Discourse Analysis: A Comprehensive Guide to Text and Context
Discourse Analysis
Address
Address is an action, a form of social practice articulated through contextualized language use (oral or written). It shapes and is shaped by social life, constituting situations, objects of knowledge, social identities, and relationships between groups. All public and private spheres generate discursive practices. Discourse is always associated with a given social practice (legal, medical, religious, anthropological, humorous, weather, literary, economic, etc.), making them “social discourses.”
Speech/Language
Language, as a virtual system of values, is contrasted with speech, which is the use of language in a particular context. Speech restricts or creates new values. It can refer to:
- A position in a discursive field (e.g., newspaper discourse)
- A type of discourse (e.g., journalistic, administrative)
- Production by a class of speakers
- A language fiction (e.g., controversial, committed)
Speech/Gender
Gender refers to word groupings with similar social functions and common formal characteristics. Gender discourse encompasses the discursive means of communication and sociohistorical matrices.
Rosti states, “All discourse is organized through various genres, which correspond to different social practices within the same discursive field.” Each genre is linked to a specific speech text. All texts belong to a genre, and all genres are associated with a particular speech. Gender rules are not strictly linguistic or spoken but belong to broader social rules.
Referential Address
Speeches are often heterogeneous and include statements about the “other.” These situations involve a sender addressing another within their own discourse.
Direct Speech
Direct speech, or “direct style,” is a literal transcription of another person’s words. It uses quotation marks, changes pronouns and verb tenses, and often includes introductory phrases like “John says, ‘I can’t stand my girlfriend.'”
Indirect Speech
Indirect speech is a regulated, indirect quote that conveys what the other person says without breaking the syntax. For example, “John says he hates his girlfriend.”
Free Indirect Speech
Free indirect speech quotes another person without explicit markers like “says.” For instance, “Riquelme is happy.” These are not the speaker’s words but are attributed to Riquelme. The speaker recognizes and conveys the characteristic tone of Riquelme’s speech.
Text
Text is the product of discourse, the social process of language production in specific situations by speakers. There is a one-to-one relationship between text and discourse. A single text may contain multiple discourses or discursive modes, and vice versa.
Context
According to Von Dighe, context encompasses everything relevant to interpreting a text. It includes three elements: place (social, geographic, etc.), time, and the relationship between communication partners. There are two types of context:
- Co-text: All parts of the text before and after a specific element, providing clarification and resolving ambiguities.
- Context: The broader situational and cultural environment surrounding the text.
Textuality Criteria
Cohesion
Cohesion is the connection between text elements where the interpretation of one element depends on another. It ensures the text flows smoothly and avoids confusion for the receiver. Cohesion is achieved through various linguistic means, such as lexical and grammatical connections. It corresponds to the grammatical structure and surface features of the text.
Coherence
Coherence is the connection that arises from knowledge outside the text, typically the reader’s or listener’s background knowledge. It allows readers to perceive the text as a unified whole, with secondary ideas supporting the main idea or theme. Coherence ensures the text is meaningful and understandable.
Intentionality
Intentionality refers to the author’s or speaker’s conscious intention to achieve specific goals with their message. They aim to convey information, persuade, or express an opinion. Without intentionality, the text becomes a random sequence of words.
Acceptability
Acceptability requires the text to be acceptable to the target audience. The receiver must find the sequence of sentences coherent and meaningful for it to be considered a text.
Informativity
Informativity means the text must contain new information. If the reader already knows everything in the text, it loses its value. Similarly, if the reader cannot understand the text, it fails to be informative.
Situatedness
Situatedness is the relevance of the text within a specific communicative situation. It considers the factors that make the text meaningful and appropriate in its context.
Intertextuality
: it means that a sequence of sentences are related by form or meaning with another sequence of sentences.