Adenda 25 topics mag.

TOPIC: FLT THEORIES (6, 13, 14, 25)

Discourse analysis.
Discourse is quite an elastic term in linguistics. It is often used to mean any sequence of
language in written or spoken form larger than a sentence. The distinctive feature of
discourse is that it stresses the communicative dynamics of language.
In this sense, discourse analysis means studying all those features which are part of the
communicative act: the context of the utterance, the tenor of relationships, the mode of
discourse, and so on. Of the many types of communicative acts, most study has been devoted
to conversation.
Conversation analysis (also known as ethno methodology) studies aspects such as
strategies for beginning and ending a conversation, changing topics, and the use of adjacency
pairs. These are formulaic exchanges: greeting-greeting, question- answer, apologyacceptance, etc.
Examples:
Greeting: Hello, Tom.
Greeting: Hi, Bill.
Offer: Would you like a cup o f tea?
Acceptance: Yes, please.
Once we have studied these approaches, we can conclude that they have a common
concern: they see language as a dynamic, social and interactive phenomenon, whether
between the speaker and listener or the writer and reader.
Meaning is conveyed not by single sentences but by more complex exchanges, in which the
participants, the purpose and the situation play a crucial part. We will see these factors in
more detail further on in this chapter. But first let us analyze the main features of oral and
written language.