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INTRODUCTION: KEY TOPICS IN THE STUDY OF DISCOURSE ANALYSIS, Ahmad Khaerul…
INTRODUCTION: KEY TOPICS IN THE STUDY OF DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
What is Discourse Analysis?
Discourse analysis is the study of language. Many people would define discourse analysis as a sub-‐field of linguistics, which is the scientific study of language. But it is not just the study of language, it is a way of looking at language that focuses on how people use it in real life to do things. This way is based on four main assumptions. They are
language is ambiguous, language us always ‘in the world’, the way we use language is inseparable from who we are and the different social groups to which we belong,
and
language us never used all by itself.
The Ambiguity of Language.
Nearly all communication contains some elements of meaning that are not expressed directly by the words that are spoken or written. The fact that
people don’t always say what they mean, and people don’t always mean what they say.
Language in The World.
The meaning of an utterance can change dramatically depending on who is saying it, when and where it is said, and to whom it is said. In other words, when we speak of discourse, we are always speaking of language that is in some way
situated.
Language and Social Identity
. Whenever people speak or write they are, through their discourse, somehow demonstrating who they are and what their relationship is to other people. They are enacting their identities.
Language and Other Modes
. In other words, language alone cannot achieve all the things I Need to do to be a certain kind of person.
Text and Texture
Discourse analysts analyze ‘texts’ and ‘conversations’. The main thing that makes a text a text is relationships or connections. Sometimes these relationships are between words, sentences or other elements inside the text. These kinds of relationships create what we refer to as
cohesion
. Another kind of relationship exists between the text and the person who is reading it or using it in some way, this is what we called with
coherence
. Finally, there is the relationship between one text and other texts in the world that one might, at some point, need to refer to in the process of making sense of this text. This Kind of relationship creates what we call
intertextuality.
Text and Their Social Functions
Different patterns of texture are associated with different types of texts. The notion of genre in discourse analysis goes beyond examining the conventional structures and features of different kinds of texts to asking what these structures and features can tell us about the people who use the texts and what they are using them to do.
Discourse are Communicative events
. The communicative purposes of texts are often multiple and complex. The different people using the text might also have different purposes in mind.
Conventions and Constraints
. Genres, therefore, come with ‘built -in’ constraints as to what kinds of things they can include and what kinds of things they cannot, based on the activity they are trying to accomplish.
Creativity
. Being able to successfully ‘bend’ and ‘blend’ genres is very much a matter of and a marker of expertise: in order to break the rules effectively, you must also be able to show that you have mastered the rules.
Discourse Communities
. At the center of the concept of genre is the idea of belonging. Genres are always associated with certain groups of people that have certain common goals and common ways of reaching these goals. Genres not only link people together, they also link people with certain activities, identities, roles and responsibilities.
Discourse and Ideology
All texts, even those that seem rather innocuous or banal, somehow involve these systems of inclusion and exclusion.
‘
Whos doing Whats
’. According to Halliday, we represent the world through language by choosing words that represent people, things or concepts (
participants
), and words about what these participants are doing to, with or for one another (
processes
).
Relationships. Another important way texts promote ideology is in the relationships they create between the people who are communicating and between communicators and what they are communicating about, what Halliday calls the
interpersonal function
of language.
Intertextuality. We called the relationship texts create with other texts
intertextuality
, and intertextuality is another important way ideologies are promoted in discourse.
Discourse
Spoken Discourse
When people speak they also produce different kinds of genres (such as casual conversations, debates, lectures and speeches of various kinds) and use different kinds of ‘social languages’. They also promote particular versions of reality or
ideologies
. But there are some ways in which speech is very different from writing. First of all, speech is more interactive. Second, speech tends to be more transient and spontaneous than writing.
Making Sense of Conversations
. Although, as we have seen there is also a certain amount of ambiguity in written language, this problem is much more common in spoken language due in part to its inexplicit, context -specific nature.
Strategic Interaction
Two basic kinds of conversational strategies:
face strategies
and
framing strategies
. Face strategies have to do primarily with showing who we are and what kind of relationship we have with the people with whom we are talking. Framing strategies have more to do with showing what we are doing in the conversation, whether we are, for example, arguing, teasing, flirting or gossiping.
Context, Culture, and Communication
What is Context? ‘Context’ Could mean practically anything from the place and time of day of an utterance, to the color of the clothing that the speakers are wearing, to speakers’ political views or religious beliefs.
Context and Competence
Mediated Discourse Analysis
We are literally surrounded by discourse.
Mediated discourse analysis
, the perspective on discourse that is the topic of this section, approaches the problem of ‘which discourse to analyze’ by asking the simple question: ‘What’s going on here?’ and then focusing on whatever texts, conversations or other things play a part in ‘what’s going on’.
Discourse and Action
. Mediated discourse analysis has a similar focus on action, but, whereas these other approaches start with the discourse and ask what kinds of social actions speakers or writers can accomplish with it, mediated discourse analysis starts with actions and asks what role discourse plays in them.
Multimodal Discourse Analysis
Multimodal discourse analysis
which focuses more directly on these other tools or ‘modes’ of communication. Multimodal Discourse analysts see discourse as involving multiple modes which often work together. The point of multimodal discourse analysis is not to analyze these other modes
instead
of speech and writing, but to understand how different modes, including speech and writing, work together in discourse.
Corpus-assisted Discourse Analysis
Corpus-assisted discourse analysis is unique in that it allows us to go beyond looking at a small number of texts or interactions to analyzing a large number of them and being able to compare them to other texts and conversations that are produced under similar or different circumstances. A corpus is basically a collection of texts in digital format that it is possible to search through and manipulate using a computer program.
Theory or Method?
One of the differences between corpus -assisted discourse analysis and the other approaches to discourse is that, while approaches like genre analysis, conversation analysis, and the ethnography of communication each explicitly advance a particular theory of discourse, corpus-assisted discourse analysis is often seen to be ‘theory-neutral’. That is,it is viewed more as a method for assisting in the application of different theories.
Ahmad Khaerul Akhyar
F041201074
Discourse Analysis A