Module 5 Discourse analysis
Overview
Discourse Analysis may be defined as the study of language use, be it spoken, written or delivered in any form.
‘Language use’ here relates to the fact that in an everyday setting, the real, genuine language used is often very different to the language which is presented in course books for English language learners, and for that matter grammar textbooks.
The study of discourse (communication) under this term started around the 1950s and became more popular in the sixties and seventies as the areas of psychology and sociology expanded.
Discourse analysis is now a huge field, encompassing such varied topics as genre, power and memory
It has important implications for the teaching of English as a foreign or second language for a number of reasons, which we will hope to discover in this unit.
Module 5 Discourse analysis
Background
The term ‘discourse analysis’ (DA) is rather difficult to define in simplistic terms as it is really a set of ideas rather than a strict approach or methodology. This difficulty in definition is historical in a sense, as discourse analysis has been taken up by such a wide variety of disciplines such as psychology, sociology and political science, to name a few.
The aim of discourse analysis would appear from its name to be to analyze 'discourse', where discourse is communication in some form, be it verbal, written, signed language or whatever This is where the problems start to arise as there will nearly always be some pre determined reason for making the analysis, as part of some research in a particular discipline.
As such it will be useful first of all to look at the various 'flavors' of DA, each of these being a different approach to what DA is about.
We will look at five different approaches to discourse analysis here. In no particular order, they are:
n Corpus linguistics
n Discursive psychology
n Conversational analysis
n Critical Discourse analysis
n Sociolinguistics
(i) Corpus Linguistics
A corpus, as defined by David Crystal (A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics 1991) is:
A collection of linguistic data, either written texts or a transcription of recorded speech, which can be used as a starting point of linguistic description or as a means of verifying hypotheses about language.
Corpus linguistics is therefore the study of natural authentic language through the use of multiple corpora.
Examples of corpora would be 'The Bank of English', which has been used to inform the writing of the Collins series of 'Cobuild English Grammar' books, and Longman Dictionaries, who have compiled the 'Longman Corpus Network'.
Longman dictionaries are compiled using the Longman Corpus Network – a huge database of 330 million words from a wide range of real-life sources such as books, newspapers and magazines. All the information in their dictionaries, including example sentences, is based on this corpus so dictionary users only see 'real' English, as it is actually used.
Module 5 Discourse analysis
Natural phrases and collocations form part of this. For example, when you hear a word like 'blue', what do you think of? Once in a blue moon? Argue until you're blue in the face? It's not always easy to know which words are statistically most naturally used together. One of the main benefits of working with a system such as the Longman Corpus Network is that we can give full coverage of thousands of natural word combinations (or collocations).
As Longman dictionaries are written specially for learners, the corpus actually helps them to avoid common mistakes. With 12 million words of students' essays and exam scripts, Longman analyze typical learners' mistakes and include notes on how to avoid them.
An example of the use of the Longman corpus is given here:
https://www.lextutor.ca/freq/lists_download/longman_3000_list.pdf
“Longman Communication 3000"
(ii) Discursive Psychology
This can be seen as a development from the Wittgensteinian tradition of the Philosophy of language. Discursive psychology aims to try and explain such issues as, attitude and motivation in what and how we say things.
As such, certainly in more recent years (this school of Psychology is itself very young, having been developed in the 1990's) the data that these studies draw upon is taken from real world sources. An example might be telephone conversations from the Child Protection Agency, an agency in the UK which was responsible for collecting payments from absent parents.
Module 5 Discourse analysis
(iii) Conversational Analysis
The initial development of this approach to discourse is arguably attributed to the work of Harvey Sacks in the 1960s.
It is unusual in the 'scientific' sense in that there are no real written rules to suggest what a CA research session should involve and in the reporting of this research there is usually no background information about prior hypotheses, statistical data or the subjects tested. Indeed CA limits the research of discourse to real life interactions, avoiding any set up conversations, or laboratory work which the field feels would alter the true nature of language use. The material used is nearly always recorded and later transcribed to add to the report.
Conversational analysis is concerned with describing the operational procedures that conversationalists use to make their discourse intelligible.
(iv) Critical Discourse Analysis
The basic tenet of critical discourse analysis is that language use is a form of social practice which is underscored by power or domination in some way
CDA has in a sense a political agenda; it suggests that texts in particular are always written from some ideological standpoint and that the way in which the texts are written can greatly affect the understanding taken by the reader, as indeed can the ideological standpoint of the reader, before interpreting the text.
In this sense CDA may well not be seen as a DA method at all, merely a branch of studies that looks at the relationship between power and discourse.
(v) Sociolinguistics
Sociolinguistics is concerned with the effect of society on language. This means that the discourse we produce is to some (or all) extent dependent on the social situation in which we are using the language. The use of different forms of language in these different situations is called 'code switching' such that the same individual, should it ever occur, would not use the same type of language in his motorcycle gang as he would when at his golf club reception dinner party.
The founder of this 'methodology' is generally considered to be William Labov
The sounds a person produces in speech depends upon the region in which they learnt their language – we refer to this as dialect. According to sociolinguists the way we speak is also dependent on the groups we belong to and mix in, which gives rise to sociolects. Sociolinguists study sociolects.
Module 5 Discourse analysis
Research study sheet
Before starting the questions below, please refer to module 2, page 2, ‘Theory and practice’ and the notes you produced at the time.
1. In the 'Theory and Practice' section of module 2, you were asked to give three more examples of approaches. Choose one which you feel would be most appropriate to the teaching of discourse analysis, and give reasons.
2. Choose one of the five examples of discourse analysis given at the start of this unit and expand on it, to between 900 and 1000 words.
3. What in your opinion are the major contributions that discourse analysis in any form can make to the EFL classroom?
Module 5 Discourse analysis
4. Explain the potential paradigm shift from Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) to the context-based approach, which has been suggested more recently. How might DA be applied to or even responsible for this shift?
5. Contrast two forms of discourse analysis you have studied thus far
Module 5 Discourse analysis
Task sheet
1. Complete each sentence below with the same word.
The company was recently out.
If I'd had the money I would have _____________ a bigger one. “My God,” exclaimed Biggles, “he's _____________ the farm!”
This is an example of a cloze activity using language corpora, which may well appear on a single page of a book organized in this way. How many different grammatical structures are covered within this single task? Give at least five.
2. It has been stated earlier in this unit that 'CDA has in a sense a political agenda'. What evidence is there to support this notion?
3. CLT has been the mainstay of EFL teaching for the last 20 years. What are the major criticisms of this approach according to advocates of a Context based approach?
Module 5 Discourse analysis
4. Choose one type of DA you have studied and give three advantages and three disadvantages of organizing a syllabus based on this structure.
5. Describe briefly how 'concordancing' could be utilized in the EFL classroom, making use of actual examples where possible.
You should now be ready to access the test.
Make sure you have copied and saved a file of your guided study and research answers, so that you can refer to them during the test.
Good luck.
