FIELDS OF STUDY WITHIN DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

 

Introduction to Discourse Analysis

FIELDS OF STUDY WITHIN DISCOURSE ANALYSIS 

◆ COHESION 
The use of various cohesive ties to explicitly link together all the propositions in the text results in the cohesion of that text. The most obvious structural features of such connected discourse are the cohesive ties identified and discussed by Halliday and Hasan (1976, 1989).

I am a working mother with two pre-teens. After dropping them off at school, I have to get right to work. But my children are disorganized and always late. A few times, I have had to turn around and go back home because one or the other forgot something. (Children-LA's Best Calendar of Family Events, July 1998:12) 

The use of the pronoun them in the first line is an anaphoric reference to "two pre-teens.” The conjunction but, which begins the second sentence, expresses the counter expectation arising from the second and third sentences. The phrase "always late” is an elliptical form of the clause "they are always late” and the phrase one or the other is a good example of the ellipsis at the noun phrase level meaning “one child or the other child."


◆ COHERENCE 

In addition to cohesion, which is expressed via language resources, or bottom-up connections in text, effective discourse also requires coherence, which can be viewed as part of top-down planning and organization. Coherence contributes to the unity of a piece of discourse such that the individual sentences or utterances hang together and relate to each other.


◆ INFORMATION STRUCTURE 

Languages use grammatical and discourse features in order to indicate which bits of information are known and which are new. 

Rona(=topic) was the youngest of three sisters. She(=Rona) liked music and literature. Being the youngest sister(=Rona) was in some ways a blessing and in others a curse... 


◆ TURN-TAKING IN CONVERSATION ANALYSIS 

In conversation, in addition to coherently managing new and old information, the interlocutors also have to take stock of and constantly monitor each other to control the turn-taking system of the target language in question since this is another feature of discourse in oral interaction. The conversational turn-taking system (Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson, 1974) of any language includes conventions governing matters such as the following: how conversations open and close, who speaks when and for how long, who can interrupt (and how this is done), how topics get changed, how much time can elapse between turns or between speakers, whether or not speakers can overlap, and whether or not speakers can complete or repair each other's utterances. There are often important cultural (and subcultural) differences in the way discourse communities do turn-taking. 


◆ CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS 

The primary interest of critical discourse analysis is to deconstruct and expose social inequality as expressed, constituted, and legitimized through language use.