DISCOURSE ANALYSIS BY BRIAN PALTRIDGE

CHAPTER 1
WHAT IS DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
By shamimnazish@hotmail.com

Central Idea of the Chapter The first chapter, “What is

Discourse Analysis?”, surveys discourse analysis, its origin, and
the issues that interest discourse analysts. In this chapter the
writer gives us basics and description of discourse analysis and
dilates upon different accounts of linguists from Zellig Harris
and Fairclough to Mills. Zellig, had two main interests i.e. the
examination of language beyond the level of sentence and the
relationship between linguistic and non-linguistic behaviuor. The
relation between language and context has been
comprehensively presented for the readers as a food for thought
1. What is Discourse Analysis Discourse Analysis is the
investigation of knowledge about language beyond the word,
clause, phrase and sentence levels. All of them are the basic
building blocks of successful communication. In discourse
analysis researchers have to infiltrate language as a whole
beyond the micro level of words and sentences and look at the
entire body of communication produced in a given / particular
situation. Discourse analysis refers ‘to attempts to study the
organization of language above the sentence, or above the
clause, and therefore to study larger linguistic units, such as
conversational exchanges or written texts’ (Stubbs 1983:1).
However, Michael Stubbs redefines Discourse in his later work as
‘It is therefore more accurate to say that text and discourse
analysis studies language in context: how words and
phrases fit into both longer texts, and also social contexts of
use’ (Stubbs 2001a:5).
a. Relationship Between Language And Context The
basic consideration of Discourse Analysis is
relationship between language and the situations
wherein it is produced. It analyzes and investigates
both spoken and written interactions. In the broader
context, it’s not only the conversation that is taken into
account in discourse analysis, but also the societal
customs and practices as well that make the entire
web of social fibre / behaviours.
b. Discourse Analysis and Pragmatics This chapter
will highlight pragmatics that is the prime
consideration of the ways in which people mean more
than what they say in spoken and written discourses.
Paltridge discusses Discourse Analysis from pragmatic
point of view.
c. The Discourse Structure Of Text Discourse
Analysts are interested in how people knit into a
structure what they intend to convey to others in a
conversation or in a piece of writing. For Example
there are cultural differences of greetings in Japan and
USA. In US they are very short while in Japan they
include weather and other details in greetings. As they
say “greetings from HOT and SIZZLING Tokyo” instead
of only the word of greetings which is not a requirement
in English
d. Cultural Ways Of Speaking And Writing The
author criticizes the study of the Ethnography of
communication by Dell Hymes. The cultural context
remains the most important aspect that needs attention
of analysts, researchers and critics. Paltridge maintains
that though Hymes analyzed cultural point of view but
 he ignored social and cultural context in language
occurs.
e. Communicative Competence & Discourse
Communicative competence is knowing about
the structures that are normally used while
communicating in a given language. It revolves around
the knowledge of speakers as to how to respond to
different speech acts as faced during day to day
situations. Communicative competence consists of four
components i.e. grammatical competence, socio
linguistic competence discourse competence and
strategic competence.
f. Discursive Competence Discursive competence
is not only language related and text level
knowledge but also includes complex factors beyond
text which are required for useful communication.
Discursive competence draws together the notion of
textual competence generic competence and social
competence.
2. Different Views of Discourse Analysis It is the
analysis of functional language i.e. the language currently in use
in context. Paltridge has discussed different uses of discourse
analysis i.e. the one is textually oriented and the other is social
constructionist use of discourse analysis. The first view only
concentrates on language features of text while the second one
talks about the text in social and cultural settings. Paltridge has
focused more on discourse analysis from the second point
of view. Both of these aspects can hardly be ignored in a
realistic discourse analysis. Different features of text are
important components but at the same time the contextual
settings cannot be separated from the textual features to
scrutinize / analyze the intended meaning.
a. Discourse as the Social Construction of Reality
The author here discusses that through discourse we
always construct our social reality and she gives the
example of BBC Panorama interview in which
Princess Diana doesn’t only talk about herself but while
she talking she also constructs her social world in a
way that she wants people to see.
b. Discourse And Socially Situated Identities Similarly,
whenever we speak or pen something down we
construct our socially situated identities. A speaker
can construct multi identities in a single stretch of
discourse. For example, when a speaker, in an
interview, tells that his son goes to Chicago University,
he establishes his identity of being a father and a
husband. In the same very interview if he discloses it to
the audience that he is a high ranking officer in the
Army, he constructs his second identity of being an
army office. It includes the way we dress, the way we
act and interact influences.
c. Discourse And Performance Sometimes our
discourse not only shows the intentions and identities, it
actually performs the intended functions. It’s based
on the view that in saying something we do it. For
example when it is said, “I promise and I now
pronounce you man and wife” The act has been
performed i.e. the couple has become man and wife.
d. Discourse And Intertextuality All text whether
spoken or written, takes meanings from other texts
and refers to other texts. So, this way they are in an
 intertextual relationship with other texts. Casablanca
movie in which different genre such as adventure
patriotic war propaganda are mixed up.
3. Difference Between Spoken And Written Discourse
There are a no of differences b/w spoken and written
discourse. The differences are as under:-
a. Grammatical Intricacy and Spoken Discourse
Researchers have shown that speech as well as
writing is grammatically complex and different from
each other. The written language is more complex
grammatically compared to the spoken version of
discourse
b. Lexical Density in Spoken and Written Discourse
Discourse analysts like Halliday maintain that
written discourse is more lexically dense than the
spoken form. It used thicker and comparatively
difficult lexicon to convey the meaning.
c. Nominalization In Written And Spoken Discourse
Nominalization refers to the process of forming
nouns from other word class than nouns. For example
red+ness=redness. It occurs where actions and
events are presented as nouns rather than verbs. In
written discourse the process of nominalization
takes place on higher level while in spoken discourse
there is low level of nominalization.
d. Explicitness In Spoken And Written Discourse
Writing is more explicit than speech.
Explicitness in writing and speech depends on the
purpose of the text as well as listeners and readers.
e. Contextualization In Spoken And Written Discourse
Some of the spoken genre is decontextualized
and some of the written genre is also
 decontextualized while some are not. In the written
discourse the contextualization has to be
established before starting the major
discussion/explanation. The spoken genre, such as
academic lectures, is decontextualized.
f. The Spontaneous Nature Of Spoken Discourse
Spoken discourse is often produced
spontaneously so sometimes it is disorganized in
comparison to writing as Halliday points out writing is,
“a highly idealized version of the writing process”
g. Repetition Hesitation and Redundancy in Spoken
Discourse Spoken discourse being produced
spontaneously and without any preplanning, contains
abundant repetition hesitation and redundancy because
it is produced in real time and it contains pauses and
fillers.
h. A Continuum Of Differences between Spoken and
Written Discourse
There are no binding rules of differentiating
between spoken and written discourse as spoken
and written styles may intermingle with each other in
forms.
CHAPTER NO 2
DISCOURSE AND SOCIETY

