Discourse Analysis—What Speakers Do in Conversation

The professor illustrates four terms about discourse. The first one is reframing, which is re-interpreting the meaning of first sentence at a specific text.. For example, for the same passage, the consequence on the reader is different when they read it as a news from they consider it as a novel. Second, turn-taking is talking about that speakers has a system to determine when one person's turn is over and the next person's turn begins. However, for diverse person, the signal is different, and sometimes it would cause inadvertently interrupt or feel interrupted. And the similar situations are frequently occurs in the conversation between person with diverse cultural background. The third one is discourse makers, which is the little words like 'well', 'oh', 'but', and 'and' that break our speech up into parts and show the relation among parts. Although these words has general meaning, however person may have their specific way to use these words. And recognize this words’ function is important. The last is speech act analysis ask to identify the utterance’s function. Obviously, for individuals from different culture, sometimes, it is difficult to understand the purpose of others’ words, that is where the speech act analysis works.

Discourse Analysis

Discourse analysis represents the analysis of the sentence structure. Experts in this field examine larger structures so called chunks of language in order to grasp how they affect on the meaning of the sentence.
Frame analysis requires the setting of the discourse i.e. a broader context- its topic, genre, scene. What is more conversation has it clear structure and systems for determiningthe exchange of turns or "floors"in a conversation. Linguistic means to signal the change of turns are: intonation, pausing and phrasing.
From a listener is also expected to actively participate by nodding or giving feedback either verbaly or through eye contact.
Little words such as 'well', 'oh', 'but' and 'and' are called 'discourse markers' and they serve to divide our speech as well as to mark the relation of its parts. 'Oh' for example means that something surprised the hearer or he/she remembered something.
Speech acts analysis is focused on the effect of what is being said. In this sense the discourse analysts analyse what is understood by the listener. Here it is very important to have in mind the cultural differences, it may happen that what is in one country seen as compliment in another cultural context can be seen as a request.