Definition of Discourse Analysis

DEFINITION OF
DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
Reported by: Jessa V. Jumawan BSED-IV
Discourse Analysis
 It is the study of how sentences in spoken and written language from lager meaningful
units such as paragraphs, conversations and interviews.
What is Discourse?
 The word ‘discourse’ comes from Latin ‘discursus‘ which denotes ‘conversation,
speech’ (Taiwo 14).
 According to Johnstone, it is “actual instances of communication in the medium of
language”. Discourse is a discipline that has no stable definition. This is because so many
scholars have given varied definitions to it based on their views of the subject matter.
 The common definition is given by Stubbs. He describes Discourse as “language above
the sentence or above the clause”. Discourse is meaning communicated far above what is
said.
 The study of Discourse is indeed the “study of many aspects of language use (Fasold 65).
Discourse is essentially the study of language in use.
 The term Discourse was first used by Zellig Harris in a paper he presented in 1952.
As a structural linguist, he did not use Discourse in the sense that is commonly used now.
He used it only as a sequence of utterances. It was in the late 1960s that scholars began to
use the term as an approach to the study of social interaction. (Taiwo 16). Discourse was
fully developed in the 1970s as a critique of cognitive process in communication. It is
based on the notion that language needs a context for it to function properly. Thus, it
becomes very impossible to understand the linguistic items used in discourse without a
context (Ahmad 1).
 Discourse, according to Zellig Harris (1951), who first used the term, is a sequence of
the utterances. He observes that:
 Stretches longer than one utterance are not usually considered in current
descriptive linguistics. The linguist usually considers the interrelations of
elements only within one utterance at a time.
 This yields a possible description of the material, since the interrelations of
elements within each utterance (or utterance type) are worked out, and any longer
discourse is describable as succession of utterances, i.e. a succession of elements
having the stated interrelations. This restriction means that nothing is generally
said about the interrelations among whole utterances within a sequence.
 Grenoble (2000), explaining Harriss definition of discourse, states that:

 Harris interestingly enough ruled out the kind of study which discourse analysis
aims to do. He is of the view that linguistic research focuses on the elements
within an utterance; discourse can be considered as a sequence of utterance.
 Harris argues that the study of the interrelations between utterances within a
discourse; the scope of a discourse analysis required much more information than
the theoretical apparatus of that time could handle. While this held true for 1950s
and 1960s, roughly, but 1970s saw an emerging body of different approaches
including pragmatics, conversation analysis, textual linguistics, and relevance
theory.
 Pragmatics as a general term, according to Grenoble (2000), can be
understood in at least as many ways as discourse analysis; some linguists equate
the two terms. In its narrow sense, it refers to linguistic theory that has been
directly influenced by the philosophy of language. In this paper I am concerned
with the approaches, either similar or different, used by stylistics and discourse
analysis to analyze different literary genre.
 Discourse is viewed as social performance or a social action. It is a relative social

phenomenon that depends solely on wide range of disciplines, such as Psychology,
Anthropology, Philosophy, Anthropological Linguistics, Sociology, Cognitive and
Social Psychology. This fact is corroborated by Fairclough when he opines that
“Discourse constitutes the social. Three dimensions of the social are distinguished-
knowledge, social relations, and social identity-and these correspond respectively to
three major functions of language” .
 Discourse, viewed from the linguistic perspective, is, in turn, composed of a wide range
of disciplines, such as Stylistics, Pragmatics, Conversational Analysis and Speech Act
Theory (Ahmad 2).
 Discourse Analysis basically studies and examines how an addresser structures his
linguistic messages for the addressee and how the addressee in turn uses some linguistic
cues to interpret them (the messages) (Brown and Yule qtd. in Taiwo 15).
 Social context plays a vital role in generating meaning in a discourse. In fact, it

determines the meaning that is to be communicated. Similarly, certain contextual features
equally shape the language people use. These are: the interlocutors themselves, their
discourse roles and the physical environment of the discourse, the worldview and cultural
practices in the domain of the discourse.
 Discourse Analysis considers language, used together with the aforementioned

features, to determine meaning. Discourse Analysis thus generates data for analysis based
on the observation and the intuition of the language users. This is why Taiwo believes
that a discourse analyst can analyze virtually every conversation, like “(casual, telephone,
gossip, etc), speeches (campaigns, formal speeches delivered by political figures, etc),
written discourse (novels, plays, news, written speeches, editorials, etc)” (15).
 Discourse analysis picks up from where stylistics stops. The tasking questions
discourse often asks are: What makes the speaker or writer use language the way he or
she does? How does the hearer or reader interpret what the speaker or writer says or
writes? Of course, this is where discourse shares a common boundary with Pragmatics.
Indeed, the speaker or writer has total control of the choice of words to use but he or she
certainly does not have control of the meaning the listener or speaker would derive from
what is said or written (Aziz n.pag).
 Discourse, in Collins dictionary of English,
 It is defined as verbal communication; talk or conversation that shows the

disciplines discourse analysis - major concern with analysing real
conversation.
 Discourse, according to Stubbs (1983:1),
 It is language above the sentence or above the clause and the study of
discourse is the study of any aspect of language use.
 (Fasold1990: 65).
 In simple words, discourse analysis is the study of language in use. The
discipline is based on the fact that language needs a context for its
existence and it is impossible to understand the linguistic items, used in
discourse, without a context.
 As Fairclough states:
 Discourse constitutes the social. Three dimensions of the social are
distinguished knowledge, social relations, and social identity and these
correspond respectively to three major functions of language Discourse is
shaped by relations of power, and invested ideologies. (Fairclough 1992:8)
 Discourse analysis, being a relative social phenomenon solely depends on
the wide range of disciplines, such as sociology, anthropology, cognitive
and social psychology, philosophy, for knowledge and methodologies and
it is difficult to draw a clear line of demarcation between certain linguistic
fields, such as anthropological linguistics, psycholinguistic, discourse
analysis and cognitive linguistics, as the approaches to study of language
in use are borrowed from these sub fields and most of the times the
findings are independently supported by the fresh evidences.
 Discourse analysis, in turn, is composed of a wide range of sub-
disciplines, such as pragmatics, conversational analysis, speech act theory
and ethnography of speaking. The discipline studies language used in the
context, so its subject matter is language as a whole, either written or
spoken, in terms of transcriptions, larger texts, audio or video recordings,
which provides an opportunity to the analyst to work with language rather
than a single sentence.
 Discourse analysis, on the other hand, is concerned with:

 The language in use
 Conversation analysis
 Speech Acts
 Co-operative principles
 The analysis of language in a social context, political, religious, cultural contexts
 Discourse analysis relies on a wide range of disciplines
Discourse dwells so much on the context of language use in social setting.

Discourse analysis on the other hand tries to analyze literature in terms of Co-
operative principles, with derived maxims, speech acts and conversational analysis,
which is an approach totally different from that followed by stylistics in analyzing
literary texts.

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DEFINITION OF

 Grenoble (2000), explaining Harriss definition of discourse, states that:

 Discourse is viewed as social performance or a social action. It is a relative social

 Social context plays a vital role in generating meaning in a discourse. In fact, it

 Discourse Analysis considers language, used together with the aforementioned

 Discourse, in Collins dictionary of English,

 It is defined as verbal communication; talk or conversation that shows the

 Discourse analysis, on the other hand, is concerned with:

Discourse dwells so much on the context of language use in social setting.

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