1. Central Idea of the Chapter In this chapter the author talks

about the notion of Discourse Community and the related
notion of speech Community and both of these influence ‘what
we say and how we say’ and which language variety we choose
to use as we are engaged in discourse. Further she talks about
social and gender identities. Partridge argues that speakers have
a linguistic repertoire from which they can make different
choices in different situations. The notions of gender and identity
are thoroughly discussed
as important topics in the area of discourse and society.
2. Discourse Communities and Speech Communities
Discourse community is a group of people who work or live
together. Members of discourse community have shared goals,
values and beliefs. Cameron’s study of telephone call centre
in the UK is an example of discourse community. These
communities have shared goals, same vocabulary and similar
living environments that elicit language.
3. Speech Communities and Spoken / Written Discourse
A speech community refers to any group of people that
speak the same language such as Hindko, Pashto and Urdu
etc. from general linguistic point of view. The term refers to people
who not only use the same language but also have the
opportunity to interact with each other, from socio-linguistic point
of view. However, Paltridge says that it is not only the
language that defines speech community but also we need to
keep in mind various factors like society, geography, culture,
politics and ethnicity.
4. Discourse and Language Choice People use a
particular variety of language to keep the intended meanings
limited to the group that shares the secrecy of
information/meaning. Like some of young school students in
Pakistan invented the term GF meaning Girl Friend. They use
the term to avoid disclosing the fact that they have a girl friend
or who their girl friend is.
5. Discourse Social Class & Social Networks The use of
spoken and written discourse also depends on social class
network people belong to. A group of speakers may appear to be
very similar in social class membership but they differ in use of
language as they interact in social networks.
6. Discourse and Gender Earlier works have talked about
discourse and gender in terms of biological category of sex but
the present research talks in relation to the socially constructed
category of gender. Paltridge also agrees the later view. As
Simone De Beauvoir says, “one is not born but rather
becomes a woman”. Then she talks of the two approaches
namely Dominance Approach and the Difference or Cultural
Approach. The Dominance approach maintains that there are
clear differences in the use of language as a result of male
dominance over the female. The cultural approach believes that
boys and girls live in different sub-cultures in the way that people
from different social and ethnic backgrounds might be described
as being part of different sub cultures. Resultantly boys and girls
learn different ways of using the spoken discourse. It includes
the notion of desire as we have discussed that gender is
socially constructed but sexual desires are not constructed.
7. Discourse and Identity Paltridge talks about two views of
language and identity. One view is variationist perspective and
the other one is post structural perspective. The variation is
perspective looks at the relationship between social variables in
terms of variation in the use of linguistic variables. However,
post structural perspective on language and identity focuses on
this view that identity is constructed through discourse.
Cameron’s example of this in her discussion of how a group of
male US college students constructs heterosexual masculinity
through the talk they engage in while watching TV in their college
dorm.
a. Identity and Casual Conversation Through use of
conversation people establish social identities as
Eggins and Slade argue that people do not engage in
casual conversations just to kill time but rather to
negotiate social identities as well as clarify and extend
 interpersonal relations. To quote Cameron “when we
speak, we are telling other people something about
ourselves”.
b. Identity and Written Academic Discourse Identity
is even constructed in our academic writing as in
spoken or other written discourse. As Hyland argues,
“almost everything we write says something about
us and the sort of relationship that we want to set
up with our readers”.
8. Discourse and Ideology. Texts are neither
ideology free nor objective. A spoken or written genre is never
created without an objective. It always intends to convey or
propagate a message to the readers / listeners. There are a
number of ways in which ideology might be extracted from a text.
This may include tracing underlying ideology from linguistic
features of a text unpacking ideological presupposition underlying
the texts.

