis. The reader is
also introduced to some of the approaches to linguistic
study of discourse.

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CHAPTER

8
DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

Ikenna Kamalu & Ayo Osisanwo

Introduction
Discourse analysis (DA) is a broad field of study that draws some of its
theories and methods of analysis from disciplines such as linguistics,
sociology, philosophy and psychology. More importantly, discourse
analysis has provided models and methods of engaging issues that
emanate from disciplines such as education, cultural studies,
communication and so on. The vast nature of discourse analysis makes it
impossible for us to discuss all that the reader needs to know about it in
an introductory work of this nature. However, the chief aim of this chapter
is to introduce the reader to some of the basic terms and concepts involved
in discourse analysis. The reader is also introduced to some of the
approaches to linguistic study of discourse.

What is Discourse Analysis?

The term ‘discourse analysis’ was first used by the sentence linguist, Zellig
Harris in his 1952 article entitled ‘Discourse Analysis’. According to him,
discourse analysis is a method for the analysis of connected speech or
writing, for continuing descriptive linguistics beyond the limit of a simple
sentence at a time (Harris 1952). Meanwhile, scholars have attested to the
difficulty in coming up with a comprehensive and acceptable definition for
discourse analysis. However, a way to simplify the attempt to define
discourse analysis is to say that discourse analysis is ‘the analysis of
discourse’. The next question, therefore, would be ‘what is discourse?’

169

170 ▪ Issues in the Study of Language and Literature: Theory & Practice

Discourse can simply be seen as language in use (Brown & Yule

1983; Cook 1989). It therefore follows that discourse analysis is the
analysis of language in use. By ‘language in use’, we mean the set of
norms, preferences and expectations which relate language to context.
Discourse analysis can also be seen as the organization of language above
the sentence level. The term ‘text’ is, sometimes, used in place of
‘discourse’. The concern of discourse analysis is not restricted to the
study of formal properties of language; it also takes into consideration
what language is used for in social and cultural contexts. Discourse
analysis, therefore, studies the relationship between language (written,
spoken – conversation, institutionalized forms of talk) and the contexts in
which it is used. What matters is that the text is felt to be coherent. Guy
Cook (1989:6-7) describes discourse as language in use or language used
to communicate something felt to be coherent which may, or may not
correspond to a correct sentence or series of correct sentences. Discourse
analysis, therefore, according to him, is the search for what gives
discourse coherence. He posits that discourse does not have to be
grammatically correct, can be anything from a grunt or simple expletive,
through short conversations and scribbled notes, a novel or a lengthy legal
case. What matters is not its conformity to rules, but the fact that it
communicates and is recognized by its receivers as coherent. Similarly,
Stubbs (1983:1) perceives discourse analysis as ‘a conglomeration of
attempts to study the organization of language and therefore to study
larger linguistic units, such as conversational exchanges or written text.’
Again, we affirm that what matters in the study of discourse, whether as
language in use or as language beyond the clause, is that language is
organized in a coherent manner such that it communicates something to
its receivers.
Discourse analysis evolved from works in different disciplines in the
1960s and early 1970s, including linguistics, semiotics, anthropology,
psychology and sociology. Some of the scholars and the works that either
gave birth to, or helped in the development of discourse analysis include
the following: J.L. Austin whose How to Do Things with Words (1962)
introduced the popular social theory, speech-act theory. Dell Hymes
(1964) provided a sociological perspective with the study of speech. John
Searle (1969) developed and improved on the work of Austin. The linguistic
philosopher, M.A.K. Halliday greatly influenced the linguistic properties of
discourses (e.g. Halliday 1961), and in the 1970s he provided sufficient
framework for the consideration of the functional approach to language
(e.g. Halliday 1973). H.P. Grice (1975) and Halliday (1978) were also
influential in the study of language as social action reflected in the
formulation of conversational maxims and the emergence of social
semiotics. The work of Sinclair and Coulthard (1975) also developed a
model for the description of teacher-pupil talk. The study grew to be a

Discourse Analysis – Ikenna Kamalu & Ayo Osisanwo (2015) ▪ 171

major approach to discourse. Some work on conversation analysis also

aided the development of discourse analysis. Some of such works from the
ethnomethodological tradition include the work of Gumperz and Hymes
1972. Some other works influential in the study of conversational norms,
turn-taking, and other aspects of spoken interaction include Goffman
(1976, 1979), and Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson (1974). The brief review
above shows that the approach to discourse is anything but uniform, so
below is an attempt to provide a more systematic insight into some of the
approaches to discourse.

