WEB-ресурс научно-практических конференций

DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

Petrovskaya T.O.

The traditional concern of linguistic analysis has been the construction of sentences; but in recent years there has been an increasing interest in analyzing the way sentences work in sequence to produce coherent stretches of language. Linguists investigate the features of language that bind sentences when used in sequence [4, p.58]. Two main approaches have been developed. Discourse analysis focuses on the structure of naturally occurring spoken language. Text analysis focuses on the structure of written language. Some scholars use terms like “spoken and written discourse”, others say “spoken and written text”. But these approaches have a common concern: they stress the need to see language as a dynamic, social, interactive phenomenon – whether between speaker and listener, or writer and reader.

The problem of discourse analysis is defined in the works of R.Kaplan , G.Kress , Z.Harris and R.Wodak .

The aim of the paper is to understand what is discourse analysis and to generalize topics of interest and approaches to the discourse analysis.

The object of our article is discourse analysis. The scientific novelty lies in the fact that this research is an attempt to generalize the theoretical material that might help a researcher to be aware of discourse phenomenon and the approach to its research.

Discourse analysis (DA), or discourse studies, is a general term for a number of approaches to analyze written, spoken or signed language use [2, p.75].

The objects of discourse analysis – discourse, writing, talk, conversation, communicative event, etc. – are defined variously in terms of coherent sequences of sentences, propositions, speech act or turns-at-talk.

Discourse analysis studies not only language use “beyond the sentence boundary”, but also “naturally occurring” language use, and not invented examples [3, p.182].

Discourse analysis has been taken up in a variety of social science disciplines, including linguistics, anthropology, sociology, cognitive psychology, social psychology, international relations and communication studies, each of which is subject to its own assumption, dimensions of analysis, and methodologies.

Topics of interest to discourse analysis include the following:

1. The various levels or dimensions of discourse, such as sounds, gestures, syntax, the lexicon, style, rhetoric, meanings and other interactions.

2. Genres of discourse.

3. The relations between discourse and the emergence of sentence structure.

4. The relations between text and context.

5. The relations between discourse and power.

6. The relations between discourse and interaction.

The following are some of the specific theoretical perspectives and analytical approaches used in linguistic analysis:

1. Text grammar.

2. Functional grammar.

3. Rhetoric.

4. Stylistics.

5. Interactional sociolinguistics.

6. Ethnography of communication

Discourse analysis enables access to the ontological and epistemological assumptions behind a project, a statement, a method of research.

Critical or DA is a deconstructive reading and interpretation of a problem or text. Thus discourse analysis will does not provide absolute answers to a specific problem but enable us to understand the conditions behind a specific “problem”, and make us realize that the essence of that “problem”, and its resolution, lie in its assumptions; the very assumptions that enable the existence of that “problem” [3, p.232].

Critical thinking, however, is older than postmodern thought, as the following quote by John Dewey illustrates. Dewey defined the nature of reflective thought as “active, persistent, and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it and the further conclusion to which it tends”. When critically evaluating a research project or text, one should, therefore, not limit oneself to postmodern theories [2, p. 56].

Discourse analysis provides a higher awareness of the hidden motivation in others and ourselves and, enables us to solve specific problems – not by providing anequivocal answers, but by making us ask ontological and epistemological questions [1, p.12]. Though critical thinking about analysis of situations is an ancient as mankind or philosophy itself and DA is generally perceived as the product of the postmodern period.

Discourse analysis aims at following us to view the “problem” from a higher stance and to gain a comprehensive view of the “problem” and ourselves in relation to that “problem”. So, discourse analysis can be characterized as a way of thinking about the problem [4, p.315].

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2. Ван Дейк Т.А. К определению дискурса . – М .: Высш . ш кола , 1998. – 128 с .

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4. Foucault M. The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language. Trans. A.M. Sheridan Smith. – N.-Y.: Phantheon / Random, 1992. – 350 p.