CHAPTER - 3
DISCOURSE AND PRAGMATICS
1. Central Idea of the Chapter. Chapter 3, “Discourse and
Pragmatics”, clarifies the relationship between language and
context. This section shows that both pragmatics
and discourse analysis share an interest in the relationship
between language and
context and how language is used to perform different speech
acts. The chapter begins by defining pragmatics i.e. the study of
meaning in relation to the context in which the discourse is
being produced.
2. Language, Context and Discourse. Use of Language in
context is very important in discourse analysis. Same
language carries different meaning in different context. For
example, the word ‘duck’ in normal English language is only the
‘bird’. The same word ‘duck’ while being used in cricket would
mean ‘zero score’. So, what determines the meanings of
discourse is the use of discourse in context. However, there are
other factors which also play very important role like physical,
social contexts and the mental world and roles of people involved
in the interactions.
3. Speech Acts and Discourse. Austin argued that there are
three kinds of acts which occur with everything we say. These are
locutionary act, the illocutionary act and perlocutionary act.
The locutionary act refers to the dictionary meaning of words,
the illocutionary act refers to the speakers’ intended meanings
and the perlocutionary act refers to the way discourse is
perceived by others.
4. The Co-operative Principle and discourse. Grice based
his co-operative principle on four sub-principles. These are
maxims of quality, quantity, relation and manner. Quality
means, people should only say what they believe to be true and
accurate without any addition to the meaning from them.
Quantity means that the message being conveyed by the
discourse should be comprehensive and holistic without any
loopholes and confusions in it. Relation refers to the fact that our
discourse needs to be in harmony to the context and should
have relevance to the surroundings. If not so, the entire message
may not be communicated in its true letter and spirit. Manner
says that we should be clear in what way to say it and what
exactly to say so that the listeners / readers understand the
message the best intended way.
5. Flouting the Co-operative Principle. The co-operative
principle helps the producers of discourse convey their
information effectively. This principle is followed to a great extent
but the intentions behind the production of discourse do
matter. The speakers/writers follow the cooperative principle to
convey what they intend to convey, rather than following the
principle in its true letter and spirit. For example, the principle of
quality wants the producers of discourse to say what they
want to be true. But actually what they say is what they want
their listeners / readers to believe. This violation of the co-
operative principle is best done in the diplomatic circle of the
world.
6. Cross - Cultural Pragmatics and Discourse. In the global
world of today the cross-cultural pragmatics is very important.
When people say something, it carries different meanings in
different culture. This is called cross-cultural pragmatics. For
example, once when I was teaching my Saudi students two years
back, I wanted them to finish their assignment quickly. I snapped
my fingers to tell them to be quick. (as we normally do in our
country to tell someone to work quickly) Snapping my fingers
made my students feel offended because the act of snapping
fingers is done to call dogs in Saudi Arabia. There are two key
notions in the area of cross-cultural pragmatics i-e
pragmalinguistics (the study of more linguistic end of
pragmatics) and sociolinguistics (sociopragmatics refers to
specific local conditions of language use).
7. Conversational Implicature and Discourse. According to
Thomas, an implicature is generated intentionally by the speaker
to make a listener do something which he may fail to
understand. For example the sentence “there is some chalk on
the floor” intends the listener to pick up the chalks. However, a
listener in this case may not be able to understand that the
speaker wants him to pick up the chalks. Inference, on the other
hand, is produced by the hearer on the basis of certain evidence
and may not in face be the same as what speakers intends.
8. Politeness, Face and Discourse. Politeness and face are
two important factors for discourse analysis. Lakoff (1973)
introduced three maxims of politeness. These are don’t impose,
give options and make your hearer feel good. If our listeners
are meant to understand the intended meaning effectively and
comprehensively the we must maintain the three maxims to
convey the message.
9. Face and Politeness across Cultures. Face and
politeness varies from culture to culture. For example in the
Saudi culture it is not customary to look at somebody’s face while
talking / listening. On the other hand, if we talk/listen to someone
in Pakistan without looking at his face it is thought to be
impolite. Also in some cultures bedroom is private and cannot be
entered while in others there is no problem in strangers’ entry into
bedrooms.
10. Politeness and Gender. Politeness varies depending on
