Understanding to Discourse Analysis

Dear Steemians, Today I am going to publish my article about Discourse Analysis. For some people who have learnt about linguistics, it is not strange to hear about the term discourse. Actually, Discourse Analysis is a Subject Matter I learnt when I was in fifth semester in my bachelor study.

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Based on my understanding, Discourse Analysis is a study that concern with the relationship between language and the context it used. It is talking about the language used in the text and context. So, generally the discourse analysis can be divide into two types, written discourse and spoken discourse. The first one is refer to how the language in the text such as journals, articles, thesis, dissertation, newspapers, magazine and etc. The second is refer how to use the language naturally in communication such as daily conversation, debate, speech, and etc. But, it should be underline that there is no clear cut between spoken and written discourse. There are differences between British discourse and American discourse. The first one is concerned on functional approach to language. The second one is emphasized on research method of close observation of group of people communicating naturally.

Form and Function

In discourse analysis, it is important to talk about form and function of languages. Form relates to the grammatical context and lexical, while the function refers to language in context, it means the language used in its context. So that, if we want to interpret grammatical form depends on a number factors, some linguistic and purely situational. We can see how people's daily conversations as the example of the use of language based on the context, to understand idea of conversation we not only to see the grammatical form, but also the intonation and the situation of that conversation. Then, we can conclude in form and function of discourse analysis is that D.A is interested in a lot more that linguistic forms only. The aim to study this matter is that teacher can provide the materials for students and hope them to be able to use language functionally.

The Scope of Discourse Analysis

In the study of discourse analysis we do not only learn about how to describe and analyze the daily spoken interaction, but also written text that we find in in daily life such as newspaper, magazine, billboard, notice and many others. Sometimes they all are confusing to understand. In discourse analysis we learn how to these all spoken interactions and written texts to be coherent, meaningful communication in which words and sentences are linked each others. Then everyone can understand what it is talked about and written about. The aim of this is to create a much better understanding of natural spoken and written discourse looks and sounds in daily life.

What we do in analyzing spoken interaction is we have to classify moves of the conversation: opening move, answering move and follow up move. Without using this one, sometimes, the conversation texts are confusing to be understood.

Speech Act and Discourse Analysis

Speech act is one of topics discuss in Discourse Analysis because is speech is commonly use in spoken language. In simple words. speech act is doing something by using language. To understand this one we have to know some examples of speech act:

1. Open the door is a physical act where someone take an action to open the door
2. Imagine how to open the door is a mental act
3. Ask someone to open the door is what we call speech act where you ask, , command or request someone to open the door using action verbs.

Moreover, in speech act we can ask, request, command someone by using language in order we expect they react to us. These are some common speech act and its function : assertion (to convey information), question (to elicit information), request (to elicit action and information), and order (to demand action) (Steiwart and Vailette, 2001)

Bottom-Up and Top-Down

It is very crucial to learn about top-down and bottom-up in discourse analysis, especially in the scope of learning and teaching process. In education it is like a teaching and learning method. In other hands the also call these two methods as inductive and deductive. In bottom-up teachers teach students the specific or the basic of language. Teacher can start to teach from the lowest level:

sounds - alphabets - numbers - words - phrases - sentences - paragraphs - passages and so on...,

While in the top-down, teachers teach student the general of language to specific of language. usually teachers start from a text than classify it into specific part:

Texts - paragraph - sentence - tenses classification - words ( verb, noun, adjective,....,

Grammatical Cohesion

In the study of English language, discourse analysis and grammar has a vital connection. Grammar features are needed in analyzing spoken or written discourse.

Spoken and written discourse display grammatical connexion between individual clauses and utterances such as Reference, Ellipsis, Substitution as well as Conjunction. (source)

Furthermore, by learning grammatical cohesion we can write and speak coherently and cohesively to make the listener and reader easily understand the topic.

Conclusion

Nowadays, the study of Discourse Analysis has become popular in the world. It is a branch of applied linguistics. By learning this study, we can understand the topic talked and spoken based on its context used. As I mentioned above that in British Discourse; this study is very crucial in research methods where researchers uses discourse way in their research writings. As well as, the Americans employs this study as the approach to learn languages.

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Regards,

@affiedalfayed
(a teacher and writer)

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