Highly accessible and easy to read, Discourse analysis: Putting our worlds into words puts the world of discourse analysis into words undergraduates can easily understand. This introductory text presents perspectives from sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology in a seamless fashion. These perspectives are all tied together by the shared pursuit of studying the social meaning of language. The text looks at discourse through its structure, practice, functions, and several frameworks for understanding discourse: Conversation Analysis (CA), Pragmatics, Semiotics, and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). The structure of the text is intuitive as it begins with the ‘building blocks’ of discourse. It then advances to show how those building blocks are used in practice and explains what function they have. The text then gives tools for systematically analysing conversation, understanding the ways speakers create meaning from potentially ambiguous discourse, the processes by which meanings become accessible linguistic resources, and the way discourse works to produce social realities.
After the introduction to the text, the authors explain that grammar is a mutable system that is structured by speakers of the language. The text examines the denotative and connotative meanings that nouns possess and how these interact with conceptual frameworks that are used to make distinctions between one thing and another.
Following this explanation of the ‘building blocks’ of language, the authors introduce genre as a culturally influenced way of looking at how ways of talking are constituted through reiteration. Genres, the authors tell us, vary just as modalities vary. The text illustrates that it is necessary to consider the genre and modality of discourse in addition to the content or constitutive reiteration of linguistic practices.
The first method that the authors discuss is CA, which they later contrast with pragmatics. The authors explain that CA seeks to investigate the mechanisms of conversation as they emerge in the interaction, as opposed to looking at the context(s) of discourse. In contrast, pragmatics privileges the context in which discourse occurs, showing how, for example, language users create meaning from nonliteral interpretations of text and talk.
In their discussion of semiotics, the authors explain how speakers position themselves through words because discourse is never neutral. In particular, the authors illustrate the identity-forming functions of indexicality and how categories of identity are agentively produced and reproduced through discourse.
Finally, the authors introduce CDA as a method of critical examination. Using CDA, the authors show the reader how discourse can be critically analysed through examining the underlying assumptions of the talk or text. While the authors' introduction to semiotics and indexicality showed the agentive power of language users to shape meaning, CDA illustrates the power that discourse has to shape the ideologies of language users. Once again, the authors show that language is never neutral and no practice possesses only one meaning.