the context and culture like women are more polite than men.
Sometime polite words like ‘Yar!’ (in Pakistani/Urdu culture)
to a strange lady will be an odd one as compared to known friend
etc. Therefore, it is important to use polite words at right place.
11. Face-Threatening Acts. Some acts ‘threaten’ a person’s
face. They are called face-threatening acts. When you interact
with some person and in reaction, the individual does not respond
and showing you cold shoulder, in this context, your face is going
to be threatened. For example, in Pakistani culture, if someone
says Asalamolikum to another person and in response the other
person does not say Waalikunassalam, the first person will be
offended and annoyed. The act of the later will be a face
threatening act.
 CHAPTER-5
DISCOURSE AND CONVERSATION
1. Central Idea of the Chapter Conversation analysis is an
important component of discourse analysis. It is an approach
of spoken source that looks at the way in which people manage
their everyday conversational interaction. Paltridge gives a
transcribed extract to clarify the particular transcription
conventions that
are used as part of conversation analysis where intonation,
prolongation of
sounds, and stress matter. For example, underlining and the use
of capitals
implies loud talk and word stress.
2. Transcription Conventions. Specific transcriptional
conventions are used in conversation analysis. The rise and fall
of pitch / intonation, the length of sentences, and the pauses
indicated in the transcription all contribute to the analysis of the
transcriptions.
3. Sequence and Structure in Conversation. Aspects of
conversational interactions that have been examined from this
perspective include conversational openings, closings, turn
taking, sequence of related utterances and preferences for
particular combination of utterances. Adjacency pairs are a
fundamental unit of conversational organization and a key way in
which meanings are communicated and interpreted in
conversation. These pairs put the conversation in the sequence
and treat the sentences spoken by each of the speakers as
consequential to each other’s utterances. Adjacency pairs
across cultures their stage and convention is fundamental to the
analysis to the spoken discourse.
4. Preference Organization. The basic rule for adjacency
pairs is to allow and give time to the other participant. Thus
having gained sufficient time to take turns and respond to the
other participant of the conversation, the speakers complete the
entire body of the conversation rendering it all as a complete body
of discourse ready for analysis.
5. Feedback. Feedback means the ways in which listeners
show by saying “mmm” and “yeah” or through body position
and the use of eye contact. The functions response items such
as “mmm”, “yeah” and “OK” are also influenced by the
intonation, place and timing of the utterances. So, the feedback
on the speaker’s performance is what encourages the speaker to
continue or to head towards the culmination of the conversation.
The feedback also speaks of the face threatening act or
politeness in conversation on part of the listener.
6. Repair. As the term simply signifies that the speaker
corrects / repairs blemishes he commits in the conversation.
He does it either himself or with the help of another person. The
act of repair also concentrates on what exactly the listener of the
conversation has understood of the discourse.
7. Gender and Conversation Analysis. Discourse analysts
have also investigated the construction of gender reality by
speakers in their discourse/conversation. For example
excessive use of Child-care vocabulary discloses the
speakers as being a female and beyond that a mother exactly.
The researchers have examined the social construction of social
reality, and have examined the social construction of gender from
a conversation analysis perspective.
8. Conversation Analysis and Second Language
Conversation Introduction of Discourse analysis, as an
academic subject, is not traced back in centuries rather in only a
few decades. Initially the subject remained limited to the
attention of the native speakers later the attention shifted to
the second language speakers as well. The non-native talk will,
in future, contribute a lot in the development of teaching methods
and techniques. Though psychological analysis is not the
mandate of discourse analysis but attention, somehow or the
other, will be drawn to this this aspect to promote the second
language acquisition.
9. Criticism of Conversation Analysis The major criticism
on conversation analysis is that, when we analyze data from the
conversation analysis perspective, we are working as spectators
not participants in the interaction. It is thus, not really possible
for us to know how the participants view the conversation unless
we ask them. This is, to my mind a misplaced criticism as the
entire conversational analysis is not only the transcript analysis.
Rather in the modern era the video recording facility will
revolutionize the conversational analysis because the availability
of real time footages will make it possible to contextually analyze
the decontextualized conversations.

