CHAPTER 3

• Discourse analysis, developed during the 1970s as an academic field, studies the ways in which language is used between people, both in written texts and spoken contexts (Nordquist. 2020).
• In essence, doing discourse analysis means studying carefully “how language functions and how meaning is created in different social contexts” (Luo, 2019).
• According to Rowe and Levine (2012), discourse analysis is “the process of discovering the rules that govern a series of connected utterances (a discourse), such as a conversation, story, lecture, or any other communication event.
• Discourse markers are “words that are not a grammatical part of the sentence, but are used by speakers to begin a conversational turn or to indicate their attitude” (Rowe and Levine, 2012). 
• Vocabulary - Words and phrases can be analyzed for ideological associations, formality, and euphemistic and metaphorical content.
• Grammar - The way that sentences are constructed (e.g., verb tenses, active or passive construction, and the use of imperatives and questions) can reveal aspects of intended meaning.
• Structure - The structure of a text can be analyzed for how it creates emphasis or builds a narrative.
• Genre - Texts can be analyzed in relation to the conventions and communicative aims of their genre (e.g., political speeches or tabloid newspaper articles).
• Non-verbal communication - Non-verbal aspects of speech, such as tone of voice, pauses, gestures, and sounds like “um”, can reveal aspects of a speaker’s intentions, attitudes, and emotions.
• Conversational codes - The interaction between people in a conversation, such as turn-taking, interruptions and listener response, can reveal aspects of cultural conventions and social roles.
• Cohesion refers to the ties and connections that exist within texts (Yule, 2010).
• The key to the concept of coherence (“everything fitting together well”) exists in people since it is they who make sense of what they read or hear.
• Academic applications of DA include examining discourse during a political debate, discourse in advertising, television programming/media, interviewing, storytelling, as well as the study inequality in society, such as institutional racism, inherent bias in media, and sexism.
• Pragmatic or real-world uses of DA include looking into communications and interactions among world leaders, helping physicians find ways to ensure better understanding by people with limited language skills and guiding them in dealings when giving patients a challenging diagnosis.
• Grammar analysis and discourse analysis differ in terms of focus, textual analysis and verbal expression.
• Basic steps in DA as outlined by Luo (2019):S1: Define the research question and select the content of analysis.S2: Gather information and theory on the context.S3. Analyze the content for themes and patterns. S4: Review your results and draw conclusions.
• According to Clark (2007), critical linguistics is grounded on cultural theory to extend the term”text” to every kind of writing and also to spoken speech.
• Critical Discourse Analysis puts together linguistic analysis with social and cultural theories in order to put forward the ideological assumptions and relations at play in language, which have something to do with power.
• Three dimensions or stages of CDA are: description, interpretation, and explanation (Fairclough, 2001).
• Description is the stage which is concerned with formal properties of the text.
• Interpretation deals with the relationship between text and interaction – with seeing the text as the product of a process of production, and as a resource in the process of interpretation.
• Explanation is concerned with the relationship between interaction and social context – with the social determination of the processes of production and interpretation, and their social effects