Discourse analysis

From Vero - Wikipedia
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Template:Short description Template:Original research Template:Sociolinguistics Template:Sidebar with collapsible lists Template:Research Discourse analysis (DA), or discourse studies, is an approach to the analysis of written, spoken, or sign language, including any significant semiotic event.Template:Citation needed

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, not invented examples.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Text linguistics is a closely related field. The essential difference between discourse analysis and text linguistics is that discourse analysis aims at revealing socio-psychological characteristics of a person/persons rather than text structure.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Discourse analysis has been taken up in a variety of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, including linguistics, education, sociology, anthropology, social work, cognitive psychology, social psychology, area studies, cultural studies, international relations, human geography, environmental studies, communication studies, biblical studies, public relations, argumentation studies, and translation studies, each of which is subject to its own assumptions, dimensions of analysis, and methodologies.Template:Citation needed

History

{{ safesubst:#invoke:Unsubst||date=__DATE__ |$B= Template:Ambox }}

Early use of the term

There is ongoing discussion about whether Austria-born Leo Spitzer's Stilstudien (Style Studies) of 1928 is the earliest example of discourse analysis (DA).Template:Citation needed Michel Foucault translated it into French.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> However, the term first came into general use following the publicationTemplate:Citation needed of a series of papers by Zellig Harris from 1952<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> reporting on work from which he developed transformational grammar in the late 1930s. Formally equivalent 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 (see references) into a science of sublanguage analysis (Kittredge & Lehrberger 1982), culminating in a demonstration of the informational structures in texts of a sublanguage of science, that of immunology (Harris et al. 1989),<ref name=Hardy1991>Template:Cite journal</ref> and a fully articulated theory of linguistic informational content (Harris 1991).<ref name=Hardy1991/> During this time, however, most linguists ignored such developments in favor of a succession of elaborate theories of sentence-level syntax and semantics.<ref>John Corcoran, then a colleague of Harris in Linguistics at University of Pennsylvania, summarized and critically examined the development of Harris’s thought on discourse through 1969 in lectures attended by Harris’ colleagues and students in Philadelphia and Cambridge.
Template:Cite journal</ref>

In January 1953, a linguist working for the American Bible Society, James A. Lauriault (alt. 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<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Summer Institute of Linguistics in Norman, Oklahoma, in the summers of 1956 and 1957 and entered the University of Pennsylvania<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> to study with Harris in the interim year. He tried to publish a paper,<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>Shipibo Paragraph Structure, but it was delayed until 1970 (Loriot & Hollenbach 1970).Template:Citation needed In the meantime, Kenneth Lee Pike, a professor at the University of Michigan,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> 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.

In the humanities

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. These include 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" (CA),<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> which was influenced by the sociologist Harold Garfinkel,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> the founder of ethnomethodology.

Perspectives

The following are some of the specific theoretical perspectives and analytical approaches used in linguistic discourse 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 (such as relations among sentences, propositions, and turns) 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.

Increasingly, more recent methodological frameworks in social sciences conceptualize discourse analysis not as a singular method, but as an umbrella term representing both an analytical framework and a flexible set of methods from discursive psychology to critical discourse analysis.<ref name="AlejandroZhao2023">Template:Cite journal</ref> The unifying goal across these perspectives is to empirically investigate how discourse—defined broadly as language in its social context—produces social configurations and contributes to the (re)production of social and political orders.<ref name=":0">Template:Citation</ref><ref name=":1">Template:Cite book</ref> This is typically achieved by identifying specific linguistic mechanisms and processes within the socio-political context where texts are produced and received.<ref name="AlejandroZhao2023" /> Consequently, discourse analysis is frequently combined with other approaches, such as content analysis or thematic analysis, to maximize its strength in providing in-depth and contextualized readings<ref name=":0" /> in multi-method qualitative text analysis research designs according to the framework developed by Alejandro and Zhao.<ref name="AlejandroZhao2023" />

Topics of interest

Topics of discourse analysis include:<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

  • The various levels or dimensions of discourse, such as sounds (intonation, etc.), gestures, syntax, the lexicon, style, rhetoric, meanings, speech acts, moves, strategies, turns, and other aspects of interaction
  • Genres of discourse (various types of discourse in politics, the media, education, science, business, etc.)
  • The relations between discourse and the emergence of syntactic structure
  • The relations between text (discourse) and context
  • The relations between discourse and power
  • The relations between discourse and interaction
  • The relations between discourse and cognition and memory
  • Lexical density
  • Ecocultural discourse studies consider human relationships with their wider ecologies. As Milstein writes, “discourses not only serve to structure, oppress, and transform human lives, but so, too, do discourses serve to symbolically and materially construct, constrain, and change the more than human world”.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

Political discourse

Template:See also Political discourse is the text and talk of professional politicians or political institutions, such as presidents and prime ministers and other members of government, parliament or political parties, both at the local, national and international levels, includes both the speaker and the audience.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Political discourse analysis is a field of discourse analysis which focuses on discourse in political forums (such as debates, speeches, and hearings) as the phenomenon of interest. Policy analysis requires discourse analysis to be effective from the post-positivist perspective.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book.</ref>

Political discourse is the formal exchange of reasoned views as to which of several alternative courses of action should be taken to solve a societal problem.<ref name="co-operation.org">Template:Cite journal</ref>

Corporate discourse

Corporate discourse can be broadly defined as the language used by corporations. It encompasses a set of messages that a corporation sends out to the world (the general public, the customers and other corporations) and the messages it uses to communicate within its own structures (the employees and other stakeholders).<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

See also

Template:Col div

Template:Colend

References

Template:Reflist

Template:Library resources box

Template:Communication studies Template:Michel Foucault

Template:Authority control

Retrieved from "https://wiki.sarg.dev/index.php?title=Discourse_analysis&oldid=584487"