CHAPTER - 6
DISCOURSE GRAMMAR
1. Central Idea of the Chapter In “Discourse Grammar”,
Paltridge throws light on the idea that grammar discussions are
no longer limited to sentences but extend to include discourse as
well. Expounded by Hughes and McCarthy (1998) making
a strong connection among form, function, and context. In the
initial phase of the development of the new subject of discourse
analysis, it was thought to be the analysis of language just
beyond sentence. However, the passage of time moved the
discussions from sentence based perspectives to grammar, a
discourse based perspective. This chapter highlights those
aspects of grammar that help the discourse analysis of a text.
2. Grammar from a Discourse Perspective Different linguistic
items such as ‘it’, ‘this’ and ‘that’ show different interpretation from
a discourse analysis point of view. For example, the use of the
word ‘it’ would mean a reference to a non-living thing already
mentioned before in a discourse. This grammatical term will be
very different and would mean something else compared to the
use of the word ‘he’ later in the chapter.
a. Grammar and Discourse from a Contextual
Perspective Hilles ( 2005) describes the process of
examining grammar and discourse from a
contextual perspective. The first stage in this process
is to make a decision as to what aspect of language
to investigate, in next stage, to look at as many
sources as possible from reference grammar and the
final stage is to test the hypotheses that have been
formed by the native speakers if they would make the
same choices that the research suggests they would
make.
b. Comparing Discourse and Sentence-Based
Grammars Huges and McCarthy (1998) make a
helpful comparison between Discourse and sentence-
based grammars. A discourse-based Grammar, makes
a strong connection between form, function and context
and also aims to place appropriateness.
c. Cataphoric Reference Cataphoric reference is the
reference to something that is mentioned later in the
discourse. It describes an item forward. For example,
in the sentence “I said this many times before and
let me repeat it again today” the meaning of ‘this’ and
‘it’ is not specified and it has to come later in the
chapter. This reference to something that has to come
yet, is called cataphoric reference.
d. Exophoric reference This type of reference looks
outside for the things it refers to. David Crystal’s
Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics defines it as
“A term used by some linguists to refer to the
process of a linguistic Unit referring directly to the
EXTRALINGUISTIC SITUATION accompanying an
utterance”.
 e. Homophoric Reference. Homophoric reference is
where the identity of the item can be retrieved by
reference to cultural knowledge, in general, rather than
the specific context of the text.
f. Comparative and Bridging Reference Comparative
reference “The identity of the presumed item is
retrieved not because, it has already been
mentioned (will be mentioned) in the text.
3. Lexical Cohesion It refers to the relationship in meaning
between lexical items in a text and the particular content words
and the relationship between them.
a. Repetition Repetition refers to words that are
repeated in a text. This includes words which are
inflected for tense or number and words which are
derived.
b. Synonymy. Synonymy refers to words which are
similar in meaning such as “date” and “go out”.
c. Antonymy. Antonymy describes opposite or
contrastive meaning such as “Shy” and “Forward”.
d. Hyponymy and Meronymy. A word with a particular
meaning that is included in the meaning of the more
general word for example dog and cat are the
hyponym of animal. Meronymy is where lexical items
are in a ‘whole to part’ relationship with each other.
4. Collocation. Collocation is the association between
vocabulary items which have a tendency to co-occur, such as
combinations of adjectives and nouns as in ‘table and chair’,
hair dye’ ‘real-estate agent’, the ‘right direction’ etc.
5. Conjunction. Conjunction refers to words, such as ‘and’
‘however’ that joins phrases, clauses or sections of a text in such
a way that they express a logical semantic relationship
between them.
6. Substitution and Ellipsis Substitute form is used
for another language item, phrase or group. For example “Try
reading this book. That one’s not very good.” Here, ‘one’s’ is
substitution for book. In ellipsis some essential element is omitted
from the text and can be recovered by referring to a preceding
element in the text.
7. Theme and Rheme Theme is the starting point of a
clause; that is, what the clause is ‘about’. The rest of the clause is
the rheme. Genre is a term in widespread use to indicate an
approach to communication which emphasizes social function
and purpose.
8. Thematic Progression The notion of theme and rheme
are also employed in the examination of thematic
progression, or method of development of texts.
a. Constant Theme One theme of thematic progression
is theme reiteration or constant theme.
b. Linear Theme Another common pattern of
thematic progression is when the subject matter in the
rheme of one clause is taken up in the theme of a
following clause.
c. Split Rheme Texts may, equally, include other kinds
of progression such as multiple-theme or ‘split rheme’
patterns. In multiple theme / split rheme progression, a
rheme may include a number of different pieces of
information, each of which may be taken up as the
theme in a number of subsequent clauses.
9. Focusing on Cohesion in Student Texts The work
of Halliday and Hasan (1976) influenced scholars and
researchers by the early 1980s. The two terms were distinguished
then. Before their work, both the words were used
interchangeably. Cohesion is now understood to be a textual
quality, attained through the use of grammatical and lexical
elements that enable readers to perceive semantic relationships
within and between sentences. Coherence refers to the overall
consistency of a discourse, its purpose, voice, content, style,
form, and so on--and is in part determined by readers'
perceptions of texts, dependent not only on linguistic and
contextual information in the texts but also on readers' abilities to
draw upon other kinds of knowledge, such as cultural and
intertextual knowledge.

