Approaches to Discourse

There are six dominant approaches to discourse analysis such as speech act theory, pragmatics, ethnomethodology, interactional sociolinguistics, ethnography of communication, and variation theory.

Speech Act Theory is a logico-philosophic perspective on conversational organization focusing on interpretation rather than the production of utterances in discourse. From the basic belief that language is used to perform actions. Every utterance can be analyzed as the realization of the speaker’s intent (illocutionary force) to achieve a particular purpose. Neither Austin nor Searle were concerned with the analysis of continuous discourse. (Austin 1955, Searle 1969)

Principal problems: the lack of a one-to-one match up between discourse function (IF) and the grammatical form. Systemic name : speech function (SF) – central issue in discourse structure.

Interactional Sociolinguistis grows out of the work of anthropologists. Centrally concerned with the importance of context in the production and interpretation of discourse. Units of analysis: grammatical and prosodic features in interactions. Gumperz demonstrated that interactants from different socio-cultural backgrounds may “hear” and understand discourse differently according to their interpretation contextualisation cues in discourse. E.g. intonation contours, ‘speaking for another’, alignment, gender. (Gumperz 1982, Goffman 1959-1981)

Schiffrin (1987): focused on quantitative interactive sociolinguistic analysis, esp. discourse markers (defined as ‘sequentially dependent elements which bracket units of talk). Schiffrin’s unit of analysis: turn.

Ethnography of Communication concerned with understanding the social context of linguistic interactions: ‘who says what to whom, when, where. Why, and how’. Prime unit of analysis: speech event. Definition: ‘The speech event is to what analysis of verbal interaction what the sentence is to grammar … It represents an extension in the size of the basic analytical unit from the single utterance to stretches of utterances, as well as a shift in focus from … text to … interaction’. (Dell Hymes (1972b, 1974)

Problem: Lack of explicitness in Hymes’ account on the relationship between genre and other components of the speaking grid and their expression in language. The ethnographic framework has led to broader notions of communicative competence.

Pragmatics formulates conversational behaviour in terms of general “principles” rather than rules. At the base of pragmatic approach is to conversation analysis is  Gricean’s co-operative principle (CP). This principle seeks to account for not only how participants decide what to DO next in conversation, but also how interlocutors go about interpreting what the previous speaker has just done. This principle is the broken down into specific maxims: Quantity (say only as much as necessary), Quality (try to make your contribution one that is true), Relation (be relevant), and manner (be brief and avoid ambiguity). (Grice 1975, Leech 1983, Levinson 1983)

Significant problem: it implies that conversations occur co-operatively, between equals where power is equally distributed etc.

Conversation Analysis (CA), Garfinkel (sociologist) concern: to understand how social members make sense of everyday life. Sack, Schegloff, Jefferson (1973)tried to explain how conversation can happen at all. CA is a branch of ethnomethodology. Two grossly apparent facts: a) only one person speaks at a time, and b) speakers change recurs. Thus conversation is a ‘turn taking’ activity. Speakers recognize points of potential speekar change – turn constructional unit (TCU). (Harold Garfinkel 1960s-1970s)

Major problems: a) lack of systematicity- thus quantitative analysis is impossible; 2) limited I its ability to deal comprehensively with complete, sustained interactions; 3) though offers a powerful interpretation of conversation as dynamic interactive achievement, it is unable to say just what kind of achievement it is.

Variation Analysis, L & W argue that fundamental narrative structures are evident in spoken narratives of personal experience. The overall structure of fully formed narrative of personal experience involves six stages: 1) Abstract, 2) Orientation, 3) Complication, 4) Evaluation, 5) Resolution, 6) Coda where 1) and 6) are optional. Strength: its clarity and applicability. (Labov 1972a, Labov and Waletzky1967)

Problems: data was obtained from interviews. Variationists’ approach to discourse stems from quantitative of linguistic change and variation. Although typically focused on social and linguistic constraints on semantically equivalent variants, the approach has also been extended to texts.

Discourse Analysis

WHAT IS DISCOURSE ANALYSIS?

Discourse analysis is a qualitative method that has been adopted and developed by social constructionists. Although discourse analysis can and is used by a handful of cognitive psychologists, it is based on a view that is largely anti-scientific, though not anti-research. Discourse analysis is a way of understanding social interactions. The researcher acknowledges their own bias and position on the issue, known as reflexivity. The aims of research vary: The aim of one investigator might be to understand power relationships in society in order to bring about change; another may be interested in appearance and how it can shape identify; and another investigator may be interested in an interaction or conversation simply for its own sake (in terms of not knowing what the study might uncover).

