Personal Perspective of Discourse Analysys

 How do I do discourse analysis?

 Laura Fernanda Guerrero Castillo

When we talk about discourse analysis, it ought ideally to be an interdisciplinary undertaking. This follows from the conception of discourse as an interest in the properties of texts, the production, distribution, and consumption of texts. These facets of discourse impinge upon the concerns of various social sciences and humanities, including linguistics, psychology and social psychology, sociology, history, and political science.

Research projects in discourse analysis are, therefore, most sensibly defined first in terms of questions about particular forms of social practice, and their relations to social structure; given the focus I have been adopting, in terms of particular aspects of social or cultural change. Discourse analysis should best be regarded as a method for conducting research into questions that are defined outside it.

When talking about the corpus, the nature of the data required will vary according to the project and the research questions, but there are certain general principles to bear in mind. One can only make a sensible decision about the content and structure of a corpus in the light of adequate information on the 'archive.' This is partly a practical matter of knowing what is available, and how to get access to it.

Interdiscursivity: The objective is to specify what discourse types are drawn upon in the discourse under and how. 

Intertextual chains: The objective here is to specify the dlsulbutlon of a (type of) discourse sample by describing the intertextual chains it enters into that is the series of text types it is transformed into or out of

Coherence: The aim here is to look at the interpretative implications of the intertextual and interdiscursive properties of the discourse sample.

Conditions of discourse practice: The aim is to specify the social practices of text production and consumption associated with the type of discourse the sample represents

Manifest intertextuality: The objective is to specify what other texts are drawn upon in the constitution of the text being analyzed, and how genres differ in the modes of manifest intertextuality

Interactional control: The objective here is to describe large-scale organizational properties of interactions, upon which the orderly functioning and control of interactions depend.

Cohesion: The objective is to show how clauses and sentences are connected together in the text.

Politeness: The objective is to determine which politeness strategies are most used in the sample, whether there are differences between participants, and what these features suggest about social relations between participants.

Ethos: The objective is to pull together the diverse features that go towards constructing 'selves', or social identities, in the sample.

Grammar: Three dimensions of the grammar of the clause are differentiated here: 'transitivity', 'theme', and 'modality'. These correspond respectively to the 'ideational', 'textual', and 'inter-personal' functions of language 

Transitivity: The objective is to see whether particular process types and participants are favored in the text, what choices are made in voice (active or passive), and how significant is the nominalization of processes. A major concern is agency, the expression of causality, and the attribution of responsibility.

Theme: The objective is to see if there is a discernible pattern in the text's thematic structure to the choices of themes for clauses.

Modality: The objective is to determine patterns in the text in the degree of affinity expressed with propositions through modality. A major concern is to assess the relative import of modality features for (a) social relations in the discourse, and (b) controlling representations of reality.

Word meaning: The emphasis is upon 'key words' which are of genera! or more local cultural significance; upon words whose meanings are variable and changing; and upon the meaning potential of a word 

Wording: The objective is to contrast the ways meanings are worded with the ways they are worded in other texts, and to identify the interpretative perspective that underlies this wording.

Metaphor: The objective is to characterize the metaphors used in the discourse sample, in contrast to metaphors used for similar meanings elsewhere, and determine what factors (cultural, ideological, etc.) determine the choice of metaphor.

Social practice: the general objective here is to specify: the nature of the social practice of which the discourse practice is a part, which is the basis for explaining why the discourse practice is as it is; and the effects of the discourse practice upon the social practice.

Social matrix of discourse: The aim is to specify the social and hegemonic relations and structures which constitute the matrix of this particular instance of social and discursive practice; and what effects it contributes to, in terms of reproducing or transforming them.

Orders of discourse; The objective here is to specify the relationship of the instance of social and discursive practice to the orders of discourse it draws upon, and the effects of reproducing or transforming orders of discourse to which it contributes.

Ideological and political effects of discourse: It is useful to focus on the following particular ideological and hegemonic effects: systems of knowledge and belief; social relations, and social identities.

Talking about results, the first observation to make here is that while analysts have some control over how results are used. a 'critical language awareness' (CLA) element ID the language education of all school children, which would provide them with the knowledge to initiate change in their own discourse practices, and the discourse practices of their community.

As a personal conclusion, I can mention that as discourse analysis is an interdisciplinary under-taking  in the same way that the teaching profession should be seen as a complex interdisciplinary activity that requires to develop many roles at the same time and the use of critical discourse analysis as one of the most valuable tools to move among a variety of social practices, and their relations to social structure through the many roles we perform in our contexts.