Perspectives on Discourse Analysis: Theory and Practice provides the student/reader with the basic theoretical knowledge and the empirical tools of some of the most relevant approaches to the analysis of discourse. It has been mainly conceived of as a general (university) course on Discourse Analysis, but it can also be useful for any person or group whose main concern is to acquire the basic necessary knowledge and skills for analyzing any type of discourse. The subject matter of the book could not only be of use for linguists or prospective linguists: given its interdisciplinary character, its findings can be (and in fact are) used and applied by practitioners and scholars from different fields, such as sociology, psychology, medical science, computer science, and so on. Thus the book can be used by any person who, having certain linguistic knowledge, is interested in exploring the fascinating world of discourse. All the chapters contain both a theoretical and an empirical section, the latter containing examples of analysis, as well as exercises (Practice) and self-evaluation questions, whose answers can be found at the end of the book (in the Practice key and Key to self-evaluation questions sections). The book is divided into 12 chapters. The first two introduce basic information about discourse analysis and text linguistics, as well as the necessary techniques for gathering data, including a very brief introduction to corpus linguistics. Chapters 3-11 present and discuss some of the most prominent and well-known approaches to discourse analysis, namely Pragmatics, Interactional Sociolinguistics, Conversation Analysis, The Ethnography of Communication, Variation Analysis and Narrative Analysis, Functional Sentence Perspective, Post-Structuralist Theory and Social Theory, Critical Discourse Analysis and Positive Discourse Analysis, and Mediated Discourse Analysis. Finally, Chapter 12 deals with crucial and further issues, such as the type of discourse chosen for the analysis, the strategies and functions of discourse, or the problem of choosing an appropriate unit of analysis which will suit the aims of research. Perspectives on Discourse Analysis: Theory and Practice may prove of value to all those who are professionally involved in the area of discourse and pragmatic studies, or simply to those who wish to acquire the necessary basic knowledge and techniques for analyzing any type of discourse, from medical, journalistic or political discourse to computer-mediated, humoristic, or hegemonic discourse (where the use and abuse of power is an important issue), just to name a few of the innumerable possibilities. A desirable and intended effect of this book is also the development of an open and tolerant mind, which will eventually lead to a better understanding of the different and varied manifestations of language, culture and communication in human society.

The papers in this book explore language use in a broad range of discourse fields. They provide theoretical perspectives on global orientations to social, political and economic transformations in the “New World Order” (NWO), and extend these with studies on the impacts of such transformations at the local, national, regional and global levels. The discussions highlight current concerns among academics and political commentators about the potential social impact of representations of the NWO in language and discourse. The present work is important in raising social consciousness towards the central role that language and discourse play in the construction of shifting/multiple identities. In this way, the roles of critical discourse analysis and indeed that of the analysts themselves are emancipative and socially transformative. The value of such consciousness-raising for potential social action in language user empowerment terms cannot be overstressed, particularly given the ascendant position of the English language in the NWO. This collection is a significant contribution to the ongoing critical discussion on global order discourse.

'Perspective' and 'viewpoint' are widely used in everyday talk as well as in the specialist languages of the social, cognitive, and literary sciences. Taken from the field of visual perception and representation, these concepts have acquired a general meaning and significance, as characteristics of human cognitive processing. Since, however, this field is shared by an increasing body of disciplines, perspective terms have also acquired specific and technical meanings. A striking example is the newly introduced use of 'perspectivation' in discourse analysis. This volume on 'perspective and perspectivation' — the first of its kind — will help to fill the gap between the common understanding of perspective and the specifics of its structure and dynamics as they have been elaborated in the human sciences, mainly in psychology and linguistics. The focus is on the structure of perspectivity in cognition and language, and the dynamics of setting and taking perspectives in social interaction and in the construction and understanding of texts. Both topics are presented here in an interdisciplinary way by a group of linguists and psychologists.

The title of this book 'Critical Discourse Analysis: An Interdisciplinary Perspective' is purposely chosen to emphasise the interdisciplinary nature of critical discourse analysis (CDA). This book has the following key features: The chapter authors bring to the book their diversified backgrounds. They are linguists, educators, computer scientists, health professionals, and social consultants. Although they all share a common interest in CDA, their academic and cultural experiences are different and this intercultural and interdisciplinary feature provides interesting insights into the understanding of CDA and its wider application. Thus, it appeals to a wide range of readers such as students, educators, researchers, health professionals and others. The book is divided into three parts to reflect the main interdisciplinary aspects of CDA: Part One is about some introductory aspects of CDA. It gives readers some basic ideas about CDA as an emerging field. Part Two is on CDA across different subjects and disciplines such as language education, information technology, and heath sciences. Part Three deals with CDA across cultures. It includes the use of CDA in examining social and linguistic issues in different nations and cultures such as Spain, Nigeria, Indonesia, New Zealand. For those who do not have backgrounds in linguistics, two introductory chapters on aspects of linguistics and functional grammar, which are relevant to CDA, are included in this book. They are essential for understanding CDA.

