Approaches to Discourse: Language as Social Interaction

This is a guide to the various frameworks, concepts, and methods available for the analysis of discourse within linguistics. It compares six dominant approaches to discourse analysis: speech act theory, pragmatics, ethnomethodology, interactional sociolinguistics, ethnography of communication, and variation theory.

The author not only considers each approach from several standpoints but she also illustrates them through extensive applications to a variety of concrete social and linguistic problems facing discourse analysts.

Preface and Acknowledgments.

Part I: The Scope of Discourse Analysis.

1. Overview.

2. Definitions of Discourse.

Part II: Approaches to Discourse Analysis.

3. Speech Act Theory.

4. Interactional Sociolinguists.

5. The Ethnography of Communication.

6. Pragmatics.

7. Conversation Analysis.

8. Variation Analysis.

Part III: Conclusion.

9. Structure and Function.

10. Text and Context.

11. Discourse and Communication.

12. Conclusion: Language as Social Interaction.

Appendix 1: Collecting Data.

Appendix 2: Transcription Conventions.

Appendix 3: Sample Data.

Bibliography.

Index

Deborah Schiffrin is Associate Professor of Linguistics at Georgetown University. She is author of Discourse Markers (1987).

"Deborah Schiffrin has written a rigorous yet accessible description and comparison of various approaches to the analysis of discourse." Pragmatics