CHAPTER - 7
CORPUSES APPROACHES TO DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

1. Central Idea of the Chapter Discourse analysis is basically

a research activity i.e. a micro level work on the text / spoken
discourse as a single whole conveying meanings collectively.
In corpus analysis the data is fed to computers and modern
gadgetry to get certain out puts based on the information
given in the discourse. Corpus studies can make important
contribution to our understanding of data / characteristic of
discourse. However, the completely computer based analysis can
make unnecessary generalizations which can lead to
unrealistic outcomes and judgments.
2. What is Corpus Corpus is the collection of data usually
stored and analyzed electronically. They look at the occurrence
and re occurrence of particular linguistic features to see how and
where they occur in the discourse.
3. Kinds of Corpora. There are following eight kinds of
corpora:-
a. General Corpora.
b. Specialized Corpora. .
c. The Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English.
d. The British Academic Spoken English.
e. The British Academic Written English Corpus.
f. The TOEFL Spoken and Written Academic Language
Corpus
4. Design and Construction of Corpora. Data for general
research is always available in abundance. However if answer
to a specific questions is required then we have to design our
own corpora to suit our requirements.
5. Issues to consider in constructing a Corpus. While
designing a Corpus many factors need to be considered, like the
size of corpus, form of expression like written or spoken
genre or in the form of monologue, dialogic and multi-party
etc.
a. Authenticity, representativeness and Validity of the
Corpus. In the construction of corpus authenticity,
representativeness and validity are also important
issues, that need due attention of the researchers.
b. Kinds of Texts to Include in the Corpus. According
to (Hunston2002), the kind of Corpus depends on
the availability of texts as well as the validity. He
means to say that, for how much time it will be available
for the purpose of updating.
c. Size of the Texts in the Corpus. It depends that,
some corpora aim for an even sample size of an
individual texts.
d. Sampling and representativeness of the Corpus.
The important issue in this regard to define what
 section of the society is being considered as the
population being researched on.
6. The Longman Spoken and Written English Corpus. The
LSWE (Longman Sspoken and Written English) corpus
represents four major discourse types, conversation, fiction,
news and academic prose.
7. Discourse Characteristics of Conversational English
Following are the major characteristics as noted by Longman
Grammar of Spoken and Written English:-
a. Non clausal units in conversational discourse
Conversational discourses make wide use of non-
clausal units i.e. utterances which do not contain an
explicit subject or verb.
b. Personal Pronouns & Ellipsis in Conversation
Wide usage of personal pronouns and ellipses
in conversational discourse. It is because of shared
context in which conversation take place.
c. Situational Ellipsis in Conversation Speakers at
times intentionally skip certain words as they take it
for granted that the listener understands the immediate
context.
d. Non-clausal Units as Elliptic Replies in
Conversation In the shared social situation in
which the conversation is taking place both
speakers know what is being talked about.
e. Repetition in Conversation In order to give added
emphasis to a point the spoken discourse has
abundant repetitions in conversation.
f. Lexical Bundles in Conversational Discourse
There is frequent use of lexical bundles in
 conversational discourse such as “in addition to”, “in
order to”, “it is going to be”, “If you want to”, etc.
8. Performance Phenomenon of Conversational Discourse
Following are the important points of Performance
Phenomenon of Conversational Discourse:-
a. Silent and Filled Pauses in Conversation The
individuals fear to lose their turn if they pause in the
end. To retain their turn the speakers tend to pause
in the middle giving the impression of speaking the very
next moment.
b. Utterance launchers and filled pauses In
conversational discourse people use utterance
launchers such “as well as”, “all right”, “okay”,
“fine”, “lets” etc. to take the turn and to fill pauses.
c. Attention Signals In Conversation Speakers often
use other persons’ names as an attention signal to
make it clear to whom they are speaking to.
d. Response Elicitors In Conversation A question
tag is an example of response elicitors in
conversation.
e. Non Clausal Items as Response Forms Uh, Huh,
Mum, Yeah, Okay, are the examples of non-clausal
items.
f. Extended Coordination Of Clauses In
conversational discourse one clausal unit is added to
another clausal unit with such items “as, and, but etc.”
9. Constructional principle of conversational discourse.
There are key principles which underlie the production of
conversational discourse, which are following. The principle of
keep talking, the principle of limited planning ahead and the
principle of qualification of what has been said.
 a. Prefaces and Conversation. In conversation, the main
part of speakers’ message is often preceded by a
preface including fronting of clausal units, noun
phrase, discourse markers, linking adverbs,
utterances launchers, interjection etc.
b. Tags in Conversation. Speakers add tags in many
ways to a grammatical unit in conversational discourse
by use of question tag at the end of a sentence to
reinforce what has just been said.
10. Corpus Studies of the Social Nature of Discourse.
As Swales found spoken discourse to be unpretentious in
terms of vocabulary choice while using the MICASE (Michigan
Corpus of Academic Spoken English) he also found that spoken
discourse avoided name dropping and the use of obscure
references. He concluded that from the language point of view
there are few barriers to cross - disciplinary oral
communication than there perhaps might be in written academic
communication.
11. Collocation and Corpus Studies Corpus studies are
also used to examine collocation in spoken and written discourses
for example Hyland and Tse’s 2004 study of dissertation
acknowledgement of collocation “special thanks”, Sincere
thanks” and “deep thanks”. They found that through this corpus
how the writers expressed gratitude in their conversation.
12. Criticism of Corpus Studies Corpus study has been
severely criticized by linguists saying that it is machine based
orientation of Corpus Studies that leads to atomized and
misleading investigation of language use. Another criticism is
that corpus studies do not take into account the contextual
aspects of text. However, these arguments have been negated
by Tribble saying that corpus studies enable contextual features
such as the social context of the text, communicative purpose
of the text, roles of the readers and writers of the text shared
culture etc.

