A1. WHAT IS DISCOURSE ANALYSIS?
It’s the scientific study of language.
DA focuses on how people use language in real life to do things like joke
and argue and persuade and flirt, and to show what kind of people they
are.
Discourse analysis study the ways sentences and utterances go together
to make texts and interactions and how those texts and interactions fit
into our social world.
DA is based on four assumptions: (assunti)
1. Language is ambiguous. What things means is never absolutely clear. All
communication involves interpreting what other people mean and what
they are trying to do.
2. Language is always “in the world” (context).
3. The way we use language is inseparable from who we are and the
different social groups to which we belong.
4. Language is never used by itself (never isolated = can’t focus on a single
text/sentence). It is always combined with other things such as our tone
of voice, facial expressions, and gestures when we speak, and the fonts,
layout and graphics we use in written texts. What language means and
what we can do with it is often a matter of how it is combined with these
other things.
THE AMBIGUITY OF LANGUAGE
Nearly all communication contains some elements of meaning that are not
expressed directly by the words that are spoken or written. (you want to borrow
a pen but you ask instead ‘do you have a pen?’ – in order to understand this
question as a request, the other person needs to undertake a process of
‘figuring out’ what you meant, a process which in this case may be largely
unconscious and automatic, but which is, all the same, a process of
interpretation.
-People don’t always say what they mean, and people don’t always mean
what they say.
-Language is an imperfect tool for the precise expression of many things
we think and feel. (Sometimes language is not enough)
-We mean to communicate more than just one thing.
LANGUAGE IN THE WORLD
One of the most important ways we understand what people mean when
they communicate is by referring to the social context within which they
are speaking or writing. The meaning of an utterance can change
dramatically depending on who is saying it, when and where it is said,
and to whom it is said.