THE APPLICATION OF DISCOURSE ANALYSIS IN LANGUAGE TEACHING AND LEARNING

1. Application of discourse analysis to teaching grammar

There are a number of questions posed by discourse analysts with reference to grammar and grammar teaching. In particular, they are interested in its significance for producing comprehensible communicative products, realization of grammar items in different languages, their frequency of occurrence in speech and writing which is to enable teaching more natural usage of the target language, as well as learners' native tongue (McCarthy 1991:47).

2. Application of discourse analysis to teaching vocabulary

From studies conducted by discourse analysts emerged an important idea of lexical chains present in all consistent texts. Such a chain is thought to be a series of related words which, referring to the same thing, contribute to the unity of a communicative product and make its perception relatively easy. Additionally, they provide a semantic context which is useful for understanding, or inferring the meaning of words, notions and sentences. Links of a chain are not usually limited to one sentence, as they may connect pairs of words that are next to one another, as well as stretch to several sentences or a whole text. The relation of words in a given sequence might be that of reiteration or collocation, however, analyst are reluctant to denote collocation as a fully reliable element of lexical cohesion as it refers only to the likelihood of occurrence of some lexical items. Nevertheless, it is undeniably helpful to know collocations as they might assist in understanding of communicative products and producing native-like discourse (McCarthy 1991:65).

One other significant contribution made by discourse analysts for the use of vocabulary is noticing the omnipresence and miscellaneous manners of expressing modality. Contrary to popular belief that it is conveyed mainly by use of modal verbs it has been proved that in natural discourse it is even more frequently communicated by words and phrases which may not be included in the category of modal verbs, yet, carry modal meaning. Lexical items of modality inform the participant of discourse not only about the attitude of the author to the subject matter in question (phrases such as I believe, think, assume), but they also give information about commitment, assertion, tentativeness (McCarthy 1991:85).

Discourse analysts maintain that knowledge of vocabulary-connected discourse devices supports language learning in diverse manners. Firstly, it ought to bring students to organize new items of vocabulary into groups with common context of use to make them realize how the meaning of a certain word might change with circumstances of its use or co-text. Moreover, it should also improve learners' abilities to choose the appropriate synonym, collocation or hyponym (McCarthy 1991:71).

3. Application of discourse analysis to teaching text interpretation

Interpretation of a written text in discourse studies might be defined as the act of grasping the meaning that the communicative product is to convey. It is important to emphasize that clear understanding of writing is reliant on not only what the author put in it, but also on what a reader brings to this process. McCarthy (1991) points out that reading is an exacting action which involves recipient's knowledge of the world, experience, ability to infer possible aims of discourse and evaluate the reception of the text.

Communicative Competence

           In the past decade much research related to communicative competence and communicative language use has emerged in various fields, research which now allows us to develop a model with more detailed content specifications than was possible in the early 1980s. The need for an updated and explicit description of language teaching areas generated with reference to a detailed model of communicative competence. Celce-Murcia and Zoltan Dornyei describe two existing models of communicative competence (the model proposed by Canale & Swain model and the Bachman & Palmer model) and then propose their own pedagogically motivated construct which includes five components: discourse competence, linguistic competence, actional competence, sociocultural competence, and strategic competence.

           Discourse competence is explained the selection, sequencing, and arrangement of words, structures, sentences and utterances to achieve a unified spoken or written text. Linguistic competence comprises the basic elements of communication: the sentence patterns and types, the constituent structure, the morphological inflections, and the lexical resources, as well as the phonological and orthographic systems needed to realize communication as speech or writing. Actional competence is defined as competence in conveying and understanding communicative intent, that is, matching actional intent with linguistic form based on the knowledge of an inventory of verbal schemata that carry illocutionary force. Sociocultural competence refers to the speaker's knowledge of how to express messages appropriately within the overall social and cultural context of communication, in accordance with the pragmatic factors related to variation in language use. Strategic competence examined as knowledge of communication strategies and how to use them.

