GRADO EN ESTUDIOS INGLESES:

LENGUA, LITERATURA Y CULTURA

Análisis del Discurso en Lengua Inglesa

Unit 1: A) Introducing Discourse Analysis

B) The data for Discourse Analysis

Professor: Dr. Laura Alba Juez

[email protected]
A) INTRODUCING DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

Defining text and discourse:

What is Text Linguistics? What is Discourse Analysis?
• The terms text and discourse are used in
a variety of ways by different researchers.

• In everyday use, the notion of text has

been limited to written language, whereas
discourse can be said to be used more in
relation with the spoken language.

• However, modern linguistics has

introduced a concept of text that includes
every type of utterance, from magazine
articles or cooking recipes to television
interviews or normal conversations
among friends, just to name a few.
 De Beaugrande and Dressler take a wider
perspective on the concept of text and define it
as a communicative event that must satisfy the
De following seven criteria:
Beaugrande
and 1. COHESION, which refers to the close
relationship between text and syntax.
Dressler’s E.g.: ellipsis, anaphora, cataphora,
(1981) recurrence or conjunction are crucial
phenomena for cohesion.
definition of
text 2. COHERENCE, which has to do with the
meaning of the text and with elements of
knowledge or cognitive structures which
are implied by the language used and
thus influence the reception of the
message.

3. INTENTIONALITY, which has to do with the

attitude of the speaker/writer.
4. ACCEPTABILITY, which concerns the
preparation of the reader/hearer to assess
the relevance or usefulness of a text.

5. INFORMATIVITY, which refers to the quantity

and quality of the information.

6. SITUATIONALITY, which indicates that the

situation in which a text is produced plays
a key role in the production and reception
of the message.

7. INTERTEXTUALITY, which alludes to the facts

that a) texts are always related to some
preceding or simultaneous discourse, and
b) texts are always linked and grouped in
particular text types or genres (e.g.:
descriptive, narrative, etc.) by formal
criteria.
Tischer et al (2000) explain that the first two criteria
(cohesion and coherence) may be considered as text-
internal, whereas the remaining five criteria are text-
external.

• Text-internal  TEXT

• Text-external  CONTEXT

Discourse Analysis has given more importance to the external

factors than the “pure” Text Linguistics approaches, but all
approaches within Discourse Analysis view text and context
as the two kinds of information that contribute to the
communicative content of an utterance.
Food for thought:
Listen to Kamala
Harris’ full
acceptance
speech on
November 7,
2020, and try to
explain how the
speech meets the
seven criteria
described by de
Beaugrande and
Dressler:

https://www.yout
ube.com/watch?a
pp=desktop&v=5
WUVTKvs3Sk
1. COHESION: Is Harris’ speech syntactically cohesive? Do you find instances of, for instance,
ellipsis, reference or conjunction that make the text a cohesive whole?

2. COHERENCE, Does Harris make reference to any elements of the collective knowledge of
Americans? Does she play with the audience’s cognitive structures in order to make her
message meaningful?

3. INTENTIONALITY: What is Harris’ main intention when delivering this speech? Do you think
she accomplishes such an intention? Is it well received by her audience?

4. ACCEPTABILITY: Do you think Harris’ text is well accepted by his audience? Is it appropriate
to the moment in which she is giving it? Are the receptors prepared to receive this
speech?

5. INFORMATIVITY: Is Harris’ speech informative enough, both quantitatively and qualitatively, to

meet the expectations of the audience?

6. SITUATIONALITY: Is the speech given by Harris appropriate to the (social, historical) situation?

7. INTERTEXTUALITY: Do you find any (implicit or explicit) allusions to other texts or discourses?
What do you think is the type of text/genre of his speech?

Conclusion: After analyzing all these elements, can you conclude that Harris’ speech meets all
the criteria to be defined as a text?
Reflections
Schiffrin et al. (2001: 1) note that all the
on some of definitions of discourse fall into three
the main categories:
definitions
1. Anything beyond the sentence
of
Discourse 2. Language use

