An introduction to discourse analysis: Theory and method has become established as a seminal work. This book introduces both various “building tasks” (17) and tools of inquiry for discourse analysis. In this third edition, Gee extends the data to some new genres, including interviews, academic texts, and policy documents. The book begins with an overview of discourse analysis from a “language-in-use” (8) perspective. As Gee puts it, “any proper theory of language is a theory of practice … of the ‘games’ we humans play” (12). This critical and political view of discourse analysis will serve as an orientation and inspiration for readers, whether they are established researchers or are unfamiliar with the field of discourse studies.
The book aims to equip readers to investigate language practice. To this end, three groups of tools of inquiry are developed in Ch. 2–6. The first group, discussed in Ch. 2, comprises the seven things language is used to enact. In this chapter Gee also introduces discourses, or “whos” doing “whats,” which Gee sees as thinking devices for discourse analysts. The second group of tools (in Chs. 3 and 4) is concerned with social languages, conversations, and intertextuality. The last group (Chs. 5 and 6) includes devices for interpreting relationships between language and “figured worlds.” As the previous tools are related to context, Ch. 7 comprises an intensive study of context and follows up with three examples to illustrate how these tools interact. These three groups of tools, together with Ch. 7, serve as the theoretical and methodological basis for the analysis in the following chapters.
The remaining chapters are devoted to field practice in discourse analysis. Ch. 8 describes methods of data transcription and discusses the validity of “ideal” discourse analysis, while Ch. 9 deals with how to interpret the meaning conveyed by a speaker through a study of the discourse and the sentence. Chs. 10, 11, and 12 investigate interviews, narratives, and social-historical discourse respectively. The first study investigates socioculturally situated identities, the second the coverage and convergence with the first study, and the third consolidates the theories introduced in Ch. 2. The appendix discusses analyses of images and multimodal texts, while the glossary defines key terms. Together with the cross-reference to the author's (2010) book, How to do discourse analysis: A toolkit (Routledge), these make this book a comprehensive work.
Based on the theory that language has meaning only in and through social practice, the book aims first to describe data to reveal the intricacies of language, and ultimately to illuminate and help students and researchers, people interested in language, culture, and institutions, or colleagues in discourse analysis explain important issues and problems in areas that interest and motivate them.