CHAPTER NO 8
CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

Central Idea of Chapter The chapter “Critical Discourse

Analysis” explains that texts are no longer constructed just by
words but by combinations of other modalities such as pictures,
videos, and sound. The author argues that the use of these
modalities make the reader more of a ‘witness’ of the events.
The chapter gives background information on critical discourse
analysis. Paltridge outlines some steps for carrying out critical
discourse analysis and some of the limitations of such analysis.
1. Principles of Critical Discourse Analysis Paltridge
reproduces certain principles for critical discourses propounded
by Fairclough and Wodak which are as under:-
a. Social and political issues are constructed and
reflected in this course Critical discourse analyses
address social and political issues and examines
ways in which these are constructed and reflected in
the use of discourse.
b. Power relation are negotiated and performed
through discourse This principle suggests that it can
be looked at through an analysis of who controls
conversational interaction, who allows a person to
speak and how they do this.
c. Discourse reflects and reproduces social relation
Discourse not only reflects but also produces
social relation. Both are established and maintained
through the use of discourse.
d. Ideologies are produced and reflected in the use of
discourse Another principle of CDA is that
ideologies are produced and reflected in the use of
discourse. This includes ways of representing and
constructing society such as relation of power, relation
based on gender, class ethnicity etc.
2. Doing Critical Discourse Analysis CDA “includes not
only a description and interpretation of discourse in context,
but also offers an explanation of why and how discoursed
work” (Rogers). The analysis considers the framing of the text,
fore grounding and back grounding in the text. The analysis may
also consider who is doing what to whom i.e. agent - patient
relation in the discourse and who has the most authority and
power in the discourse.
3. Critical Discourse Analysis AND Genre. The
consideration of genre in achieving a particular discourse goal
is an important in approaching a critical perspective as
Flowerdew discusses the various genre that were involved in
constructing the view of Hong Kong as a world class city. These
included committee meeting, policy speeches, commission
report and inception report, public for a, exhibition,
consultation digest and videos.
4. Critical Discourse Analysis & Framing A further way of
doing CA is to examine the way in which the content of the text is
framed, Huckin looks at a newspaper report on
demonstration at nuclear test site in US in this way. The
Demo described in this report, framed as a confrontation between
the group of protesters and law officials. The report does not
discuss the issues that motivated the protest.
5. Critical Discourse Analysis And Multi-Modality Many
readers of the text are constructed not just by the words but by
the combination of words with other modalities such as pictures,
films or video images and sounds. The ways in which people
reacted to the events of 11 Sep. for example were very much
affected by the images they saw on TV.
6. Critical Discourse Analysis And Identity Gordon
discusses how a family in the US uses language to create and
socialize each other into a shared family political identity.
7. Critical Discourse Analysis And World Wide Web
Critical Discourse Analysis can be widened with the help of World
Wide Web. However the web material is not authentic and is often
misleading as it happens many times. Many a time the data given
on the web is wrong and sometimes it’s not even updated.
8. Criticism of Critical Discourse Analysis Critical
Discourse Analysis has been criticized vehemently maintaining
that it is very similar to earlier stylistic analysis, the area of literary
criticism. Some critics believe that Critical Discourse Analysis
does not always consider the role of reader in consumption and
interpretation of a text. Some of the critics want Critical Discourse
Analysis to be more demanding in tools of analysis.