3. A broader range of social practice

that includes non-linguistic and non-
specific instances of language.
APPROACHES TO THE PHENOMENON OF
DISCOURSE
Z. Harris (1951,1952) was the
first linguist to use the term
discourse analysis and he was a
formalist: he viewed discourse as
the next level in a hierarchy of
morphemes, clauses and
sentences. But this view was
criticized due to the results of
studies such as Chafe’s (1980,
1987, 1992), where it was
argued that the units used by
people in their speech cannot
always be categorized as
sentences. People normally
produce units that have a
semantic and intonational closure,
but not necessarily a syntactic
one.
• Functionalists , on the other
hand, give much importance
to the purposes and functions
of language. Functional
analysis includes all uses of
language, for its main focus is
the way in which people use
language in order to achieve
certain communicative goals.
Discourse is not regarded as
one more of the levels in a
hierarchy, but as an all-
embracing concept which
includes not only the
propositional content, but
also the personal, emotional,
social, and cultural contexts.
Schiffrin (1994) proposes a balanced
approach to discourse, in which both the
formal and the functional paradigms are
integrated. She views discourse as
utterances, i.e., “units of linguistic
production (whether spoken or written)
which are inherently contextualized
“(1994:41)

Slembrouck (2005:1) points to the ambiguity

of the term discourse analysis and defines
it as the linguistic analysis of naturally
occurring connected speech or written
discourse, or the study of larger linguistic
units, such as conversational exchanges or
written texts. So, for him, as for many other
discourse analysts, D.A is concerned with
language use in social contexts.
As Van Dijk (2002) or Johnstone
(2002) point out, DA is
essentially multidisciplinary and
therefore it involves not only
the field of Linguistics, but also:
• Poetics
• Semiotics
• Psychology
• Sociology
• Anthropology
• History
• Communication research
• Political science
• Literary criticism, etc.
SO REMEMBER:

DA is the study of language in use,

including text and context as parts of
discourse.
 BRIEF
HISTORY OF In the 20th century, new disciplines
TEXT emerged within the field of Linguistics, all
of which are interrelated:
LINGUISTICS
AND
 Functional Grammars (Functionalism)
DISCOURSE
 Cognitive Linguistics
ANALYSIS
 Sociolinguistics
 Pragmatics
 Text Linguistics
 Discourse Analysis
• All these schools agreed that a good linguistic
description should go beyond the sentence
and believe that if a study is only limited to the
syntactic analysis of sentences, certain
meanings and aspects of language will not be
embraced or understood.

• As for the relationship between Text

Linguistics and Discourse Analysis, it may be
said that there was a “progressive integration”
of both disciplines, for many scholars have
moved from TL into DA as part of the natural
flow of their beliefs and ideas, as shown by
van Dijk in his biographical article of 2002,
where he explains how his research evolved
from Text Grammar to Critical Discourse
Analysis.
Within the category of discourse, then,
we may include not only the “purely”
linguistic content, but also sign
language, dramatization, or ‘bodily
hexis’ (Bordieu, 1990). Thus, it can be
said that discourse is multi-modal, for
it uses more than one semiotic system
and performs several functions at the
same time

One of the discourse analyst’s tasks is to

explain the connection between these
other modes of communication and
language
 Then… what do discourse analysts do?
• We can learn a great deal about a discipline
by looking at what their practitioners do.
Discourse analysts will explore matters such as:

• Face-to-face conversations
• The language, images, symbols, etc. used
in e-mails
• Turn-taking in telephone conversations
• The language of humor
• The use of irony/metaphor for certain aims
• Linguistic politeness
• The discourse of politicians
• Power relations and sexism as manifested
in language
• The expression of emotion in discourse
• The structure of (written and oral)
narratives
• Etc., etc., etc……….
B) THE DATA FOR DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

Before starting, you should know that…

Discourse analysts normally work with some

kind of corpus. A corpus 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 a language” (Crystal,
1997:95)
 DATA COLLECTION
When setting out to analyze discourse, the analyst faces several initial
problems which arise in the form of research questions such as:

What type of discourse am I going to analyze?

This depends on the aims of the researcher, who may focus his/her study
on spoken or on written language, or may be interested in a particular kind
of discourse or genre (e.g.: political, medical, legal, etc.)

How am I going to collect the data I need, and in case I want to analyze
spoken discourse, how am I going to transcribe and annotate the data so
as to show the features of both text and context as faithfully as possible?
The criteria for selecting a sample (and therefore transforming the material
into data) depends on the goals of research. Once I have collected my data,
the approach taken will guide me as to what procedure to choose (e.g.
transcribing spoken discourse, keying texts in, scanning, downloading
material from the internet, etc.)
 TRANSCRIBING THE DATA
When dealing with talk or spoken discourse the researcher turns the
spoken discourse into a document called transcript by means of the
process of transcription. If s/he aims at some degree of objectivity,
s/he should try to use a system of transcription that shows, as
faithfully as possible, all the variables that intervene in the studied
phenomenon.

