Discourse

Communication of thought by words; talk; conversation A formal discussion of a subject in speech or writing

Discourse Analysis
Discourse analysis is sometimes defined as the analysis of language 'beyond the sentence. This contrasts with types of analysis more typical of modern linguistics, which are chiefly concerned with the study of grammar.

 Discourse analysts study larger chunks of language as they flow together. Both the production and the comprehension of language are factors of our ability to perceive and process stretches of discourse. Discourse analysis is a multifaceted and exceedingly important consideration in the teaching of a second language.

Discourse and Frames

'Reframing' is a way to talk about going back and reinterpreting the meaning of the first sentence. Frame analysis is a type of discourse analysis that asks, What activity are speakers engaged in when they say this? What do they think they are doing by talking in this way at this time? Consider how hard it is to make sense of what you are hearing or reading if you don't know who's talking or what the general topic is.

Turn-taking
Conversation is an enterprise in which one person speaks and another listens. Discourse analysts who study conversation note that speakers have systems for determining when one person's turn is over and the next person's turn begins. This exchange of turns or 'floors' is signaled by such linguistic means as intonation, pausing, and phrasing. Listenership, too, may be signaled in different ways. The type of listener response you get can change how you speak.

Discourse Markers
'Discourse markers' is the term linguists give to the little words like 'well', 'oh', 'but', and 'and' that break our speech up into parts and show the relation between parts. 'Oh' prepares the hearer for a surprising or justremembered item, and 'but' indicates that sentence to follow is in opposition to the one before. However, these markers don't necessarily mean what the dictionary says they mean.

 Some people use 'and' just to start a new thought, and some people put 'but' at the end of their sentences, as a way of trailing off gently. Realizing that these words can function as discourse markers is important to prevent the frustration that can be experienced if you expect every word to have its dictionary meaning every time it is used.

Speech Acts
We perform speech acts when we offer an apology, greeting, request, complaint, invitation, compliment, or refusal. A speech act is an utterance that serves a function in communication. Speech act analysis asks not what form the utterance takes but what it does. Saying "I now pronounce you man and wife" enacts a marriage.

 Studying speech acts such as complimenting allows discourse analysts to ask what counts as a compliment, who gives compliments to whom, and what other functions they can serve. Speech acts include real-life interactions and require not only knowledge of the language but also appropriate use of that language within a given culture.

 examples of speech acts we use or hear every day: Greeting: "Hi, Eric. How are things going?"

Request: "Could you pass me the mashed potatoes, please?" Complaint: "Ive already been waiting three weeks for the computer, and I was told it would be delivered within a week." Invitation: "Were having some people over Saturday evening and wanted to know if youd like to join us." Compliment: "Hey, I really like your tie!"
Refusal: "Oh, Id love to see that movie with you but this Friday just isnt going to work."

Discourse Analysis Approaches

Levinson proposes that there are two major approaches to the study of naturally occurring interaction: discourse analysis (DA) and conversation analysis (CA). Seedhouse suggests that the overwhelming majority of previous approaches to L2 classroom interaction have implicitly or explicitly adopted what is fundamentally, a

discourse analysis approach.

 When DA approaches are used to isolation, they are guided by principles taken from structural-functional linguistics. For example, the frequently used Could you turn to page 36? might be interpreted as a request under DA. Sinclair and Coulthard compiled a list of 22 speech acts representing verbal behaviors of both teachers and students participating in primary classroom

interaction.

 Sinclair and Coulthard: It is now widely accepted that most classroom communications are characterized by an IRF or IRE structure, where I corresponds to teacher Initiation, R to student Response, and F/E to optional teacher Feedback or teacher Evaluation. I-R-E structure: This exchange comprises how teacher moves for every student move and typifies much of the communication to be found in both content-based and L2 classrooms. We can say that DA approaches are both descriptive and prescriptive and attempt to categorize naturally occurring patterns of interaction and account for them by reference to a discourse hierarchy.