Discourse Analysis: Understanding Text and Context, Slide di Lingua Inglese

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MINIMAL TEXTS

KEEP OFF THE GRASS KEEP LEFT KEEP OUT DANGER EXIT

They are complete in terms of communicative meaning

Text= a stretch of language complete in itself

We understand the signs

• We know what the message is intended to be
• Alienation of message (road signs in a souvernir shop)
• A text is dependent on its use in an appropriate context

context

• An internal linguistic context built up by the language patterns inside the text
• an external non linguistic context drawing us to ideas and experiences in the world outside the text
• 1. the text type
• 2. its topic, purpose, function
• 3. the setting of the text
• 4. the text’s wider social, cultural, historical setting
• 5. the author (identity, assumptions)
• 6. the reader

Discourse is:

• language above the sentence or above the clause
• a stretch of language perceived to be meaningful unified, and purposive;
• language in use
• (viewed) as social practice determined by social structures

Conditions of production & interpretation

Socio practice^ cultural

Situational Institutional Societal

Process of production &

interpretation

Discourse practice

Text

Explanation: why is it this way?

Interpretation: what does it all mean?

Description: what does it look like? (text analysis)

A newspaper headline

• Life on Mars – war of the words
• Debate of life on Mars
• Headline: puts in a nutshell the main point of the story
• It captures the reader’s attention
• Typographical make up: bolder typeface, or larger

headlines

**- 1. typography

• 2. sound and rhythm (alliteration)
• 3. grammar and structure (ellipsis, dash)
• 4. vocabulary (war instead of debatem dispute, quarrel…)
• Why? British national newspaper and its readers**

intertextuality

• H. G. Wells’ s SF novel The War of the Worlds (1898)
• Orson Welles – radio drama of the novel 1938 - La guerra dei mondi ( War of the Worlds ) movie directed by Steven Spielberg

Intertextuality: what does it mean?

• Inter: a prefix from Latin, where it meant “between,” “among,” “in the midst of,” “mutually,” “reciprocally,” “together,” “during”
• Textuality: all of the attributes that distinguish the communicative content under analysis as an object of study

A plane crashed on the motorway. Four

people were on board. Luckily, no one died

**- 1) Lucky escape as plane skids onto motorway

• 2. And they all lived
• 3. Actress Lisa’s amazing jet crash escape
• 4. Four got out of this alive
• 5. Cleese’s film pal in plane crash escape
• 6. Cleese girl jet miracle**