Discourse Analysis

By George Yule, Gillian D. Brown, Gillian Brown George Yule

Book Overview

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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0521284759
• ISBN13: 9780521284752
• Release Date: August 1983
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Length: 302 Pages
• Weight: 1.07 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.9" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Well done work

This review pertains to the 2004 reprint edition. Aside from the lousy type in the book (an old mimeograph machine could have made clearer print than whoever reprinted this edition), the content is excellent. Though originally copyrighted in 1983, the content is still relevant. The portrayal of DA is balanced, taking into account a wide array of research. The authors have done their readers a service in several ways: (1) the book is a good resource of DA terminology and concepts; (2) they look at the research critically, presenting pros and cons, and where appropriate, provide their own alternative theories; (3) they write in a manner that is surprisingly engaging and fairly easy to follow; (4) the data from which they glean examples are from real world discourse (if contrived, they tell the reader); (5) they provide a solid bibliography for anyone doing work in DA. I recommend this book.