Discourse Analysis

Ø Arguments for and against an atomistic approach

Many students,teachers,educationalists,and examiners like to deal with things which can be classified as clearly right or wrong,and perhaps this is approach to foreign language learning,for communication is hard to asses,whereas isolated levels like grammar and vocabulary are much easier. Another reason is perhaps sheer incredulity that anyone cagain control over the systems of language and communication operating as a whole. Only by reducing them to sharply defined and manageable areas,it is felt,can we ever begin to understand their systematic nature and operate their rules. Yet,amazingly,human beings do manage to do this. Infants developing competence in their first language,experience it as a working high-speed whole,yet acquire native speaker competence without any formal instruction, apparently without effort, without any conscious formulation of rules,and without any splitting down into manageable ‘areas’ (although the features of adult speech to children may provide some help).

Ø Introduction

In language use (as opposed to the drills of formal language practice) we almost always have some sort of knowledge about the senders or receivers of the discourse. Sometimes, particularly in some types of written discourse,we have only a very general or limited knowledge. In the production or processing of discourse with a low degree of reciprocity (for example,a manual,a road sign,a circular letter) we can say very littla about the individual identity of the person or persons in communicationwith us; their name, gender, age, personality, appearance, and so on. Nevertheless, we still make certain assumptions about them and about our relationship to them, otherwise we would simply not know how to orient ourselves towards the language, or what to say.

Ø Office, status, role, and identity

As we have already said, it is not always necessary to know very much about the individual identity of the sender or receiver, but only certain general facts about his or her social relation to us. Sociologists distinguish three factors in social relationship :

Office: a relatively permanent position within the social structure to which someone is appointed or qualified, for example, electrician, nurse, pilot.

Status: a general term for social importsnce influenced by facts like age, wealth, education, education (and office), and varying relative to other individuals

Role: a temporary intersactional stance, involving the performance of certain types of perlocutionary and illocutionary acts often dependent upon having a certain status and office.

Ø Shared Knowledge

Apart from needing to know varying about the office, status, role, and personal details of people we are communicating with, we also need to from hypotheses about the degree of knowledge we share with them and the degree to which the schemata they are operating correspond with our own. As we have seen in 5 and 6, this assesment affects every level of discourse, from the quantity and ordering of the information, to cohesion, the use of article, and grammatical structure.