DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

A.    DEFINITION OF ANALYSIS DISCOURSE

Analysis discourse is broad term for the study of the ways in which language is used in texts and contexts. Also called discourse studies. Developed in the 1970s, discourse analysis is concerned with "the use of language in a running discourse, continued over a number of sentences, and involving the interaction of speaker (or writer) and auditor (or reader) in a specific situational context, and within a framework of social and cultural conventions" (Abrams and Harpham, A Glossary of Literary Terms, 2005)

Analysis Discourse has been described as an interdisciplinary study of discourse within linguistics, though it has also been adopted (and adapted) by researchers in numerous other fields in the social sciences. Theoretical perspectives and approaches used in discourse analysis include the following: applied linguistics, conversation analysis, pragmatics, rhetoric, stylistics, and text ling SEuistics, among many others.

B.     COHESION

Cohesion is the grammatical and lexical linking within a text or sentence that holds a text together and gives it meaning. It is related to the broader concept of coherence. There are two main types of cohesion: grammatical cohesion which is based on structural content, and lexical cohesion which is based on lexical content and background knowledge. cohesion is the use of repetition, transitional expressions, and other devices (called cohesive cues) to guide readers and show how the parts of a composition relate to one other.

C.    COHERENCE

In Text and Context: Explorations in the Semantics and Pragmatics of Discourse,  convincingly that coherence is a semantic property of discourse formed through the interpretation of each individual sentence relative to the interpretation of other sentences, with "interpretation" implying interaction between the text and the reader. One method for evaluating a text's coherence is topical structure analysis. Coherence in linguistics is what makes a text semantically meaningful. It is especially dealt with in text linguistics. Coherence is achieved through syntactical features such as the use of deictic, anaphoric and cataphoric elements or a logical tense structure, as well as presuppositions and implications connected to general world knowledge. The purely linguistic elements that make a text coherent are subsumed under the term cohesion.

However, those text-based features which provide cohesion in a text do not necessarily help achieve coherence, that is, they do not always contribute to the meaningfulness of a text, be it written or spoken. It has been stated that a text coheres only if the world around is also coherent.

Texts can be coherent at what is called the 'local level' and the 'global level.' Local-level coherence is that which occurs within small portions of texts, usually within texts no longer than a paragraph. A text is said to have global coherence, on the other hand, if the text hangs together as a whole. Coherence is fundamentally not an objective property of the produced text. Rather, that text is a by-product of the mental processes of discourse production and discourse comprehension, which are the real loci of coherence."

"The Coherence Principle accounts for the fact that we do not communicate by verbal means only. The traditional concept of coherence, which is solely based relationships between verbal textual elements, is too narrow to account for coherence in interaction. Ultimately, coherence in interaction is not established in the text but created in the minds of the interlocutors in their attempt to make sense of the different verbal, perceptual, and cognitive means at their disposal . .."(Edda Weigand, Language as Dialogue: From Rules to Principles. John Benjamins, 2009)

D.    ANALYSIS DISCOURSE AS A SCIENTIFIC DISCIPLINE

the analysis of discourse can be said as the long disciplines as well as the still new.origin analysis of discourse can trace up to 2000 years ago in the study of literature and speech. one of the disciplines that pada saat is a prominent classical rhetoric, that art is a good speaking including planning, compile and present a public speech in the political sphere as well as in law. origin analysis of modern discourse can be traced in the 1960s that time in France published an analysis of the structure of discourse analysis, stories, film analysis to analysis of photo print. Although the background, objectives and methods of analysis were still diverse, the number of keen interest in the study of linguistic field widely that eventually forms the red thread that makes the realization of the analysis of discourse become ore intact.

E.     INTERPRETING DISCOURSE

This course reflects an emerging field of interdisciplinary study that has significant implications for curriculum design and for promoting literacy development. Its primary goal is to help students understand principles relating discourse and practice within a variety of disciplines as they learn to apply methods of discourse analysis. Students should develop a critical understanding of discourse within a specific discipline, and thus be better able to evaluate research in that discipline, as well as research on the teaching and learning of that discipline. One hope (as yet untested) is that through increased self-reflection in inquiry, students should improve their ability to conduct research and to present it effectively to members of a discipline as well as to outsiders.

Discourse forms can be written or spoken; they include conversations, novels, interviews, narratives, journal articles, speeches, instruction manuals, advertisements, and so on. Lexical and syntactic features of the language used by participants in a discourse may index important aspects of the discourse, but the characteristics of the discourse derive from the participants' social relations, including their purposes for engaging in the discourse. For example, one might find a strong similarity among segments of technical discourse at a biology conference, regardless of the national language employed, and great differences across discourses of English speakers who differ in social status, occupation, or cultural background.

The study of discourse is thus the study of how people use language to share ideas and feelings, to influence others, to define and maintain communities, and to make sense of the world. Discourse analysis entails the study of utterances situated in social, cultural, historical, and linguistic contexts. The broad definition of discourse soon leads the discourse analyst beyond any narrow conception of linguistics, into the study of discourse communities, and inter alia, into the way language is used in various fields of inquiry. In this course, we will explore the way discourse varies across communities that are defined by disciplines such as anthropology, biology, history, economics, psychology, literary criticism, and novel writing

F.     ANALYSIS OF THE CONVERSATIONS IN THE CLASSROOM

Each participant in the class will produce a critique of discourse within a discipline they know well, examining the rhetorical structure of individual texts, and where appropriate, think-aloud protocols, interviews, or observations of practices within the discipline. Other students will serve as readers for this critique. Major portions of the class time will be used for discussions of these on-going projects.

We will read and discuss works of writers such as Wittgenstein, Bakhtin, and Foucault that address the relations among discourse, community, and institution, as well as more recent works examining specific disciplines, such as that of McCloskey (economics), Scholes (literary theory), Gigerenzer & Murray (psychology), Latour & Woolgar (laboratory science), and Pratt (ethnography). The first three weeks will emphasize general issues in the rhetoric of inquiry. The next six weeks will address discourse within specific disciplines. Weeks 10-13 will examine theoretical conceptions that underly much of this research. Weeks 14 and 15 will focus on educational consequences.

Class meetings will include discussions of similarities and contrasts across disciplines, methodologies for the study of discourse, and concepts such as language, discourse, appropriation, community, communication, and institution.