Overview of Discourse Analysis

1. Pragmatics and Politeness Theory (356-365)

2. Ethnography of Speaking (365-372)
3. Interactional Sociolinguistics (372-378)

4. Conversation Analysis (CA) (378-388)

5. Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) (388-397)

Holmes, Janet. 2008. An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, 3rd edition. Harlow, England:

Pearson Education, Ltd, pp. 356-397.
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 Getting the most out of this
chapter

Questions YOU should be able to answer after

reading this chapter:

1. What is Discourse?

2. What is Discourse Analysis?

3. What is each of the approaches good for?

Holmes, Janet. 2008. An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, 3rd edition. Harlow, England:

Pearson Education, Ltd.
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 Discourse

“Among sociolinguists, the term

‘discourse’ is generally used to refer to
stretches of spoken or written
language which extend beyond an
utterance or a sentence.”

Holmes, Janet. 2008. An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, 3rd edition. Harlow, England:

Pearson Education, Ltd, p. 356.
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 Discourse Analysis as a Tool

“Discourse analysis provides a tool for

sociolinguists to identify the norms of
talk among different social and cultural
groups in different conversational and
institutional contexts, and to describe
the discursive resources people use in
constructing different social identities
in interaction.”

Holmes, Janet. 2008. An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, 3rd edition. Harlow, England:

Pearson Education, Ltd, p. 356.
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Pragmatics
and Politeness Theory

Possible emphasis on:

Analysis of speech acts
Possible focus on: For us as EFL
teachers, cross-cultural and cross-
linguistic comparisons

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 Conversational Maxims

Cooperative Principle

Holmes, Janet. 2008. An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, 3rd edition. Harlow, England:

Pearson Education, Ltd., p. 358.
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 Maxims of Conversation

 Quantity

 Quality

 Relation

 Manner

Holmes, Janet. 2008. An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, 3rd edition. Harlow, England:

Pearson Education, Ltd., p. 358.
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 Politeness Rules of Thumb

1. Don’t impose
2. Give options
3. Be friendly

Holmes, Janet. 2008. An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, 3rd edition. Harlow, England:

Pearson Education, Ltd., p. 359.
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Ethnography of Speaking

Possible emphasis on:

 Analysis of Communicative events:

Speech events in a culture that might be very
different from the supposed equivalent in our
own culture. (Need a good background in the
target culture.)

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 Interactional Sociolinguistics
Possible emphasis on:
 Interpreting speaker intentions based on
not only linguistic clues/cues but also non-
linguistic context
 “The interactional sociolinguist also tries to
make explicit the presuppositions and
background knowledge that people use to
interpret utterances in context. In doing so
the concept of a schema or frame is often
useful.”
Holmes, Janet. 2008. An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, 3rd edition. Harlow, England:
Pearson Education, Ltd., pp. 372, 376.
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 Conversation Analysis (CA)

Possible emphasis on:

 “communication as a jointly organized
activity like dancing, or a cooperative
musical”
 Often focuses on “micro level” such as
adjacency pairs
 “CA looks for internal linguistic clues and
paralinguistic clues to assist.”

Holmes, Janet. 2008. An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, 3rd edition. Harlow, England:

Pearson Education, Ltd., pp. 378-279.
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 Critical Discourse Analysis
(CDA)
Possible emphasis on:

 Power (who has it and who does not and

why)

 Differs in the “stance of the analyst”

Holmes, Janet. 2008. An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, 3rd edition. Harlow, England:

Pearson Education, Ltd., p. 389.
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