3.0 Approaches to Discourse

The term ‘discourse analysis’ has been employed by people in a variety of
academic disciplines and departments to describe what they do, how they
do it, or both. Barbara Johnstone (2002: 1) observes that while many of
these people have training in general linguistics, some identify themselves
primarily as linguists, yet others identify themselves primarily with fields
of study as varied and disparate as anthropology, communication, cultural
studies, psychology or education among others. This shows that, under
the label discourse analysis, so many people do their own things in their
own ways, relying on methods and approaches that may be peculiar or
relevant to their disciplines or fields of study. However, the only thing all
these endeavours seem to have in common is their interest in studying
language and its effects. Consequently, Deborah Schiffrin (1994:5)
recognizes discourse analysis as one of the vast, but also one of the least
defined areas in linguistics. She points out that one of the reasons is that
our understanding of discourse is based on scholarship from a number of
academic disciplines that are actually very different from one another.
Another is that discourse analysis draws not just from disciplines such as
linguistics, anthropology, sociology and philosophy, from which models
and methods for analyzing discourse first developed, but also the fact that
such models and methods have been employed and extended in engaging
problems that emanate from other academic domains as communication,
social psychology, and artificial intelligence. Schiffrin in her Approaches to
Discourse (1994) discusses and compares some of the different approaches
to the linguistic analysis of discourse: speech act theory, interactional
sociolinguistics, ethnography of communication, pragmatics, conversation
analysis, and variation analysis. This part of the work, therefore,
summarizes the approaches to linguistic analysis of discourse identified by
Schiffrin. It aims at introducing the reader to some of the linguistic
approaches to discourse that are available to the analyst. Thus, the reader
is by this exercise (the synopsis presented below), encouraged to see
Schiffrin (1994) and other related texts for more on these approaches.

172 ▪ Issues in the Study of Language and Literature: Theory & Practice

Speech Act Theory

The Speech Act Theory was first formulated by the philosopher John
Austin (1962) and was later developed and presented more systematically
by another philosopher John Searle (1969, 1975). The theory proceeds
from the assumption that language is used to perform actions hence its
main concern is on how meaning and action are related to language. John
Austin and John Searle believe that language is not just used to describe
the world, but to perform a range of other actions that can be indicated in
the performance of the utterance itself. For example, ‘I promise to marry
you’ and ‘I sentence you to death’ perform the functions of promising and
sentencing respectively. However, an utterance may perform more than
one act at a time as in: ‘Can you pass the salt?’ which can be understood
as both a question and a request. But one can hardly understand the
utterance as a question to test the physical ability of the hearer but as a
request to perform the action requested. This kind of utterance is known
as an indirect speech act because its illocutionary force is an outcome of
the relationship between two different speech acts. Schriffin notes that
speech act approach to discourse focuses upon knowledge of underlying
conditions for production and interpretation of acts through words. The
context of the utterance helps the hearer in making sense of an indirect
speech act by separating the multiple functions of utterances from one
another. The literal meanings of words and the contexts in which they
occur may interact in our knowledge of the conditions underlying the
realization of acts and interpretation of acts. She further contends that
although speech act theory was not originally designed as a means of
analyzing discourse, some of its insights have been used by many scholars
to help solve problems basic to discourse analysis. This includes problems
of indirect speech act, multifunctionality and context dependence as in the
last example above. Cook (1989) also acknowledges that speech act theory
enables us to see how meaning has become more and more slippery.
Indirection, according to him, is something which human beings exploit to
their advantage. It enables them to avoid committing themselves and to
retreat in front of danger; and this is one of the major reasons why people
speak indirectly (40).

Interactional Sociolinguistic
The approach to discourse known as ‘interactional sociolinguistics’ is
essentially derived from the works of the anthropologist John Gumperz
and the sociologist Erving Goffman. The approach, according to Schiffrin,
has the most diverse disciplinary origins …it is based in anthropology,
sociology, and linguistics, and shares the concerns of all three fields with
culture, society, and language. The contribution to interactional
sociolinguistics made by John Gumperz provides an understanding of how
people may share grammatical knowledge of a language, but differently

Discourse Analysis – Ikenna Kamalu & Ayo Osisanwo (2015) ▪ 173

contextualize what is said – such that very different messages are

produced and understood. The contribution made by Erving Goffman, on
the other hand, provides a description of how language is situated in
particular circumstances of life, and how it reflects, and adds, meaning
and structure in those circumstances. Schiffrin identified the interaction
between self and the other, and context, as the two central issues
underlying the work of Gumperz and Goffman. Thus, while the work of
Gumperz focuses on how interpretations of context are critical to the
communication of information and to another’s understanding of a
speaker’s intention and/or discourse strategy, that of Goffman focuses on
how the organization of social life (in institutions, interactions, and so on)
provides contexts in which both the conduct of self and communication
with another can be ‘made sense of’ (both by those co-present in an
interaction and by outside analysts). Schiffrin further contends that the
work of both scholars also provides a view of language as indexical to a
social world: for Gumperz, language is an index to the background
cultural understandings that provide hidden – but nevertheless critical -
knowledge about how to make inferences about what is meant through an
utterance; for Goffman, language is one of a number of symbolic
resources that provide an index to the social identities and relationships
being continually constructed during interaction.
Interactional sociolinguistics provides an approach to discourse that
focuses upon situated meaning and scholars taking this approach
combine the ideas of the anthropologist John Gumperz and the sociologist
Erving Goffman. According to Schiffrin, what Gumperz contributes to this
approach is a set of tools that provide a framework within which to analyze
the use of language during interpersonal communication. He views
language as a socially and culturally constructed symbol system that both
reflects and creates macro-level social meaning and micro-level
interpersonal meanings. Goffman’s work also focuses upon situated
knowledge, the self, and social context in a way that complements
Gumperz’s focus on situated inference: Goffman provides a sociological
framework for describing and understanding the form and meaning of the
social and interpersonal contexts that provide presuppositions for the
interpretation of meaning. In all, interactional sociolinguistics views
discourse as a social interaction in which the emergent construction and
negotiation of meaning is facilitated by the use of language. The work of
Goffman forces structural attention to the contexts in which language is
used: situations, occasions, encounters, participation frameworks, and so
on, have forms and meanings that are partially created and/or sustained
by language. Similarly, language is patterned in ways that reflect those
contexts of use. As Schiffrin puts it, language and context co-constitute

