Discourse Analysis

Discourse Analysis

Questions and exercises

1. Read the following statements and mark each one as T (true) or F (false).

1) As text is the linguistic form or record of discourse, one text always corresponds to one discourse. ( )

2) Discourse analysis only concerns authentic written texts. ( )

3) In the sentence His father used to be a soldier, the word “soldier” is a presented reference item. ( )

4) 1 bought some chocolates, and Jane some biscuits is a case of nominal ellipsis. ( )

5) As cohesion is the linguistic realization of coherence, there will be no coherence without cohesion. ( )

6) Schemata stored in our brains may be constantly renewed to adapt to new experiences. ( )

7) The theme of a sentence corresponds to its subject. ( )

8) There are two turns in this conversation:

Son: Can I watch TV, Dad?

Father: Have you finished your homework?

Son: No.

Father: Then you can't. ( )

2. Do you know the linguistic terms corresponding to the following definitions?

1) __ A stretch of language used for the act of communicating.

2) __ The linguistic form/record of discourse.

3) __ The familiar and expected relationships in experience which we use to connect the meaning of utterances, even when those connections are not explicitly made.

4) __ The presence in a discourse of explicit linguistic links which provide structure.

5) __ A pre-existing knowledge structure in memory typically involving the normal expected patterns of things.

6) __ The initial constituent of a sentence, viewed in relation to a more highly communicative theme or focus elsewhere in the sentence.

7) __ A sequence of two utterances by different speakers in conversation. The second is a response to the first.

8) __ The specific turn that has the function of prefiguring the coming action.

3. Identify the type of cohesive devices used in the following sentences.

1) These chairs look comfortable. You take the blue one and I’ll take the red one.

2) Are you planning to go camping tomorrow? I hope to.

3) Jack is very sick. In fact, he needs to be hospitalized immediately.

4) She was considered among the worst of the interviewees. Nevertheless she got the job.

5) I have a dog. His name is John,

6) John bought a Ford, He loves the car.

4. Try to make sense of the following witty dialog and to find out the cohesive ties.

A: Time flies.

B: You can't; they fly too quickly.

5. For each of the following sentences, identify its theme and point out whether it is unmarked:

1) The two Indians stood waiting.

2) Nick and his father went into the stern of the boat.

3) But I will have some photographs taken.

4) Oh, you are a great man.

5) There was no need of that.

6) Of course it was an accident.

7) Across the bay they found the other boat.

8) In February 1980 his last book was published.

9) That I don’t know.

10) What she had felt he never knew.

11) Are you interested in syntax?

12) Oh, so that is your plan?

13) By the way, were you serious about moving to New Orleans?

14) What are you doing here?

15) Then, in the name of goodness, why did she bother?

16) If it’s true that contented cows give more milk, why shouldn’t happy ball players produce more base hits?

17) Wake me up before the coffee break.

18) Don’t disturb me while I' m taking a nap.

19) Let's have a look at this recipe.

20) Oh, please stop it.

Key for reference

1. FFTFFTFF

2. discourse; text; coherence; cohesion; schema/schemata; theme; adjacency pair;

pre-sequence

3. 1) substitution ("one" is substituted for "chair")

2) ellipsis ("go camping tomorrow" is omitted in the response to the question)

3) conjunction (in fact)

4) conjunction (nevertheless)

5) reference ("his" refers to "the dog's")

6) lexical cohesion ("Ford" is a hyponym of "the car")

4. B puns on the words "time" (either a noun or a verb) and "flies" (Either a verb or a noun)

There are three cohesive ties in this dialog: you can' t=you can't time flies(ellipsis); flies--they (reference); flies--fly (lexical cohesion).

5. The themes are marked in bold type. (Note what goes into a theme: a. the first experiential element in the clause (participant/process/circumstance); b. any element preceding the first experiential element in the clause (modal/connective adjuncts, conjunctions, finite, vocative)

1) The two Indians stood waiting.

2) Nick and his father went into the stern of the boat.

3) But I will have some photographs taken.

4) Oh, you are a great man.

5) There was no need of that.

6) Of course it was an accident.

7) Across the bay they found the other boat.

8) In February 1980 his last book was published.

9) That I don’t know.

10) What she had felt he never knew.

11) Are you interested in syntax?

12) Oh, so that is your plan?

13) By the way, were you serious about moving to New Orleans?

14) What are you doing here?

15) Then, in the name of goodness, why did she bother?

16) If it’s true that c ontented cows give more milk, why shouldn’t happy ball players produce more base hits?

17) Wake me up before the coffee break.

18) Don’t disturb me while I' m taking a nap.

