Overview of Discourse Analysis

1. Pragmatics and Politeness Theory (356-365)

2. Ethnography of Speaking (365-372)

3. Interactional Sociolinguistics (372-378)

4. Conversation Analysis (CA) (378-388)

5. Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) (388-397)

Holmes, Janet. 2008. An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, 3rd edition. Harlow, England: Pearson Education, Ltd, pp. 356-397.

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Getting the most out of this chapter

Questions YOU should be able to answer after reading this chapter:

1. What is Discourse?

2. What is Discourse Analysis?

3. What is each of the approaches good for?

Holmes, Janet. 2008. An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, 3rd edition. Harlow, England: Pearson Education, Ltd.

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Discourse

“Among sociolinguists, the term ‘discourse’ is generally used to refer to stretches of spoken or written language which extend beyond an utterance or a sentence.”

Holmes, Janet. 2008. An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, 3rd edition. Harlow, England: Pearson Education, Ltd, p. 356.

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Discourse Analysis as a Tool

“Discourse analysis provides a tool for sociolinguists to identify the norms of talk among different social and cultural groups in different conversational and institutional contexts, and to describe the discursive resources people use in constructing different social identities in interaction.”

Holmes, Janet. 2008. An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, 3rd edition. Harlow, England: Pearson Education, Ltd, p. 356.

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Pragmatics and Politeness Theory

Possible emphasis on:

Analysis of speech acts

Possible focus on: For us as EFL teachers, cross-cultural and cross-linguistic comparisons

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Conversational Maxims

Cooperative Principle

Holmes, Janet. 2008. An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, 3rd edition. Harlow, England: Pearson Education, Ltd., p. 358.

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Maxims of Conversation

Quantity

Quality

Relation

Manner

Holmes, Janet. 2008. An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, 3rd edition. Harlow, England: Pearson Education, Ltd., p. 358.

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Politeness Rules of Thumb

1. Don’t impose 2. Give options 3. Be friendly

Holmes, Janet. 2008. An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, 3rd edition. Harlow, England: Pearson Education, Ltd., p. 359.

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Ethnography of Speaking

Possible emphasis on:

Analysis of Communicative events: Speech events in a culture that might be very different from the supposed equivalent in our own culture. (Need a good background in the target culture.)

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Interactional Sociolinguistics

Possible emphasis on:

Interpreting speaker intentions based on not only linguistic clues/cues but also non-linguistic context

“The interactional sociolinguist also tries to make explicit the presuppositions and background knowledge that people use to interpret utterances in context. In doing so the concept of a schema or frame is often useful.”

Holmes, Janet. 2008. An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, 3rd edition. Harlow, England: Pearson Education, Ltd., pp. 372, 376.

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Conversation Analysis (CA)

Possible emphasis on:

“communication as a jointly organized activity like dancing, or a cooperative musical”

Often focuses on “micro level” such as adjacency pairs

“CA looks for internal linguistic clues and paralinguistic clues to assist.”

Holmes, Janet. 2008. An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, 3rd edition. Harlow, England: Pearson Education, Ltd., pp. 378-279.

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Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA)

Possible emphasis on:

Power (who has it and who does not and why)

Differs in the “stance of the analyst”

Holmes, Janet. 2008. An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, 3rd edition. Harlow, England: Pearson Education, Ltd., p. 389.

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