174 ▪ Issues in the Study of Language and Literature: Theory & Practice

one another: language contextualizes and is contextualized, such that

language does not just function “in” contexts, language also forms and
provides context. Social interaction is identified as an instance of context.
Language, culture, and society are grounded in interaction: they stand in a
reflexive relationship with the self, the other, and the self-other
relationship, and it is out of these mutually constitutive relationships that
discourse is created (Schiffrin, 1994).

The Ethnography of Communication

The Ethnography of Communication, also known as Ethnography of
Speaking, was developed by Dell Hymes in a series of papers written in the
1960s and 1970s (many of which are collected in his Foundations in
Sociolinguistics: An Ethnographic Approach [1974]). Hymes argues that
Chomsky’s definition of competence is too narrow, and that an adequate
approach must distinguish and investigate four aspects of competence.
The four aspects include (i) systematic potential (to what extent is
something not yet realized), (ii) appropriateness (to what extent is
something suitable and effective in some context), (iii) occurrence (the
extent to which something is done), and (iv) feasibility (the extent to which
something is possible). In essence, therefore, this term is a critical
expansion of Noam Chomsky’s concept of competence which is only
concerned with the linguistic capabilities of the ideal speaker-hearer.
Chomsky’s concept backgrounds the social function of language. Hymes’
Ethnography of Communication is concerned with the analysis of language
use in its socio-cultural setting. This approach is based on the premise
that the meaning of an utterance can be understood only in relation to the
‘speech event’ or ‘communicative event,’ in which it is embedded (Hymes
1962). The character of such speech events (for example, a sermon) is
culturally determined.
Ethnography of speaking relates to discourse analysis through the
ethnographic approach where conversational inferences play a key role:
participants link the content of an utterance and other verbal, vocal, and
non-vocal cues with background knowledge. Hymes argues further that
any description of ‘ways of speaking’ will need to provide data along four
interrelated dimensions which are: the linguistic resources available to the
speaker; the rules of interpretation; supra-sentential structuring; and the
norms which govern different types of interaction.
Hymes tries to define the concepts of speech community, speech
styles and speech events in relation to the ethnography of speaking.
According to him, a speech community is any group which shares both
linguistic resources and rules for interaction and interpretation. On
speech styles, he says it is more useful to see a speech community as
comprising a set of styles (style, here, is seen as a mode of doing
something). The speech styles also include the consideration of registers.

Discourse Analysis – Ikenna Kamalu & Ayo Osisanwo (2015) ▪ 175

Style further considers the stylistic features (stylistic modes and

structures). It is a concept which also further accounts for variation
according to author, setting or topic but not as a general basis of
description.
Hymes believes that speech events are the largest units for which
one can discover linguistic structure and are thus not coterminous with
the situation. Speech events can occur in a non-verbal context. Several
speech events can occur successively or simultaneously in the same
situation. One of the ultimate aims of the ethnography of speaking is an
exhaustive list of the speech acts and speech events of a particular speech
community. For every speech event, Hymes holds the view that the
ethnographer initially provides data which he reduced to the acronym,
SPEAKING.

S setting: the time and space within which speech events occur –
physical circumstances
P participants: the speaker and the listener (or the addresser and the
addressee) in a speech situation
E ends: the goal/ purpose of the speaker
A acts: the actual form and content of what is said by the speaker (i.e
message form and content)
K key: the tone/manner of the message
I instrumentalities: the channel (verbal, nonverbal, physical)
through which the message is passed across
N norms of interaction and interpretation: the tradition – specific
properties attached to speaking/interpretation of norms within
cultural belief systems
G genre: the style (textual categories)

The emphasis of the ethnography of communication is based on the

analysis of situated talk. Hymes, therefore, places emphasis on the
interpretation of verbal strategies.

Pragmatics
Pragmatics as an approach to discourse is chiefly concerned with three
concepts (meaning, context, communication) that are themselves
extremely vast. The scope of pragmatics is so wide that it faces definitional
dilemmas similar to those faced by discourse analysis. Earlier studies on
pragmatics defined it as a branch of semiotics, the study of signs, but
contemporary discussions of pragmatics all take the relationship of sign to
their user to be central to pragmatics. Jacob Mey (2001) defines
pragmatics as the study of the use of language in human communication
as determined by the conditions of society. Schiffrin (1994) focuses on

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