• Thus, a conversation analyst who views talk as interaction would

include not only words in her transcription, but also other aspects
such as the sequential organization of the utterances of the different
participants, as well as interruptions and pauses.

• Some analysts will include information about the text, such as genre,
date and place of publication, etc. Others will include information
about the speakers (sex, age, occupation, etc), or about paralinguistic
features such as pronunciation and intonation patterns, or even
laughter.

• But there is no single and accepted way to transcribe speech. Each

analyst focuses on the features that best fit the goal of his/her research
ETHICS OF DATA COLLECTION

It is an ethical requirement that the

researcher obtain the consent of the
participants, not only to take part in
the study but also to use the data they
provide.
Researchers must protect all
participants and observe their legal
rights.
 CORPORA FOR DA
Corpus  a collection of linguistic data (written texts or
transcriptions), used to verify hypotheses about a language.
(Crystal, 1997: 95)

Biber et al. (1998:4) highlight the main features of a corpus-

based analysis, namely:

Empiricism (it analyzes the patterns of use in

natural texts)
Utilization of a large and principled collection of
natural texts as the basis for analysis
Use of computers for analysis
Use of both quantitative and qualitative techniques
WHY USE CORPORA?

They facilitate the investigation of language in use

We can use databases of authentic texts thanks to

the aid of corpus linguistics

It allows researchers to analyze patterns of use

(e.g. lexical associations and their distribution
across different registers)
E.g.: the lexical associations for fat, plump,
chubby, overweight
Did you know that…

The first large corpus of

English-language data was
transcribed by hand and
stored on index cards
which were processed
manually?
This corpus was originally
known as the Survey of
English Usage (1960s)
and consisted of a million
words included in 200
texts of spoken and
written material. The
whole survey was
computerized and is now
known as the London
Lund Corpus.
 COMPUTER CORPORA AND CONCORDANCE PROGRAMS

Ever since the 1980s, increasingly large

corpora have been compiled (especially
of English). Examples of Modern
corpora are:
 The BNC (British National Corpus)
 The COCA (Corpus of Contemporary
American)
 The ICE (International Corpus of
English)
 The Bank of English

Online Corpora:
 The Shakespeare Online corpus
 The Experimental BNC website
 The Davies Corpus
 CONCORDANCE PROGRAMS
They turn electronic texts WordSmith Tools (collocates and frequency lists)
into databases that can
be searched. Some of
them are:

 Word Cruncher
 TACT
 SARA
 WordSmith Tools
(widely used by
linguists,
lexicographers and
discourse analysts)
Reich’s classification of corpora (1998):
Reich’s taxonomy classifies corpora according to medium, national varieties,
historical variation, geographical/dialectal variation, age, genre, open-
endedness and availability:

a) Medium:
Spoken corpora London-Lund Corpus
Written corpora LOB (Lancaster Oslo/Bergen corpus)
Mixed corpora  BNC

b) National varieties:
British corpora  LOB
American corpora  Brown corpus, COCA
International corpora  International Corpus of English
c) Historical variation:
Diachronic corpora  Helsinki Corpus
Synchronic corpora  LOB, Brown Corpus, BNC
Corpora which cover only one stage of language history 
Shakespeare Corpora, Corpus of Old English, Corpus of
Middle English.

d) Geographical/dialectal variation:
Corpus of dialect samples  Scots
Mixed corpora  BNC (which includes samples of speakers
from all over Britain)
e) Age:
Adult English corpora
Child English corpora  CHILDES

f) Genre:
Literary texts corpora
Technical English corpora
Non-fiction corpora  ( e.g. News texts)
Mixed corpora covering all genres
g) Open-endedness:
Closed/unalterable corpora  LOB, Brown Corpus
Monitor corpora  Bank of English

h) Availability:
Commercial corpora/Non-commercial research corpora
Online corpora/ corpora on ftp servers/ corpora on floppy
disks or CD-ROMs.

This is not an entirely comprehensive taxonomy, for other

variables might be considered depending on the researcher’s
aims.
END OF UNIT 1