Analysis of spoken discourse is sometimes called conversational analysis.
Some linguists use the term text linguisticsfor the study of written
discourse.
Another focus of discourse analysis is the discourse used in the classroom.
Such analyses can be useful in finding out about the effectiveness of teaching
methods and the types of teacher-student interactions.
see also speech eventdiscourse community n
a group of people involved in a particular disciplinary or professional area
(e.g. teachers, linguists, doctors, engineers) who have therefore developed
means and conventions for doing so. The type of discourse used by a dis-
course community is known as a genre. The concept of discourse com-
munity thus seeks to explain how particular rhetorical features of texts
express the values, purposes, and understandings of particular groups and
mark membership of such groups.
discourse competence n
see communicative competence
discourse completion test n
also DCT
a type of questionnaire that presents a sociolinguistic description of a
situation followed by part of a discourse designed to elicit a specific speech
act. The responses elicited can then be analyzed as speech act realizations
of the desired type. For example, a discourse completion test designed to
elicit some kind of apology, might produce responses such as:
I’m sorry.
I won’t do that again.
What can I do to fix the situation?
discourse marker n
a class of expressions consisting of words (however, still), phrases (as a
matter of fact) or clauses (to make myself clear) that serve to monitor
and organize ongoing discourse. Discourse markers serve a variety of
functions in spoken discourse, including indicating topic boundaries (so,
right), openings (well then), closure or pre-closure (so) as well as reflecting
the ongoing interaction between speaker and hearer (you know, you see,
I mean).
discourse structure n
another term for scheme
discourse structure