         It is motivated by practical considerations reflecting the interests in language teaching, language analysis, and teacher training. The goal therefore has been to organize the knowledge available about language use in a way that is consumable for classroom practice. The purposes of any model of this sort is to serve as an elaborated "checklist" that practitioners can refer to and to draw together a wide range of issues in an attempt to synthesize them and form a basis for further research. However this model also has inconsistencies and limitations that raise several questions.  Many questions concern where lexis is to be placed in a model of communicative competence and how important the role of formulaic language is and even though the summary of communication strategies in this model is broader than some previous taxonomies, the restricting of strategic competence to communication strategies only is likely to be considered too narrow an interpretation of strategic competence. On the other way, the current conceptualization of sociocultural competence might still be too broad and the past tendency to redefine some of the sub-components of sociolinguistic or sociocultural competence as independent competencies in their own right may well continue.

          Moreover, the sub-components of the five competencies will need to be further elaborated and the extent of their teach ability assessed in order to make them optimally relevant to language pedagogy. The components contain a mixture of categories in their present form such as knowledge, rules, skills, abilities, conditions, conventions, maxims, strategies, lexical items, etc. These will have to be more systematically specified, based on a psycholinguistic model of language processing. The application of any theoretical model of communicative competence is relative rather than absolute. Nonetheless, the problems encountered and the modifications that had to make, the communicative competence framework provided an integrated and principled basis for designing a language program.

History of Language Teaching

Language teaching is a field in which fads and heroes have come and gone in a manner fairly consistent with the kinds of changes that occur in youth culture. Prior to the twentieth century, language teaching methodology vacillated between two types of approaches: getting learners to use language versus getting learners to analyze a language. Both the classical Greek and medieval Latin emphasized on teaching people to use foreign language. They were used as lingua francas all over Europe. During the renaissance, the formal study of the grammar of Greek and Latin became popular through the mass production of printing books.

Since the European venaculars had grown in prestige and utulity people in one country begen to learn language of another country. At the time, the most famous teacher and methodologist was Johann Amos Comenius that used some tecniques: use imitation instead of rules to teach, have student repeat, use limited vocabulary initially, help student practice reading and speaking, and teach through picture to make it meaningful.

By the beginning of nineteenth century, the analyrical grammar-translation approach not only for teaching Latin but also for modern languages. However, by the end of nineteenth century the direct method had begun to function as a viable alternative to Grammar-Translation. It is published by Francois Gouin in 1880.

The Direct Method beecame very popular in France and Germany. In 1886, the international Phonetic Assoiation was established and developed the International Phonetics alphabet (IPA).

Quite apart from the Reform movement in Europe, Emile de sauze implemented the Direct method inthe public school in Cleveland, Ohio. The endeavor was not too successful since there were too few foreign language teacher in America. Later the Modern Language Association of America endorsed the Reading approach with emphasis on some of great works of literature and philosophy. It held sway in U.S.A until the late 1930s and early 1940s. When World War II broke out the U.S. military hired linguists to help teah languages and develop material: the audiolingual approach (Fries 1945).

Nine Twentieth-Century Approaches to Language Teaching. There are nine approaches that the writer lists in this chapter: Grammar-Translation, Direct, Reading, Audiolingualism, Oral-Situational, Cognitive, Affective-Humanistic, Comprehension-Based and Communicative.

In Language Teaching Approaches ESL/EFL Teachers shall learn more about the various approaches and methods available and find out which practices have proved successful.

Topic in Applied Linguistics

Assignment 1

1. Obtain the definition of Topics in Applied Linguistics from the different experts/authors.

Answer:

• a. The American Association of Applied Linguistics ‘promote principled approaches to language-related concerns’ (AAAL)
• AL is the point at which all the branches of linguistics intersect with other disciplines.’ (Robert Kaplan, 1980)
• The learning and teaching of foreign languages constitutes, in our opinion, the most important area within the extensive field of applied linguistics. (Van Els, et al, 1984)
• Traditionally, the primary concern of Applied Linguistics has been second language acquisition theory, second language pedagogy and the interface between the two´ (Norbert Schmitt, 2002)
• Applied Linguistics itself may be seen as an autonomous, problem-solving disciple, concerned broadly with language (mainly, but not exclusively second language) education and language problems in society’ (Steve McDonough, 2002)
• The branch of linguistics concerned with practical applications of language studies, with particular emphasis on the communicative function of language, and including such professional practices as lexicography, terminology, general or technical translation, language teaching (general or specialized language, mother tongue or second language), writing, interpretation, and computer processing of language. (BTB Translation Bureau Canada)
• ‘The Encyclopedic Dictionary of Applied Linguistics is, as its subtitle states, A Handbook for Language Teaching’ (Keith Johnson & Helen Johnson, 1998)
• Applied linguistics is an interdisciplinary field of research and practice dealing with practical problems of language and communication that can be identified, analysed or solved by applying available theories, methods or results of Linguisticsor by developing new theoretical and methodological frameworks in linguistics to work on these problems’ (AILA International Association of Applied Linguistics)
• An amalgam of research interests. (David Block, 2009)
• Applied Linguistics (AL) provides the theoretical and descriptive foundations for the investigation and solution of language-related problems, especially those of language education (first-language, second-language and foreign-language teaching and learning), but also problems of translation and interpretation, lexicography, forensic linguistics and (perhaps) clinical linguistics. (Dick Hudson’s online survey of  BAAL British Association of Applied Linguistics members)

2. Find the similiraties and differences of three definitions.

• Traditionally, the primary concern of Applied Linguistics has been second language acquisition theory, second language pedagogy and the interface between the two´ (Norbert Schmitt, 2002) 
• Applied Linguistics itself may be seen as an autonomous, problem-solving disciple, concerned broadly with language (mainly, but not exclusively second language) education and language problems in society’ (Steve McDonough, 2002)
• The branch of linguistics concerned with practical applications of language studies, with particular emphasis on the communicative function of language, and including such professional practices as lexicography, terminology, general or technical translation, language teaching (general or specialized language, mother tongue or second language), writing, interpretation, and computer processing of language. (BTB Translation Bureau Canada)

The similarity of the three definitions is the authors agreed that applied linguistics is the study about language.

The difference of the three definitions is each author has the difference point of view about applied linguistics. One said that applied linguistics concerns the second language acquisition, the other thaught that apllied linguistics is not always about second laguage acquisition and the last author agrred that applied linguistics is the study about the first and second language acquisition.

3. Describes the scope of Applied Linguistics.

Scope of linguistics:

a. Language and Teaching:

Approaches & Methods, it includes:

• Grammar Translation Method (GTM) is the classes are conducted in the mother tongue.
• The Series Method are exposed to a series of connected sentences.
• The Direct Method is the method depends on the oral interaction using the FL inside the classroom.
• The Audio-lingual Method (ALM) is based on the idea of over-learning and repetition.
• Cognitive Code Learning Method (CCL) is a more student-oriented method as it focuses on his/her mentality and the complicated processes that take place as learning progresses.
• The Designer Methods such as Communicative Language Learning (CLL) which focuses on  It focuses on establishing interpersonalrelationships between Ls in order to make the classroom a family-like environmen, Suggestopedia which based on the idea that the human mind can learn anything if a suitable atmosphere is provided, Silent Way which  It focuses on the learners independence, The Total Physical Response (TPR) which based in actions learning new language, The Natural Approach which focuses on how humans learn their first language unintentionally.
• Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) is the method which focuses on helping learners to communicate in foreign language by improving their communicative competence. 

b. Language and society (sociolinguistics)

c. Language and Education/Learning:

• First-language education is the study when child studied their home language.
• Additional language education as the study of second language and foreign language.
• Clinical linguistic is the study of treatment of speech and communication impairments.
• Language testing is the assesment and evaluation of language achivement and proficiency.

d. Language, Work and Law:

• Workplace communication is the study of language is used in the workplace.
• Language planning is making of decission.
• Forensic linguistic is the deployment of language evidence in crimnal and other legal investigation.

e. Language, Information and Effect:

• Literary stylistic is the study of the relationship between linguistic choices and effects in literature.
• Critical discourse analysis is the study of the relationship between linguistic choices and  effects  in persuasive uses of language.
• Translation and intepretation is the formulation of principles underlying the perceive equivalence between a strecth  of language and its translation.
• Information design is the agreement and presentation of written language.
• Lexicography is the compelling of both  monolingual and bilingual dictionaries and also other language references.

4. Mention the source for your answer 1 and 3.

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/vivian.c/AppliedLinguistics/AppLingDefining.htm

http://www.scribd.com/doc/58883443/Applied-Linguistics-1-the-Scope-of-Applied-Linguistics