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DISCOURSE ANALYSIS: KEY CONCEPTS AND PERSPECTIVES

Article · January 2010

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DISCOURSE ANALYSIS: KEY CONCEPTS AND

PERSPECTIVES

By: THOURIA DRID

University of Ouargla

ABSTRACT
Moving from one layer of language to another, linguists consider the
discourse level the apex of linguistic description. The enterprise of Discourse
Analysis is to uncover the regularities of language that surpass the sentence_ the
traditional ‘highest’ unit of description _ and that encompass the context of its
use. Discourse Analysis is interdisciplinary in nature and has applications in
several fields to which language has a particular relevance. The purpose of this
paper is to briefly sketch out some of its key concepts and major broad lines of
research.

KEY WORDS: discourse, text, context, coherence, utterance, discourse

analysis, interdisciplinarity.

INTRODUCTION
Within the last few decades, in an attempt to apprehend what constitutes
knowledge of language, a remarkable shift of interest in the sentence and its
components to a concern with stretches of language that transcend sentence
boundaries and extend far to include the world in which language is used has
arisen. This relatively new approach, known as Discourse Analysis, occupies
now a body of literature, which probes into its nature, methods, scope and
applications in a number of fields. Basically, any attempt to overview this sort of
analysis tackles four main points: What is discourse? What is Discourse
Analysis? Why Discourse Analysis? And what are its main lines of inquiry?

DISCOURSE
Etymologically, the word ‘discourse’ dates back to the 14th century. It is
taken from the Latin word ‘discursus’ which means a ‘conversation’ (McArthur,
1996). In its current usage, this term conveys a number of significations for a
variety of purposes, but in all cases it relates to language, and it describes it in
some way.
To start with, discourse is literally defined as ‘a serious speech or piece
of writing on a particular subject’ (Longman Dictionary of Contemporary
English, 2001, p.388). In this general sense, it incorporates both the spoken and
written modes although, at times, it is confined to speech being designated as ‘a

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serious conversation between people’ (ibid). This restriction is also implied in

the word when it is used as a verb.
Carter (1993) specifies several denotations of the word ‘discourse.’
First, it refers to the topics or types of language used in definite contexts. Here, it
is possible to talk of political discourse, philosophical discourse and the like.
Second, the word 'discourse' is occasionally employed to stand for what is
spoken, while the word ‘text’ is employed to denote what is written. It is
important to note, however, that the text/discourse distinction highlighted here is
not always sharply defined. Nunan (1993) shows that these two terms are
sometimes used interchangeably and in many instances treated differently. Carter
(ibid) adds that the 'discourse/text' dichotomy is often correlated with the
'process/product' dichotomy respectively. Third, this word is used to establish a
significant contrast with the traditional notion of ‘sentence’, the ‘highest’ unit of
language analysis: discourse refers to any naturally occurring stretch of
language. In this connection, Trask (1999) clarifies that a discourse is not
confined to one speaker or writer, but it can embrace the oral or written
exchanges produced by two or more people. It is this last sense of the term that
constitutes the cornerstone of the approach known as Discourse Analysis.
Despite that discourse is defined as a chunk that surpasses the sentence,
not all chunks of language can fall within the scope of this definition. In fact,
what characterizes discourse is obviously not its supra-sentential nature as much
as the entirety it has_ its coherence. To be more explicit, discourse is a complete
meaningful unit conveying a complete message (Nunan, 1993). The nature of
this whole cannot be perceived by examining its constituent parts, ‘there are
structured relationships among the parts that result in something new’ (Schiffrin,
2006, p.171). In the light of this, larger units such as paragraphs, conversations
and interviews all seem to fall under the rubric of ‘discourse’ since they are
linguistic performances complete in themselves.

DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
To embark on defining discourse analysis (henceforth DA), one would
inevitably tackle two divergent approaches to language in general and discourse
in particular: the formal approach and the functional approach. Schiffrin (ibid)
combines both approaches when designating DA as ‘the study of language use
above and beyond the sentence’ (p.170).
The first trend in defining DA is a formal or structural trend. In this
paradigm, DA is seen as the exploration of language use by focusing on pieces
larger than sentences. Schiffrin (1994) elucidates that discourse is merely a
higher level in the hierarchy: morpheme, clause and sentence (as stated
originally by Zellig Harris in his first reference to DA); she also explains that the
pursuit of DA is to depict the internal structural relationships that tie the units of
discourse to each other: to describe formal connectedness within it.
The second trend is functional in perspective: it is not so much
concerned with intra-sentential relations as much as with language use. Brown
and Yule's (1983) conception seems to be compatible with this paradigm:

The analysis of discourse is, necessarily, the analysis of language in use.

