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Discourse Analysis

Discourse analysis involves the study of language beyond the sentence level, including analysis of texts and conversations. It aims to understand how people interpret meaning based on linguistic forms as well as contextual knowledge. Cohesion and coherence are important concepts, where cohesion refers to connections between elements in a text and coherence refers to a text "fitting together" logically for the reader. Conversation analysis looks at turn-taking, fillers like "um" and "er", and how conversations follow unwritten cooperative principles and maxims. Interpretation is informed by background knowledge like schemas and scripts that represent conventional expectations.

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Gerimis kecil
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77 views

Discourse Analysis

Discourse analysis involves the study of language beyond the sentence level, including analysis of texts and conversations. It aims to understand how people interpret meaning based on linguistic forms as well as contextual knowledge. Cohesion and coherence are important concepts, where cohesion refers to connections between elements in a text and coherence refers to a text "fitting together" logically for the reader. Conversation analysis looks at turn-taking, fillers like "um" and "er", and how conversations follow unwritten cooperative principles and maxims. Interpretation is informed by background knowledge like schemas and scripts that represent conventional expectations.

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Gerimis kecil
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DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

Discourse analysis, the word discourse is usually defined as language beyond the sentence,
and analysis of discourse is typically concerned with the study of language text and
conversation.

Interpretation discourse

We attempt to arrive at a reasonable interpretation of what the writer intended to convey. It is


this effort to interpret (or to be interpreted), and how we accomplish it, that are the key
elements investigated in the study of discourse. To arrive the interpretation, and to make out
our message interpretable, we certainly rely on what we know about linguistic form and
structure. But, as language users, we have to know more knowledge than that.

Cohesion

A text must have a certain structure that depends on factor quite different from those required
in the structure of a single sentence. Some of those factors are describe in terms of cohesion,
or ties and connections that exist within texts.

Analysis of these cohesive ties within a text gives us some insight into how written structure
what they want to say and they may be crucial factors in aour judgments or whether
something writing well or not.

The connectedness we experience in our interpretation of normal texts is not simply based on
connections between the words. There must have some other factor that leads us to
distinguish connected texts that make sense from those that do not this factor is usually
describe as coherence.

Coherence

The key to the concept of coherence (‘everything fitting together well’) is not something that
exists in words or structures, but something that exists in people. It is people who ‘make
sense’ of what they read or hear.

Example:

Her: that’s the telephone

Him: I’m in the bath

Her: I’m okay

Drawing on concepts derived from the study of speech acts (chapter 11) we can characterize
the brief conversation in the following way.

She makes a request of him to perform action

He states reason why he cannot comply with request


She understands to perform action.

It is reasonable analysis of what took place in the conversation. Then it is clear that language
users must have a lot of knowledge of how conversation works that is not simply linguistic
knowledge.

Speech Events

We know when we take a part in a conversation or any other speech events, we realize that
there is enormous variation in what people say and do in different circumstances. To begin
describing the source of that variation, we would have to take account of a number of criteria.
For example we would have to specify the roles of the speaker, hearer, and their relationship.
This factor will give an influence what and how it is said. We would to describe the topic and
setting of conversation.

Conversation analysis

English conversation can be described as an activity in which, for the Most part, two or more
people take turns at speaking. Typically, only one person speaks at the time, but sometimes
more than one.

For the most part, participants wait until one speaker indicates that he or she has finished,
usually by signaling a complete point.

Turn talking

In this part, there are different strategies and expectations of conversation style. Sometimes
described by participants as rudeness (if one speaker cuts in another speaker), or shyness (if
one speaker keeps waiting for an opportunity to take a turn of none seems to occur).

Filled pause : em, er, you know.

One of the most noticeable feature of conversation discourse is that it is generally very co-
operative.

The co-operative principle

Is states in the following way: “make your conversational contribution such as in required, at
the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose of direction of the talk exchange in
which you are engaged” (Gride, 1975: 45).

4 Gricean Maxims:

1. The quantity maxim, make your contribution as informative as is required, no more or


less.
2. The quality maxims, don’t say which you believe to be false or for which you lack
adequate evidence
3. The relation maxim, be relevant
4. The manner maxim, be clear brief, and orderly.
Hedges

Hedges are words or phrases used to indicate that we are not really that what we are
saying is sufficiently correct or complete. we can use such of or kind of.

Implicatures

With the co-operative principle and the maxims as guides, we can star to work out
how people actually decide that someone is implying something in conversation. An
implicature( an additional conveyed meaning).

Investigating how we use background knowledge to arrive at interpretations of what we hear


and read is a critical part of doing discourse analysis.

Background knowledge

(Ugak paham hee ^_^ )

Schemas and scripts

A schema is a general term for a conversational knowledge structure that exists in memory.
Similar in many ways to a schema I a script, it is essentially a dynamic schema. A script has a
series of conventional actions that take a place.

Indeed crucial informative is sometimes omitted from important instructions on the


assumption that everybody knows the script.

Clearly, our understanding of what we read is not only based on what we see on the page
(language structures) but also on other things that we have in mind(knowledge structures).
To understand more about the connection between these two things, we have to take a close
look at the workings of the human brain.

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