Discourse Analysis

In this textbook, first published in 1983, the authors provide an extensive overview of the many and diverse approaches to the study of discourse.

Gillian Brown (Author), George Yule (Author)

9780521284752, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 28 July 1983

302 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.7 cm, 0.48 kg

'This book makes for absorbing reading. It is very well-written, inspiring and clear. It is indispensable literature for anyone working in the field of discourse analysis.' Journal of Semantics

Discourse analysis is a term that has come to have different interpretations for scholars working in different disciplines. For a sociolinguist, it is concerned mainly with the structure of social interaction manifested in conversation; for a psycholinguist, it is primarily concerned with the nature of comprehension of short written texts; for the computational linguist, it is concerned with producing operational models of text-understanding within highly limited contexts. In this textbook, first published in 1983, the authors provide an extensive overview of the many and diverse approaches to the study of discourse, but base their own approach centrally on the discipline which, to varying degrees, is common to them all - linguistics. Using a methodology which has much in common with descriptive linguistics, they offer a lucid and wide-ranging account of how forms of language are used in communication. Their principal concern is to examine how any language produced by man, whether spoken or written, is used to communicate for a purpose in a context.

Preface
Acknowledgements
Transcription conventions
1. Introduction: linguistic forms and functions
2. The role of context in interpretation
3. Topic and the representation of discourse content
4. 'Staging' and the representation of discourse structure
5. Information structure
6. The nature of reference in text and in discourse
7. Coherence in the interpretation of discourse
References
Subject index
Author index.

Subject Areas: Semantics, discourse analysis, etc [CFG]