Discourse analysis, or discourse studies, is a general term for a number of approaches
to analyze written, vocal, or sign language use or any significant semiotic event.
The objects of discourse analysis—discourse, writing, conversation, communicative event—are
variously defined in terms of coherent sequences of sentences, propositions, speech, or turns-at-talk.
Contrary to much of traditional linguistics, discourse analysts not only study language
use 'beyond the sentence boundary', but also prefer to analyze 'naturally occurring' language
use, and not invented examples. Text linguistics is related. The essential difference between
discourse analysis and text linguistics is that it aims at revealing socio-psychological
characteristics of a person/persons rather than text structure.
Discourse analysis has been taken up in a variety of social science disciplines, including
linguistics, education, sociology, anthropology, social work, cognitive psychology, social
psychology, area studies, cultural studies, international relations, human geography,
communication studies, and translation studies, each of which is subject to its own assumptions,
dimensions of analysis, and methodologies.
Topics of interest Topics of discourse analysis include:
The various levels or dimensions of discourse, such as sounds, gestures, syntax, the lexicon,
style, rhetoric, meanings, speech acts, moves, strategies, turns, and other aspects of interaction
Genres of discourse The relations between discourse and the emergence
of syntactic structure The relations between text and context
The relations between discourse and power The relations between discourse and interaction
The relations between discourse and cognition and memory
Political discourse Political discourse analysis is a field of
discourse analysis which focuses on discourse in political forums as the phenomenon of interest.
Policy analysis requires discourse analysis to be effective from the post-positivist perspective.
Political discourse is the informal exchange of reasoned views as to which of several alternative
courses of action should be taken to solve a societal problem.
History Although the ancient Greeks had much to say
on discourse, some scholars consider the Austrian emigre Leo Spitzer's Stilstudien [Style Studies]
of 1928 the earliest example of discourse analysis. It was translated into French by
Michel Foucault. However, the term first came into general
use following the publication of a series of papers by Zellig Harris beginning in 1952
and reporting on work from which he developed transformational grammar in the late 1930s.
Formal equivalence relations among the sentences of a coherent discourse are made explicit
by using sentence transformations to put the text in a canonical form. Words and sentences
with equivalent information then appear in the same column of an array. This work progressed
over the next four decades into a science of sublanguage analysis, culminating in a
demonstration of the informational structures in texts of a sublanguage of science, that
of immunology, and a fully articulated theory of linguistic informational content. During
this time, however, most linguists ignored these developments in favor of a succession
of elaborate theories of sentence-level syntax and semantics.
In January, 1953, a linguist working for the American Bible Society, James A. Lauriault/Loriot,
needed to find answers to some fundamental errors in translating Quechua, in the Cuzco
area of Peru. Following Harris's 1952 publications, he worked over the meaning and placement of
each word in a collection of Quechua legends with a native speaker of Quechua and was able
to formulate discourse rules that transcended the simple sentence structure. He then applied
the process to Shipibo, another language of Eastern Peru. He taught the theory at the
Summer Institute of Linguistics in Norman, Oklahoma, in the summers of 1956 and 1957
and entered the University of Pennsylvania to study with Harris in the interim year.
He tried to publish a paper Shipibo Paragraph Structure, but it was delayed until 1970.
In the meantime, Dr. Kenneth Lee Pike, a professor at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, taught
the theory, and one of his students, Robert E. Longacre developed it in his writings.
Harris's methodology disclosing the correlation of form with meaning was developed into a
system for the computer-aided analysis of natural language by a team led by Naomi Sager
at NYU, which has been applied to a number of sublanguage domains, most notably to medical
informatics. The software for the Medical Language Processor is publicly available on
SourceForge. In the late 1960s and 1970s, and without reference
to this prior work, a variety of other approaches to a new cross-discipline of DA began to develop
in most of the humanities and social sciences concurrently with, and related to, other disciplines,
such as semiotics, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, and pragmatics. Many of these approaches,
especially those influenced by the social sciences, favor a more dynamic study of oral
talk-in-interaction. An example is "conversational analysis", which was influenced by the Sociologist
Harold Garfinkel, the founder of Ethnomethodology. In Europe, Michel Foucault became one of the
key theorists of the subject, especially of discourse, and wrote The Archaeology of Knowledge.
In this context, the term 'discourse' no longer refers to formal linguistic aspects, but to
institutionalized patterns of knowledge that become manifest in disciplinary structures
and operate by the connection of knowledge and power. Since the 1970s, Foucault´s works
have had an increasing impact especially on discourse analysis in the social sciences.
