Discourse

In linguistics, the phrase discourse analysis is used to refer to the analysis of both spoken and written texts. In each case, the aim is to analyse the way texts work across the boundaries of single sentences or utterances to form whole stretches of language. This sounds very simple, but actually the word ‘discourse’ has had quite a long and complicated history. The situation now is that it means slightly different things inside and outside the academic world; it can also mean different things in different academic subject areas. For these reasons, it’s worth spending a bit of time thinking about its variant meanings. The basic meaning of ‘discourse’, in modern ordinary usage, is ‘talk’. Originally, the term ‘discourse’ came from Latin, discursus, meaning ‘to run’, ‘to run on’, ‘to run to and fro’. Historically, it has been applied more to rehearsed forms of spoken language— like speeches, where people ‘run on’ about a topic— than to spontaneous speech. The modern meaning of ‘discourse’ as encompassing all forms of talk has evolved because conversations, like formal speeches, ‘run’. This means that speakers make an effort to give their interactions shape and coherence— not consciously, but as an integral part of co-operating with another speaker to make meaning. So when people refer to talk as discourse they are drawing attention to the way talk is a crafted medium . While it has long been understood that this was true of speeches and other aspects of formal oratory, it has only recently been recognised that casual conversation is subtly and skilfully fashioned by speakers as they go along, often at rapid speed.

Another way of looking at talk-as-discourse is to use the metaphor of weaving. In fact, we use this metaphor very often in our own talk about talk: for example, we talk about ‘losing the thread of the conversation’, ‘cottoning on’ to what people mean when they ‘spin us a yarn’; teachers often close their lessons by referring to ‘tying up loose ends’. We clearly see speakers as engaged together in discourse in the way a group of weavers would be to create a pattern in some fabric. But it’s not only spoken language that ‘runs’ or gets woven into patterns. 

Origin

late Middle English (denoting a woven fabric or something resembling this): from Latin textura ‘weaving’, from text- ‘woven’, from the verb texere 

This is also true of written language; and the modern use of the word ‘discourse’ can also be used to refer to aspects of written texts. This tends to be used much more within the academic world than outside it. The word text itself originally meant ‘something woven’ (Latin texere, textum —‘to weave’), and you can see a relationship between text, textile (‘capable of being woven’) and texture (‘having the quality of woven cloth’). Written language is also often referred to as ‘material’. Like speakers, then, writers manipulate different aspects of language in order to weave their texts and give their material ‘texture’. So to talk about discourse in written texts is to focus on the way written texts are constructed. This is what this unit is all about.

Carter, Ronald, et al. Working with Texts : A Core Introduction to Language Analysis, Routledge, 2001. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nottingham/detail.action?docID=180446.
Created from nottingham on 2020-11-29 03:06:47.