Discourse Analysis Of Language

‘Discourse’ is a difficult and vague concept to define in one strict way because different fields define discourse based on their own different theoretical and disciplinary viewpoints (Baxter, 2010; 2003; Cameron, 2001; Mayr, 2008; 2000; Fairclough, 1992). According to Mills (1997), the concept of discourse is not stable even within a particular discipline. Hence, the definition of discourse depends up on the context in which the term is being used and the meanings that have accrued to it (ibid.).

However, discourse is usually defined in two ways based on different assumptions about the nature of language (Mayr, 2008; 2000; Cameron, 2001) though some like Baxter (2010) define it in three ways. The first definition of discourse comes from

CDA regards discourse as a ‘form of social practice’ (Baxter, 2010; Mullany, 2007; Mayr, 2008; 2000; Ciapriani, 2002). To put it another way, language highly constructs and performs meaning to provide our sense of social reality more than it contains or reflects meaning. Therefore, language serves individuals as a crucial device to present themselves in various ways and thereby to construct multiple identities for themselves as required by role, position, relationship and context (Baxter, 2010). Baxter further elaborates that this view of discourse regards language as constitutive of individual identities in two senses: one of which is to provide people a set of resources to have ‘agency’ or authority to perform leadership, and the second one is to play an important part within broader institutional practices or discourses. These discourses are ways of combining and integrating language, actions, interactions, ways of thinking, believing, valuing, speaking, talking and writing about others, and using various symbols, tools, and objects to enact a particular sort of socially recognizable identity (Baxter, 2010; Gee,

As a result, texts can be regarded as a discursive “unit” and a material manifestation of discourse (ibid.). Texts may have a variety of forms such as written texts, spoken words, pictures, symbols, artifacts, and so on. In relation to the linguistic analysis of texts in discourse, the notion of discourse and discourse analysis is three-dimensional in the sense that analysis of discourse as text, as discourse practice, and as social practice (Fairclough, 1992) so as to stress that text analysis should not be done in isolation. Any discursive ‘event’ (i.e. any instance of discourse) is at the same time a piece of text, an instance of discursive practice, and an instance of social practice. The ‘text’ dimension is the language analysis of texts. The ‘discursive practice’ dimension, like ‘interaction’ in the ‘text-and-interaction’ view of discourse, specifies the nature of the processes of text production and interpretation, for instance, which types of discourse are drawn upon and how they are combined. The ‘social practice’ dimension is concerned with issues in social analysis like the institutional and organizational circumstances of the discursive event and how that shapes the nature of the discursive practice, and the constructive effects of discourse