19) Let's have a look at this recipe.

20) Oh, please stop it.

Marked themes (which do not correspond to the subject of the clauses) in sentence 7-10.

功能语言学与语篇分析Discourse Analysis

功能语言学与语篇分析Discourse Analysis Text (written)笔语分析VS discourse (spoken) 口语分析 研究的是language in use，paralinguistic 副语言metadiscourse 元话语 Ken Hyland 燕大网查文章：ELserver / English for Specific （Academic）Purpose 不要Made-up data 要鲜活的语言。 Context包括cultural context，situational context，co-context Halliday + Hason 合著Cohesion in English Macharthy，M（1991）Discourse Analysis for language teachers 韩李德的划分：概念功能ideational function 人际功能interpersonal Text （genre）语体 Ideational interpersonal textual You give me a book. A book is given to me by you. （有标记） A）I have a number of comments to make about your behavior. For a start, you have greatly offended the neighbors by singing rude songs and playing music instruments at all hours of the night. Then there is the matter of the burnt settee and broke window, to name but two signs of damage. I am further concerned that you appear to be keeping racing pigeons in the house, and on top of that all, it is over four months since

Discourse Analysis

Discourse Analysis The present essay makes an attempt to examine two written texts from two diverse registers. The first text （hereinafter called 'Text A'）is a news discourse taken from the CCTV English news website. Another one （hereinafter called 'Text B'）is an introductory section of a journal article extracted from Journal of Language Teaching and Research. The two texts will be analyzed respectively and compared with register，language function，lexico-grammar （Halliday，2004）and cohesion proposed by Halliday and Hasan （1976）. The scripts of these two target texts will be enclosed in Appendix for reference. Text A is identified as a journalistic genre. Journalistic style is mainly supposed to report what people care and what will happen in the whole society. As the news is taken from CCTV English news website，it is a piece of internet news. Internet news is very recapitulative and informative. Within a very limited passage length，it gives readers the general ideas and even some details and comments about what has happened and what is going on. Studying on its lexical density and contextual

Discourse Analysis

Analysis of Context and Reference on Written News of "Liu Xiang, Chinese Olympic Gold Medalist Hurdler, Announces Retirement " 1.Introduction Discourse Analysis (DA), is a general term for a number of approaches to analyze written, vocal, or sign language use, or any significant semiotic event. it involves many research aspects such as context, reference, structure, topic, coherence,etc. And Liu Xiang, who is famous as an Chinese Olympic gold medalist hurdler announces his retirement because of his Achilles injury on Apr. 8th 2015, which causes a sensation in public. Therefore, this paper mainly analyze the written news of “Liu Xiang, Chinese Olympic Gold Medalist Hurdler, Announces Retirement ”. Due to the limited time, this paper only discuss the aspects of context and reference of discourse analysis methods, which can fully reflect the stylistic characteristics of news. And through this paper, the author hope that it can provide a special perspective to analyze news discourse and inspire the readers. 2. Literature Review 2.1 Research abroad In 1952, American structuralism linguist published an thesis "Discourse Analysis”, and analyzed an advertisement with the component distribution method in this thesis. Although it did not cause much repercussions in the field, it did provide a special perspective of discourse analysis. The European discourse analysis began in1960s in Germany. The German linguist Weinrich first proposed the term of discourse linguistics in 1967, and he believed that any study about language is based on the text. Discourse analysis became a discipline in1970s, and a large number of achievement scored during this time. The research content has also increased a lot. It introduced context, register, reference, anaphora, substitution, cohesion, coherence, macro-structure and micro-structure in traditional syntactic analysis, so that the study of language is far beyond the range of sentence. In 1980s, discourse analysis has made breakthrough progress, and discourse analysis came out from the mode of "structuralism", becoming a wide-range discipline that cross field, and developed to the practical content. In 1990s, V an Dick was selected as the first editor of journal “Text”, marking the discourse analysis as a discipline of linguistics. Up to now, there are also some systematic analysis methods, and the most influential achievements includes the speech act theory, the theory of thematic structure, schema theory, etc. Discourse analysis of news is a branch of discourse analysis. The research of news starts earlier in foreign countries, and up to current, the most influential works include: "News as Discourse" written by Van Dijk, etc. Van Dick use his macro theory into the analysis of news discourse, and discusses the structure, theme structure, schema and micro structure of news. He also decomposes news’ structure into five elements, which are the summary, main event, context, effect and evaluation. There are more researches that combines the media discourse with

