Posted: September 14th, 2017

analyse a discourses in 'Discourses and Variation' subject

analyse a discourses in ‘Discourses and Variation’ subject
Project description
Choose a discourse example to analyse (or two to compare)
• Analyse it (or them) with respect to
o Field / Ideational function: What is the subject matter and how is it expressed?
o Tenor / Interpersonal function: Who are the people involved (speaker, writer, dialogue participants, reader, addressee, ….) and how does this affect the discourse ‘as an exchange’?
o Mode / Textual function: What is the medium of this discourse and how is ‘textuality’ created?
• You can focus on any one of these – develop one perspective in much detail, and only refer to the others briefly
• or address all of them in equal depth
• You can also (or alternatively) draw on further methods discussed in the
• However, be clear about the method(s) you use, make sure to refer to appropriate sources – show that you know what you’re doing.
• Make sure to show precisely where in language the phenomena happen that you talk about. Be specific!

Any kind is suitable – you’re free to choose
o Do not use one of those provided by myself in lectures. Possible sources:
• A transcript of a real dialogue that you observe (contact me to discuss ethics),
• A scripted dialogue from a movie etc.,
• A fictive dialogue found in a novel, etc.
• A chat dialogue
• A newspaper article
• A short story
• A facebook post
• A transcript of a famous speech
o It can be of any length, but it should be complete (not an extract)
o Your analysis will be marked, not the choice of discourse example. Therefore, choose
one that you find interesting and worthwhile thinking and writing about.
• The discourse example must be included in your assignment o either (if it’s short) integrated in the essay
o or appended separately (outside the word count).
• Don’t forget to provide the source where you found the discourse example (in a footnote or in the References list)

Make sure to have a clear train of thought in your assignment
o It should have structure
o It should be accessible to the reader, rather than an abstract unconnected list of observations
• It should have a message & purpose, providing the framework for your analysis – such as:
• Ways to analyse discourse. From a variety of analysis perspectives, is there something that you find most insightful for your specific text? Why?
• Dialogue phenomena. What kinds of dialogue or textual phenomena does your example reveal, and which are not found in this particular example, but may occur in others?
• Text types and genres. In which ways is your example typical for its genre? What are the features of this text type, in general? How could this be verified?
• Sociolinguistic perspective. In what ways does your example reveal the sociolinguistic background of the dialogue participants? What would change if a sociolinguistic factor (e.g., age, gender, social class, power relationships, ethnical or cultural background) changes?
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