Discourse Analysis

Book excerpt: Revised and updated, this third edition of Barbara Johnstone’s Discourse Analysis encourages students to think about discourse analysis as an open-ended set of techniques. Exploring a variety of approaches, including critical discourse analysis, conversation analysis, interactional and variationist sociolinguistics, ethnography, corpus linguistics, social semiotics, and other qualitative and quantitative methods, the book balances its comprehensive coverage with extensive practical examples, making it the ideal introductory text for students new to the subject. This new edition reflects the increased importance within the field of new media discourse, multi-modal discourse and the analysis of large corpora of discourse data. Updated material expands the discussion of stancetaking, whilst new material addresses recontextualization, precontextualization, and language and the body. Pedagogical features have been refreshed, including discussion questions, exercises, and ideas for small research projects, with suggested supplementary readings at the end of each chapter to encourage further discovery. Chapters in this book are self-contained, so they can be handled in any order Suggested supplementary readings are featured at the end of every chapter Book is written specifically for a non-specialist, interdisciplinary audience Examples of computer-aided corpus analysis (reflecting the improvements made to theories and tools) supplement every chapter Discussion questions and ideas for small research projects are interspersed throughout The combination of breadth of coverage, practical examples, and student-friendly pedagogical features ensures Discourse Analysis remains the ideal textbook for students taking their first course in linguistic approaches to discourse.