Discourse Analysis studies

Representations of ethnic minorities in China’s university media Zhenzhou Zhao a *and Gerard A.Postiglione b a Centre for Governance and Citizenship,The Hong Kong Institute of Education,Tai Po,Hong Kong;b Faculty of Education,The University of Hong Kong,Pokfulam Road,Hong Kong This paper examines the representation of ethnic minorities in China through a review of campus newspapers,a major print medium in which universities exercise power over the discourse of cultural recognition.Three universities attended by minority students were selected.A two-dimensional mode (content and config- uration)is established to analyze ethnic representations.A combination of content analysis and discourse analysis is used to categorize and analyze text and photographs relevant to ethnicity.The study concludes that (1)different discursive practices are employed to construct ‘images’of ethnic groups as ‘Others’or ‘Us’;(2)representations of ethnic minorities and the Han generate three discursive dichotomies between minority and majority:minority groups are distinctive,potentially separatistic,and visible;and the Han people are normative, patriotic,and invisible,respectively;(3)the university media reflects an ideology of ‘state multiculturalism’that constructs a reflexive representation of the relationship between majority and minority. Keywords:university media;ethnic minority groups;representation;China;state multiculturalism;discourse Introduction Many multi-ethnic countries find themselves in a difficult dilemma between national unity and cultural diversity.China,with a large population from 56ethnic groups,is one of them.The distinguishing feature of this socialist country is its directive and top-down approach in identification and categorization,social positioning,and representations of ethnic groups.This approach is referred to as duoyuan yiti geju (pluralistic unitary structure)1by Fei Xiaotong (1992),or ‘Chinese national multiculturalism’in Bulag’s (2003)term.These two interpretations share a similarity in construing ethnic relationships in terms of ‘group ranking’,that is to say,the subjugation of ethnic minority identities to an overarching and honorable identity of the Chinese nation.In this paper,we will argue how the discursive practices in campus print media construct an ideology of ‘state multiculturalism’that reveals the assimilation impetus stemming from the Sinic civilization and Marxism projects and also reflects integrative representations of diverse cultural communities.A systematic analysis of linguistic devices in the university media,the main medium for the purpose of reporting major events and publishing teacher and student essays, illuminates how the lived experiences of different actors (university,staff and students)are woven into this ideological formation. *Corresponding author.Email:zhaozz@https://www.wendangku.net/doc/e612213225.html,.hk Discourse:Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education Vol.31,No.3,July 2010,319á 334 ISSN 0159-6306print/ISSN 1469-3739online #2010Taylor &Francis DOI:10.1080/01596301003786928 https://www.wendangku.net/doc/e612213225.html,

Critical+Discourse+Analysis_Van+Dijk+批判性话语分析

18 Critical Discourse Analysis TEUN A. VAN DIJK 0 Introduction: What Is Critical Discourse Analysis? Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is a type of discourse analytical research that prim-arily studies the way social power abuse, dominance, and inequality are enacted, reproduced, and resisted by text and talk in the social and political context. With such dissident research, critical discourse analysts take explicit position, and thus want to understand, expose, and ultimately resist social inequality. Some of the tenets of CDA can already be found in the critical theory of the Frankfurt School before the Second World War (Agger 1992b; Rasmussen 1996). Its current focus on language and discourse was initiated with the "critical linguistics" that emerged (mostly in the UK and Australia) at the end of the 1970s (Fowler et al. 1979; see also Mey 1985). CDA has also counterparts in "critical" developments in sociolinguistics, psychology, and the social sciences, some already dating back to the early 1970s (Birnbaum 1971; Calhoun 1995; Fay 1987; Fox and Prilleltensky 1997; Hymes 1972; Ibanez and Iniguez 1997; Singh 1996; Thomas 1993; Turkel 1996; Wodak 1996). As is the case in these neighboring disciplines, CDA may be seen as a reaction against the dominant formal (often "asocial" or "uncritical") paradigms of the 1960s and 1970s. CDA is not so much a direction, school, or specialization next to the many other "approaches" in discourse studies. Rather, it aims to offer a different "mode" or "perspective" of theorizing, analysis, and application throughout the whole field. We may find a more or less critical perspective in such diverse areas as pragmatics, conversation analysis, narrative analysis, rhetoric, stylistics, sociolinguistics, ethno-graphy, or media analysis, among others. Crucial for critical discourse analysts is the explicit awareness of their role in soci-ety. Continuing a tradition that rejects the possibility of a "value-free" science, they argue that science, and especially scholarly discourse, are inherently part of and influenced by social structure, and produced in social interaction. Instead of denying or ignoring such a relation between scholarship and society, they plead that such relations be studied and accounted for in their own right, and that scholarly practices