Thus, in modern European social sciences, one can find a wide range of different approaches
working with Foucault´s definition of discourse and his theoretical concepts. Apart from the
original context in France, there is, at least since 2005, a broad discussion on socio-scientific
discourse analysis in Germany. Here, for example, the sociologist Reiner Keller developed his
widely recognized 'Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse'. Following the sociology
of knowledge by Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, Keller argues, that our sense of
reality in everyday life and thus the meaning of every objects, actions and events are the
product of a permanent, routinized interaction. In this context, SKAD has been developed as
a scientific perspective that is able to understand the processes of 'The Social Construction
of Reality' on all levels of social life by combining Michel Foucault's theories of discourse
and power with the theory of knowledge by Berger/Luckmann. Whereas the latter primarily
focus on the constitution and stabilisation of knowledge on the level of interaction,
Foucault's perspective concentrates on institutional contexts of the production and integration
of knowledge, where the subject mainly appears to be determined by knowledge and power. Therefore,
the 'Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse' can also be seen as an approach to deal with
the vividly discussed micro-macro problem in sociology.
Perspectives The following are some of the specific theoretical
perspectives and analytical approaches used in linguistic discourse analysis:
Applied linguistics Cognitive neuroscience of discourse comprehension
Cognitive psychology, studying the production and comprehension of discourse.
Conversation analysis Critical discourse analysis
Discursive psychology Emergent grammar
Ethnography of communication Functional grammar
Interactional sociolinguistics Pragmatics
Response based therapy Rhetoric
Stylistics Sublanguage analysis
Text linguistics Variation analysis
Although these approaches emphasize different aspects of language use, they all view language
as social interaction, and are concerned with the social contexts in which discourse is
embedded. Often a distinction is made between 'local'
structures of discourse and 'global' structures, such as overall topics and the schematic organization
of discourses and conversations. For instance, many types of discourse begin with some kind
of global 'summary', in titles, headlines, leads, abstracts, and so on.
A problem for the discourse analyst is to decide when a particular feature is relevant
to the specification is required. Are there general principles which will determine the
relevance or nature of the specification. See also
Actor Analysis of subjective logics
Critical discourse analysis Dialogical analysis
Communicative action Discourse
Essex School of discourse analysis Ethnolinguistics
Foucauldian discourse analysis Linguistic anthropology
Narrative analysis Pragmatics
Rhetoric Sociolinguistics
Stylistics Worldview
Further reading
Bhatia, V.J. Analysing Genre: Language in Professional Settings. England: Longman.
Bhatia, V.J. Worlds of Written Discourse. London: Continuum.
Blommaert, J.. Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Brown, G., and George Yule. Discourse Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Carter, R.. Investigating English Discourse. London: Routledge.
Corcoran, J.. Discourse Grammars and the Structure of Mathematical Reasoning I, II, and III,
Journal of Structural Learning 3. Gee, J. P.. An Introduction to Discourse Analysis:
Theory and Method. London: Routledge. Deese, James. Thought into Speech: The Psychology
of a Language.Century Psychology Series. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1984.
Halliday, M.A.K., and Greaves, W.S.. Intonation in the Grammar of English, London, Equinox.
Halliday, M.A.K., and C.M.I.M. Matthiessen. An introduction to functional grammar, 3d
ed. London, Arnold Harris, Zellig S.. "Culture and Style in Extended
Discourse". Selected Papers from the 29th International Congress of Americanists, vol.III:
Indian Tribes of Aboriginal America ed. by Sol Tax & Melville J[oyce] Herskovits, 210-215.
New York: Cooper Square Publishers. [Proposes a method for analyzing extended discourse,
with example analyses from Hidatsa, a Siouan language spoken in North Dakota.]
Harris, Zellig S. "Discourse Analysis". Language 28:1.1-30. French translation "Analyse du
discours". Langages 13.8-45. German translation by Peter Eisenberg, "Textanalyse". Beschreibungsmethoden
des amerikanischen Strakturalismus ed. by Elisabeth Bense, Peter Eisenberg & Hartmut
Haberland, 261-298. München: Max Hueber. [Presents a method for the analysis of connected
speech or writing.] Harris, Zellig S. 1952c. "Discourse Analysis:
A sample text". Language 28:4.474-494. Harris, Zellig S. "Distributional Structure".
