Key words: discourse analysis, approaches, business discourse, written discourse analysis, spoken discourse
analysis.
The crucial thing in the study of discourse analysis (DA) is to figure out what we mean by discourse
as a whole and the approaches and methods of analyzing it. For at least ten years now, ‘discourse’ has been
a fashionable term. Inscientific texts and debates, it is used indiscriminately, often withoutbeing defined. It
has taken on a vast array of meanings over the last century or so, ranging from natural language, speech,
and writing, to almost anything that acts as a carrier of signification, including social and political practic-
es, to discourse as an ontological horizon [1]. Here we see the importance of discourse as an object of the
study.
On one hand, discourse analysis is viewed as the study of language. Many scientists would define it
as a sub-field of linguistics, which is scientific study of language. If we consider DA from the latter point
of view, according toR.H.Jones, is the study of the ways sentences and utterances are put together to make
texts and interaction, and how those texts and interactions fit into our social world [2]. But DA is not just
the study of language. It is a way of looking at language that focuses on how people use it in real life to do
things such as joke or argue or persuade, or flirt, and to show that they are certain kinds of people or belong
to certain groups. This way of looking at language is based on four main assumptions:
- Ambiguity of language. What things mean is not absolutely clear. All communication involves
interpreting what other people mean and what they are trying to do;
- Language is always in the world. That is what language means is always a matter of where and
when it is used and what it is used to do;
- The way we use language is inseparable from who we are and the different social groups to
which we belong. We use language to display different kinds of social identities and to show that we
belong to different groups;
- Language is never used all by itself. It is always combined with other things such as our tone of
voice, facial expressions and gestures when we speak, and the fonts, layout and graphics we use in written
texts. What language means and what we can do with it is often a matter of how it is combined with these
other things [2].
So, we can easily understand some of the reasons whylearning how to analyze discourse might be use-
ful. The main reason is that we are all involved in discourse analysis all the time when we try to figure out
what people imply by what they say and when we try to express our multiple and complicated meanings to
them. DA is about studying processes that already take place beneath the surface of human’s consciousness
more explicit. But we cannot be safe from misunderstandings, offending people by saying the wrong thing,
|