As such, it cannot be restricted to the description of linguistic forms
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independent of the purposes or functions which these forms are designed

to serve in human affairs. (p.1)

The focus in this conception is on the regularities which utterances show when
situated in contexts. Thus, it is obvious that the aspects of the world in which an
utterance is used can also contribute to the meaningfulness of discourse. Van Els
et al. (1984), in this respect, argue that ‘the study of language in context will
offer a deeper insight into how meaning is attached to utterances than the study
of language in isolated sentences’ (p.94).

WHY DISCOURSE ANALYSIS?

It seems quite legitimate to question the need for such an approach since
it has become typical to describe language in linguistic formal or functional
terms and since there has been a long tradition of exploring systematicity within
language and determining regularities at all its levels. The answer lies in what
constitutes ‘knowledge of language’.
It is plain to every one that any language user subconsciously possesses
the aptitude for constructing sentences out of their minor components, i.e.
sounds, morphemes, words…, as well as the aptitude for interpreting them. This
grammatical knowledge of sentence structure, in the Chomskyan sense, is an
element one cannot do without when utilising language. Carter (1993) illustrates
that in many cases of naturally produced language, series of grammatical
sentences may not be susceptible to understanding, while grammatically
erroneous ones may be easily interpretable. In other words, there are features of
language that cannot be accounted for in grammatical terms: some kind of
systematicity is thought to transcend the grammar of sentences. ‘The sentences
that make up a text need to be grammatical but grammatical sentences alone will
not ensure that the text itself makes sense’ (Nunan, 1993, p.2). This demonstrates
that some rules distinct from grammar rules are at work. Yule (1985) concludes
that attaining an interpretation of the messages we receive and making our own
messages interpretable is not a matter of linguistic form and structure alone.
Language users know more than that: they know ‘discourse’ rules.

CONTEXT AND THE ANALYSIS OF DISCOURSE

In pursuit of uncovering the global structure of naturally occurring
stretches of language, spoken or written, discourse analysts _ as stated above_
resort to the study of language bits in the contexts within which they are used.
Widdowson (1973) points out that context, being the environment in which
language is used, can be linguistic or extra-linguistic.
Context can be approached from a linguistic angle, and this complies
with the formal definition of discourse first raised by Harris (1952). In this
perspective, the analyst relies on the linguistic elements that surround the
utterances under scrutiny to arrive at an adequate interpretation of meaning on
the basis of intra-textual relations that bind them. This is referred to as ‘the
linguistic context’. The term 'co-text' is usually employed to refer to this
particular sense of context (Yule, ibid; Hartmann and Stork, 1972). Carter (1993)
expounds on co-text and shows the interrelatedness of linguistic items within it:

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The internal environment of the text is also an established context,

although not such an obvious one. All textual features whether at word,
clause, or between-sentence level are part of an environment: any word
relates to those words which surround it both in the immediate vicinity
and in other parts of the text. Even whole texts are governed by their
textual environment. (Carter 1993: 14)

It is possible for the analyst to arrive at the exact message conveyed in

speech or in writing on the basis of what surrounds the linguistic item. It appears
from this discussion that the enterprise of DA is, partly, to investigate the
linguistic context, the way sentences are interrelated and the formal properties
that make a piece of discourse hang together.
Context can equally be approached from a wider perspective where
discourse interpretation and construction go beyond its linguistic boundaries to
include the external world. It is believed that a great deal of significance can be
obtained from the analysis of the broader social situation in which language is
used. The latter is termed the ‘context of situation’ by J. R. Firth (Léon, 2005) or
the ‘referential context’ (Nunan, 1993). This type of context also guides the
structure of discourse (Van Els et al., 1984). Thus, determining the key features
of the situation justifies some linguistic choices that are made by language users.
Discourse analysts venture to unveil the patterning of the situational
context and to state its relationship to the patterning of discourse itself. Robins
(1971) stresses this task of DA:
By setting up contexts of situation, the observer or analyst undertakes to
state the relationship of utterances to the situations or environments in which
they are said or could be said. In a context of situation the utterance or the
successive sentences in it are brought into multiple relations with the
relevant components of the environment. (p.25)

There have been several attempts to analyse the external environment

and categorise it. Nunan’s (1993) account of the components of extra-linguistic
context seems to be comprehensive. He specifies (1) the type of communicative
event (for example, joke, story, lecture, greeting, conversation); (2) the topic; (3)
the purpose of the event; (4) the setting, including location, time of day, season
of year and physical aspects of the situation (for example, the size of the room,
arrangement of furniture); (5) the participants and the relationships between
them; and (6) the background knowledge and assumptions underlying the
communicative event.
It follows, according to what has been stated above, that DA shifts the
focus of linguistic analysis from a sentence-centred approach , and it takes it one
step further to examine the interplay of language items and the way they merge
with the external world to get their real communicative identity. Here the
linguistic behaviour appears to be the outcome of a larger discourse apparatus,
including the traditional grammatical one.

