1. Eng. 429 What is Discourse Analysis? Lecture 1 Source: Paltridge (2006), p.p. 1-4

2. Objectives Students should be able to: Define discourse analysis Explain the various interests of discourse analysis Provide simple examples to illustrate those interests Explain briefly the relationship between discourse analysis and pragmatics

3. 1. Discourse analysis focuses on: language beyond the sentence, and on: knowledge about language beyond the sentence that is needed for successful communication.

4. 2. Discourse analysis looks at: patterns of language across texts and considers the social and cultural contexts in which it is used.

5. 3. Discourse analysis considers the ways that the use of language presents different views of the world and different understandings. 4. It considers how views of the world and identities are constructed through the use of discourse.

6. 5. It examines how the use of language is influenced by relationships between participants as well as the influence the use of language has upon social identities and relations. 6. It examines both spoken and written texts.

7. A Bit of History The term ‘discourse’ was first introduced by Harris as early as 1952 to refer to the analysis of connected speech or writing. Harris emphasized that there are typical ways of using language in particular situations.

8. Discourse Analysis & Pragmatics Since discourse analysis involves studying stretches of spoken or written language that have occurred in particular situations (authentic), and since it is interested in the above mentioned tasks, then it is characterized as closely related to pragmatics.

9. Pragmatics is concerned with how the interpretation of language depends on knowledge of the world. In other words, pragmatics focuses on studying how language is used in context.

10. Notion of context Features of context include: Who is speaking/writing to whom About For what purpose Where When How these impact on how we say things

11. Meaning of an utterance differs according to such features of context. Example: The runway is full at the moment The sink is full of dirty dishes Such utterances can be interpreted differently in different contexts.

12. Discourse analysis, thus, studies the relationship between language and the contexts in which it is used. Chimombo and Roseberry (1988) state that discourse analysis is concerned with providing an understanding of texts and how they become meaningful to their users.