Word 10:2/3.146-162. French translation "La structure distributionnelle,". Analyse distributionnelle
et structurale ed. by Jean Dubois & Françoise Dubois-Charlier, 14-34. Paris: Didier / Larousse.
Harris, Zellig S. Discourse Analysis Reprints. The Hague: Mouton, 73 pp. [Combines Transformations
and Discourse Analysis Papers 3a, 3b, and 3c. 1957, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania.
] Harris, Zellig S. Mathematical Structures
of Language. New York: Interscience Publishers John Wiley & Sons). French translation Structures
mathématiques du langage. Transl. by Catherine Fuchs. Paris: Dunod, 248 pp.
Harris, Zellig S. Papers in Structural and Transformational Linguistics. Dordrecht/ Holland:
D. Reidel., x, 850 pp. [Collection of 37 papers originally published 1940-1969.]
Harris, Zellig S. Papers on Syntax. Ed. by Henry Hiż. Dordrecht/Holland: D. Reidel,
vii, 479 pp.] Harris, Zellig S. "Discourse and Sublanguage".
Sublanguage: Studies of language in restricted semantic domains ed. by Richard Kittredge
& John Lehrberger, 231-236. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
Harris, Zellig S. "On Grammars of Science". Linguistics and Philosophy: Essays in honor
of Rulon S. Wells ed. by Adam Makkai & Alan K. Melby, 139-148. Amsterdam & Philadelphia:
John Benjamins. Harris, Zellig S. Language and Information.
New York: Columbia University Press, ix, 120 pp.
Harris, Zellig S. 1988b. "Scientific Sublanguages and the Prospects for a Global Language of
Science". Annals of the American Association of Philosophy and Social Sciences No.495.73-83.
Harris, Zellig S. The Form of Information in Science: Analysis of an immunology sublanguage.
Preface by Hilary Putnam. Dordrecht/Holland & Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, xvii,
590 pp. Harris, Zellig S. A Theory of Language and
Information: A mathematical approach. Oxford & New York: Clarendon Press, xii, 428 pp.;
illustr. Jaworski, A. and Coupland, N... The Discourse
Reader. London: Routledge. Johnstone, B.. Discourse analysis. Oxford:
Blackwell. Keller, R.. The Sociology of Knowledge Approach
to Discourse. In: Human Studies 34, 43-65. Keller, R.. Doing Discourse Research. An Introduction
for Social Scientists. London: Sage Kittredge, Richard & John Lehrberger. Sublanguage:
Studies of language in restricted semantic domains. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
Loriot, James and Barbara E. Hollenbach. 1970. "Shipibo paragraph structure." Foundations
of Language 6: 43-66. The seminal work reported as having been admitted by Longacre and Pike.
See link below from Longacre's student Daniel L. Everett.
Longacre, R.E.. The grammar of discourse. New York: Plenum Press.
Miscoiu, S., Craciun O., Colopelnic, N.. Radicalism, Populism, Interventionism. Three Approaches
Based on Discourse Theory. Cluj-Napoca: Efes. Renkema, J.. Introduction to discourse studies.
Amsterdam: Benjamins. Sager, Naomi & Ngô Thanh Nhàn. "The computability
of strings, transformations, and sublanguage". The Legacy of Zellig Harris: Language and
information into the 21st Century, Vol. 2: Computability of language and computer applications,
ed. by Bruce Nevin, John Benjamins, pp. 79–120. Schiffrin, D., Deborah Tannen, & Hamilton,
H. E... Handbook of Discourse Analysis. Oxford: Blackwell.
Stubbs, M.. Discourse Analysis: The sociolinguistic analysis of natural language. Oxford: Blackwell
Teun A. van Dijk,.. Discourse Studies. 2 vols. London: Sage.
Potter, J, Wetherall, M.. Discourse and Social Psychology: Beyond attitudes and behaviour.
London: SAGE. Underhill, James W.. Creating Worldviews:
metaphor, ideology & language, Edinburgh UP. Underhill, James W.. Ethnolinguistics & Cultural
Concepts: truth, love, hate & war, Cambridge UP.
External links http:www.discourseanalysis.net sign up for
the international and interdisciplinary portal in discourse analysis: conferences, publications,
people... Daniel L. Everett, statement concerning James
Loriot, p. 9 The Discourse Attributes Analysis Program
and Measures of the Referential Process. Linguistic Society of America: Discourse Analysis,
by Deborah Tannen Discourse Analysis by Z. Harris