THE SCOPE OF DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

The analysis of discourse shares its quest with a number of disciplines
in which language occupies a prominent position being the principal means of
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human communication. This overlap is, as Schiffrin (1994) points out, obviously
due to the arduousness of describing language in isolation:

It is difficult to separate language from the rest of the world. It is this

ultimate inability to separate language from how it is used in the world
in which we live that provides the most basic reason for the
interdisciplinary basis of discourse analysis. To understand the language
of discourse, then, we need to understand the world in which it resides;
and to understand the world in which language resides, we need to go
outside of linguistics. (Schiffrin as cited in Widdowson, 1996, p. 110)
The construction of discourse itself involves several processes that
operate simultaneously. Probing into this construction requires analytical tools
that derive from linguistics, sociology, psychology, anthropology, and even
philosophy, according to the nature of these processes. Being informed by
approaches in such fields gives DA an interdisciplinary nature and makes it a
wide-ranging and a heterogeneous branch of linguistics with a medley of
theoretical perspectives and analytical methods depending on the aspect of
language being emphasised.
It is possible to distinguish several subfields within DA stemming out of
works in different domains. McCarthy (1991) comments that this approach,
despite being interdisciplinary, finds its unity in the description of ‘language
above the sentence’ and a concern with the contexts and cultural influences that
affect language in use. In a brief historical overview, he specifies the following
main contributors to DA research, whose interest has been, in some way, the
study of larger stretches of language and their interaction with the external world
as a communicative framework. The following points summarize this complex
cross-affiliation of DA, as expatiated on by McCarthy:
1. Harris's (1952) work on text structure and the links between text and
social situation,
2. Semiotics and the French structuralist approach to the study of
narrative,
3. Dell Hymes's studies in the 1960's of speech in its social setting,
4. The linguistic philosophers Austin, Searle and Grice’s interest in the
social nature of speech (speech act theory & conversational maxims),
5. Pragmatics and its focus on meaning in context,
6. M.A.K. Halliday's functional approach to language in the 1970's,
7. Ethnomethodology and its concern with cross-cultural features of
naturally occurring communication within specified speech events,
8. The study of classroom talk as developed by Sinclair and Coulthard in
the 1970's,
9. Conversation analysis _the study of recurring patterns in natural spoken
interaction,
10. The analysis of oral storytelling as part of narrative discourse analysis
by William Labov,
11. Text-grammarians' work on written discourse exemplified by Halliday
& Hasan's and Van Dijk's interest in internal textual connectedness,
12. The Prague School of linguistics and its focus on the relationship
between grammar and discourse.
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CONCLUSION
It has been demonstrated through this paper that the hybrid approach of
discourse analysis adds novel dimensions to linguistic analysis that go beyond
the sentence and seeks to reveal the regularities of the context of language use,
both linguistic and extra-linguistic. Following this line, it is believed that a host
of theoretical insights concerning this interplay between language and context
can be exploited to attain the resolution of a number of practical problems in
many domains that involve language use as a central component. On this
premise, a real ‘boom’ is taking place in many fields such as foreign and second
language teaching, translation studies, stylistic studies and so many others,
taking a discourse orientation rather than a traditional sentence orientation.

REFERENCES

Brown, G., & Yule, G. (1983). Discourse analysis. Cambridge University Press.
Carter, R., (1993). Introducing applied linguistics. Penguin English.
Harris, Z. S. (1952) ‘Discourse Analysis’ in Language, V. 28,1-30
Hartmann, R. R. K., & Stork, F. C. (1972). Dictionary of language and
linguistics.London: Applied Science Publishers LTD.
Léon, J. (2005). Firth, John Rupert (1890–1960). In Encyclopedia of language and
linguistics. (2nd ed.). Elsevier.
Longman dictionary of contemporary English. (2001). (3rd Ed.). Person Education
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McArthur, T. (1996). The Oxford companion to the English language. Oxford University
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McCarthy, M. (1991). Discourse analysis for language teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge
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Nunan, D. (1993). Introducing discourse analysis. Penguin Books.
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