This volume gives intellectual space to a range of current perspectives on classroom discourse research and provides a forum for conversations about the research process. Classroom discourse researchers from different theoretical perspectives provide five separate analyses of the same instructional unit in a high school biology class, using the same set of data. Interwoven with the five research reports are several conversations among the editors and researchers regarding specific aspects of the research process. These conversations illuminate some of the actual decisions that researchers make when looking at data and crafting their analyses. This book is intended for graduate students, researchers, and teacher educators across the fields of applied linguistics and education who are interested in studying classroom discourse and, more generally, language-in-use. With its focus on both the research process and the outcomes of research, as well as on the theory-method relationship, this book is relevant for courses in research methodology, language in education, applied linguistics, discourse analysis, language development, and multiculturalism in the classroom.

This volume brings together analyses of governmentality from different angles in order to explore the multiple forms, practices, modes, programmes and rationalities of the ‘conduct of conduct’ today. Following the publication of Foucault’s annual lecture series at the Collège de France, scholars have attempted to critically rethink Foucault’s ideas. This is the first volume that attempts to revisit and expand studies of governmentality by connecting it to the theories and methods of discourse analysis. The volume draws on different theoretical stances and methodological approaches including critical discourse analysis, conversation analysis, dialogic analysis, multimodal discourse analysis, the discourse-historical approach, corpus analysis and French discourse analysis. The volume is relevant to students and scholars in the fields of critical discourse studies, conversation analysis, international studies, environmental studies, political science, public policy and organisation studies.

This introductory textbook presents a variety of approaches and perspectives that can be employed to analyze any sample of discourse. The perspectives come from multiple disciplines, including linguistics, sociolinguistics, and linguistic anthropology, all of which shed light on meaning and the interactional construction of meaning through language use. Students without prior experience in discourse analysis will appreciate and understand the micro-macro relationship of language use in everyday contexts, in professional and academic settings, in languages other than English, and in a wide variety of media outlets. Each chapter is supported by examples of spoken and written discourse from various types of data sources, including conversations, commercials, university lectures, textbooks, print ads, and blogs, and concludes with hands-on opportunities for readers to actually do discourse analysis on their own. Students can also utilize the book’s comprehensive companion website, with flash cards for key terms, quizzes, and additional data samples, for in-class activities and self-study. With its accessible multi-disciplinary approach and comprehensive data samples from a variety of sources, Discourse Analysis is the ideal core text for the discourse analysis course in applied linguistics, English, education, and communication programs.

Discourse Perspectives in Organizational Communication brings together researchers from the social sciences and humanities to look at discourse and how it shapes organizations and their social actors. Unlike others in the field, this book assumes that language creates and constitutes reality, rather than simply mirroring or describing it. This collection illustrates the variety of organizational phenomena that might be studied and the range of epistemological and methodological approaches that might be used in discourse analysis techniques.

This book offers a model of classroom discourse analysis that uses systemic functional linguistic theory and associated genre theory to develop a view of classroom episodes as 'curriculum genres', some of which operate in turn as part of larger unities of work called 'curriculum macrogenres'. Drawing on Bernstein's work, Christie argues that two registers operate in pedagogic discourse: a regulative register, to do with the goals and directions of the discourse; and an instructional register, to do with the particular 'content' or knowledge at issue. Each can be shown to be realized in distinctive clusters of choices in the grammar. The operation of the regulative register determines the initiation, pacing, sequencing and evaluation of the overall pedagogic activity. The book sets out the its methodology in detail by reference to a number of classroom texts, and a range of school subjects. Overall, schools emerge as sites of symbolic control in a culture.

"Approaching Dialogue" has its primary focus on the theoretical understanding and empirical analysis of talk-in-interaction. It deals with conversation in general as well as talk within institutions against a backdrop of Conversation Analysis, context-based discourse analysis, social pragmatics, socio-cultural theory and interdisciplinary dialogue analysis.People s communicative projects, and the structures and functions of talk-in-interaction, are analyzed from the most local sequences to the comprehensive communicative activity types and genres. A second aim of the book is to explore the possibilities and limitations of dialogism as a general epistemology for cognition and communication. On this point, it portrays the dialogical approach as a major alternative to the mainstream theories of cognition as individually-based information processing, communication as information transfer, and language as a code. Stressing aspects of interaction, joint construction and cultural embeddedness, and drawing upon extensive theoretical and empirical research carried out in different traditions, this book aims at an integrating synthesis. It is largely interdisciplinary in nature, and has been written in such a way that it can be used at advanced undergraduate courses in linguistics, sociopragmatics of language, communication studies, sociology, social psychology and cognitive science.About the author: Per Linell holds a Ph.D. in linguistics and has been professor within the interdisciplinary graduate program of Communication Studies at the University of Linkoping, Sweden, since 1981. He has published widely in the fields of discourse studies and social pragmatics of language.