CHAPTER NO 9
DOING DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
1. Central Idea of Chapter This chapter considers the issues
that need attention before embarking upon a discourse
analysis project. The discussion revolves around the question of
how to bring quality in a research project:-
1. Developing a Discourse Analysis Project. Many issues
need to be considered while planning and carrying out a
discourse analysis project. The most important is research
question. It is a key to any good research project. Cameron
2001 has suggested that one important characteristic of a
good research project is that it has a good idea. These criterion
include a well-focused idea about spoken and written discourse,
an understanding of how discourse analytic techniques can be
used to answer the research questions you are asking and so on.
2. Choosing a Research Topic Cameron says good ideas for
research “don’t just spring up from the researcher’s
imagination, they are suggested by previous research”.
3. Focusing a Research Topic Stevens and Asmar suggest,
wiser heads know that a good research project is, “marrow and
deep”.
4. Turning the Topic into a Research Question At
this stage of research it is tried to change the selected topic
into a research question. What she focuses that, we should
strike the balance between a value of the question and your
ability to develop a discourse analysis project you are capable of
carrying out i.e. the project you have the back ground,
expertise, resources and access to data that are needed for
the project.
5. Kinds of Discourse Analysis Projects. The author
underlines many kinds of discourse analysis projects which are as
under:
a. Replication of Previous discourse Studies.
b. Using Different Discourse Data but the same
Methodology.
c. Analyzing Existing Data From a Discourse Analysis
Perspective
d. Analyzing Discourse Data From A Different Perspective

e. Considering the Validity of a Previous Claim

f. Focusing on Unanalyzed Genres
g. Mixed-Methods Discourse Studies
6. Two Sample Discourse Studies The two projects that
follow are both examples of studies which combine
approaches to research in the analysis of structure:-
a. A Spoken Discourse Project Silence in the Japanese
students’ tutorial interaction in English:-
(1) Summary of the Study Nakane combines the
technical of conversation analysis with
ethnographic in order to get multiple perspectives
on the question she was investigating.
(2) Aim of the Study The aim of her study was to
examine the communication problem faced by
 the Japanese students during English medium
university classes. She discovered from her
research that we know very little about
happening in the main stream university class
room.
(3) Methodology of Study Conversation analysis of
the student interactions in the class room was
done along with conducting individual
interviews, focus group discussions and
administered questionnaires.
(4) Results of the Study The study disclosed that
silence were one of the major problems for
Japanese students and for teachers as well. She
reached the conclusion that the degree of silence
varied among the students.
(5) Commentary on the Study These multiple
data sources provided for a detailed and fine
grained analysis of the research questions.
(6) Further Research She wants to say that her
work on Japanese silence needs to be further
probed into and more data should be
accumulated
b. A Written Discourse Project The second study was ‘A
contrastive analysis of letters to the editor in
Chinese and English’:-
(1) Summary of the Study Wang’s contrastive study
of the letters to the editor in English and Chinese
is an example of a written discourse project
that drew on the frameworks of contrastive
rhetoric and systemic functional view of genre.
(2) Aim of the Study Wang’s study had several
research questions like in what ways are Chinese
 and English letters similar or different in terms of
their rhetorical structures to the editor.
(3) Methodology of Study Wang took ten letters to
the editor in Chinese and English published
newspapers. He looked at the schematic
structure of each of the two sets of data, the
rhetoric types represented between the clauses
and clauses complexes in two sets of texts.
(4) Results of the Study Wang found that
Chinese and English letters to the editor shared
some similarities at the level of schematic
structures but differ in cultural aspects and style
of writing.
(5) Commentary on the Study . By employing
approaches to analysis from systematic
functional genre studies and contrastive
rhetoric he was able to carry out a detailed
examination between similarities and differences
of letters to editor in English and Chinese at
different level of analysis.
(6) Further Research Wang says that there are
definitely limitation in his work on Chinese and
English data and so further data be collected to
improve the validity of the research.
7. Combining Discourse and other Research Perspectives
Paltridge wants to say that both the Nekene and the Wang
studies drew on a no of different Discourse Analysis and other
research perspective to find their answers to their research
questions and they strengthened their studies by combining
perspectives in the way that they have done. These techniques
of combining different perspectives and approaches to discourse
analysis are useful to solve the project under investigation that
might be provided with just one single perspective.
8. Evaluating a Discourse Analysis Project Each of the
studies described earlier suggest ways in which discourse
analysis can provide insights into social pedagogic and
linguistic questions in this chapter. Tailor considers three key
issues i.e. reliability, validity and replicability of the project that
had been carried out. Details are as under:-
a. Reliability It means the consistency of the result
obtained in the project. There are two of its kinds i.e.
internal reliability and external reliability.
b. Validity It refers to the extent to which a piece of
research actually investigates what it says it will
investigate and the truth or the accuracy of the
generalization being made by the researcher.
c. Replicability It refers to the quality of a discourse
project being repeated in research on the similar lines
as done earlier.
Conclusion
The material / book of Paltridge serves as a reference for
students who want to pursue their research / studies in discourse
analysis. It’s useful both for the new entrepreneurs and the
research scholars. It explains discourse analysis and different
approaches to discourse, society, pragmatics, genre, grammar
and corpus studies. An extensive glossary at the end and the
guidance as to further readings is a great help for the
researchers. For the advance level researchers the book proffers
new perspectives on approaches to discourse, along with an
entire chapter dedicated to critical discourse analysis.
Furthermore, the diversity of literature enables readers to discover
areas that were never interrogated upon before.