Discourse analysis

About: Discourse analysis is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 16055 publications have been published within this topic receiving 515384 citations. The topic is also known as: DA & discourse studies.

Legitimacy, Authority, and Community in Electronic Support Groups:

Abstract: In electronic support groups, people use Internet-based electronic text communication to discuss personal problems or disorders with others who share common circumstances. Although their discussions exist only in the electronic medium, these groups can be viewed usefully as discourse communities. The authors draw on what is known about two other popular sources of help—face-to-face self-help groups and self-help books—to frame the rhetorical challenges faced by members of electronic support groups. The authors then compare the discourse of electronic support groups with that of electronic hobby groups to demonstrate that the two sets differ in terms of the rhetorical behavior of their participants. The authors analyze messages to determine how members establish legitimacy and authority in their texts and how message exchange gives rise to group identity and a sense of community. Our observations indicate that although some discourse characteristics and some rhetorical features are common to all the electr...

Talk, talk, talk: teaching and learning in whole class discourse

Abstract: UK national initiatives in education, such as the National Literacy and Numeracy Strategies, have been implemented to improve learning and raise standards These initiatives place considerable significance on whole class interactive teaching, and political rhetoric makes great play of this pedagogic strategy Teachers have been encouraged to use up to 15 minutes of whole class teaching in literacy and numeracy as a key focus for developing pupil learning This paper reports on a two‐and‐a‐half‐year research study which investigated the nature and quality of these discourse episodes through analysing how teachers use talk in these whole class teaching episodes to develop and build on pupils’ learning The study explored how teachers use questions, how they capitalize on pupils’ prior knowledge and how they help pupils become independent learners A particular focus of the paper is to illustrate how teacher discourse can variously support or impede pupil learning, and how cognitive or conceptual connections

Multimodal transcription as academic practice: a social semiotic perspective

Abstract: With the increasing use of video recording in social research methodological questions about multimodal transcription are more timely than ever before. How do researchers transcribe gesture, for instance, or gaze, and how can they show to readers of their transcripts how such modes operate in social interaction alongside speech? Should researchers bother transcribing these modes of communication at all? How do they define a ‘good’ transcript? In this paper we begin to develop a social semiotic framework to account for transcripts as artefacts, treating them as empirical material through which transcription as a social, meaning making practice can be reconstructed. We look at some multimodal transcripts produced in conversation analysis, discourse analysis, social semiotics and micro‐ethnography, drawing attention to the meaning‐making principles applied by the transcribers. We argue that there are significant representational differences between multimodal transcripts, reflecting differences in the profes...

Academic Discourse: English In A Global Context

Abstract: Academic discourse is a rapidly growing area of study, attracting researchers and students from a diverse range of fields. This is partly due to the growing awareness that knowledge is socially constructed through language and partly because of the emerging dominance of English as the language of scholarship worldwide. Large numbers of students and researchers must now gain fluency in the conventions of English language academic discourses to understand their disciplines, establish their careers and to successfully navigate their learning. This accessible and readable book shows the nature and importance of academic discourses in the modern world, offering a clear description of the conventions of spoken and written academic discourse and the ways these construct both knowledge and disciplinary communities. This unique genre-based introduction to academic discourse will be essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students studying TESOL, applied linguistics, and English for Academic Purposes.