¶ … language-in-use, whether it is presented as text or speech. The meaning of the term is very heterogeneous and covers more than one approach to this subject. These approaches are very different with regard to their focus, purpose and techniques.
As far as focus is concerned, discourse analysis may concentrate on the conclusions of the discourse itself or on the social processes and structure in accordance to which the discourse is constructed. Systemic linguistics approaches are appropriate for the first category, as there is always a very well defined boundary between language and society, with emphasis on the former. On the other hand, the common discourse analysis in sociology and social psychology has a broader focus and usually rejects the artificial distinction between discursive and social actions -- since "all discourse is action and all action is discursive."
The differences in purpose are not specific to discourse analysis but to social sciences in general, as researchers try to determine whether the exclusive goal is to produce knowledge or to concentrate on a social or political objective. Conversation Analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis are very different in this respect, as the former uses a strict neutral approach, while the latter supports the idea that serving political purposes cannot be avoided.
Discourse analysis may be applied upon a text in order to draw conclusions about the way in which the production and effects of the texts integrate themselves and further influence the social context to which they belong. In other occasions, discourse analysis is used to develop theories on the different types of discursive mechanisms in general. However, there is not always a clear distinction between these two approaches and it often seems that they are applied simultaneously. Critical Discourse Analysis studies the use of discursive devices for serving ideological purposes, while Conversation Analysis provides a theoretical foundation for abstract types of discursive strategy.
One very debated issue in the field of discourse analysis is how to relate the text to the context; various versions of discourse analysis have different study objects -- depending on the discourse feature on which they concentrate -- and different technical approaches. One major difference is the degree to which linguistic resources are employed: one problem is to determine the level at which analysis operates -- word, sentence, paragraph, the entire text etc. Another problem concerns the form of analysis employed. The particular type of analysis used may be modeled on a version of linguistics analysis. For instance "linguistic organization above the level of the sentence" was used a study object for J. McH Sinclair's and R.M. Coulthard's 1975 work on classroom discourse.
Conversational Analysis (CA) focuses on the use on one particular word and does not base its conclusion on linguistic research. CA is preoccupied with the way in which language is used in context and not on its structure. A very different approach was provided by twentieth century linguistics analysis, which has made a clear distinction between the structure and the actual use of language (or language and speech, linguistics competence and performance). Linguistic approaches, including systemic linguistics, try to find a relation between structure and function of speech, therefore reconciling language and its use.
Conversational Analysis concentrates on the way in which language is used in context, rather than on its structure. However, a very different approach is used in the works of linguists, who also use the term "discourse analysis." For instance, Zellig S. Harris states than the phenomenon of discourse analysis may be approached from two angles, as a result of the issues that lead to its study: one is the fact that descriptive linguistics usually works with one sentence at a time, which does not suit the needs of a more complex text analysis. The second issue at hand is the correlation of language and culture (briefly defined as the total amount of material and spiritual achievements of the population from a certain territory).
The first problem is caused by the simple and ineluctable fact that sentences are the normal "stretch" of words with meaning - in almost all languages, including English. Therefore, descriptive linguistics links any element in a stretch of speech...
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