2. Sem. 3, Roll no. 8.
Paper. 12, English Language
Teaching.
Department of English,
MK Bhavnagar University.
3. (dĭs′kôrs′)n.1. Verbal expression in speech or
writing: political discourse.
2. Verbal exchange or conversation: listened
to their discourse on foreign policy.
3. A formal, lengthy treatment of a subject,
either written or spoken.
4. The process or power of reasoning.
-- dictionary.
4. Study of DISCOURSE is the study of language
independently of the notion of sentence.
This usually involves studying longer texts
but, above all, it involves examining the
relationship between a text and the stuation
in which it occurs.
For example, even a short notice saying
“WON’T COME” can be taken as DISCOURSE.
5. Who have given the notice and who is
addressed in notice.
For example, the person who is in authority
summons to the public. That might be like
this – do not smoke, drive slow. Etc.
How do we know what it means?
For example, there is a signboard out of the
office of travel agency – ‘No seats left’. So it
is not a text, or anything in grammatical
form. But still we tend to get the meaning
based on where is it.
6. Analyst focuses on questions like ‘who utters
the words’, ‘where’, ‘when’, ‘from whom’
the words have come from.
For this reason, they work with utterances
(i.e. Sequences of words written or spoken in
specific context) rather than sentences
(sequences of words conforming, or not, to
the rules of grammar for the construction of
phrases, clauses etc.)
7. Discourse analysts studies
1. speech analysis, (discourse analysis)
2. text analysis.
There is no single difference between speech
and writing. (Chafe 1982)
Useful way to convince the differences to see
them as a scales along which individual texts
can be plotted.
8. The setting : typically large,
teacher fronted classes
The institutional roles : teacher as
knower and source of input, as
evaluator of pupil response and as
controller of topics.
The goals : transmission of
knowledge trough question and
answer sessions.
-- from tape recorded mother
tongue school classrooms.
Observed behavioural pattern
between student and teacher.
9. It take the line that
speech and writing need
to be considered in their
separate manifestations,
and that separating them
rises important questions
for issues of description.
But what unites written
and spoken language is
that both media of
communications can be
studied in social contexts,
through real texts.
