Introduction: In the words of brian paltridge discourse analysis focuses on knowledge about languages beyond the word, clause,

phrase and sentence that is needed for successful communication. It looks at patterns of language across texts and considers the relationship between language and the social and cultural connecting which it is used. Discourse analysis also considers the way that the use of language presents different view of the word and different understanding. It examines how the use of language is influenced by the relationship between participants as well as the effects the usage of language upon social identities and relations. It also considers how views of the world are identified, are constructed through the use of discourse. Discourse analysis examines both spoken and written texts. The study of the ways in which language is used in texts and contexts. Developed in the 1970s, discourse analysis "concerns itself with the use of language in a running discourse, continued over a number of sentences, and involving the interaction of speaker (orwriter) and auditor (or reader) in a specific situational context, and within a framework of social and cultural conventions" (M.H. Abrams and G.G. Harpham, 2005).

The term discourse analysis is very ambiguous. I will use it in this book to refer mainly to the linguistic analysis of naturally occurring connected speech or written discourse. Roughly speaking, it refers to attempts to study the organisation of language above the sentence or above the clause, and therefore to study larger linguistic units, such as conversational exchanges or written texts. It follows that discourse analysis is also concerned with language use in social contexts, and in particular with interaction or dialogue between speakers.(slembrouck 2003). "[Discourse analysis] is not only about method; it is also a perspective on the nature of language and its relationship to the central issues of the social sciences. More specifically, we see discourse analysis as a related collection of approaches to discourse, approaches that entail not only practices of data collection and analysis, but also a set of metatheoretical and theoretical assumptions and a body of research claims and studies." (Linda Wood and Rolf Kroger, Doing Discourse Analysis. Sage, 2000)
in the search, one quickly finds out that discourse analysis is not just one approach, but a series of interdisciplinary approaches that can be used to explore many different social domains in many different type of studies.

Historical review: Discourse analysis is both an old and a new discipline. Its origins can be traced back to the study of language, public speech, and literature more than 2000 years ago. One major historical source is undoubtedly classical rhetoric, the art of good speaking. Whereas the grammatica, the historical antecedent of linguistics, was concerned with the normative rules of correct language use, its sister discipline of rhetorica dealt with the precepts for the planning, organization, specific operations, and per- formance of public speech in political and legal settings. Its crucial concern, therefore, was persuasive effectiveness. In this sense, classical rhetoric both anticipates contemporary stylistics and

structural analyses of discourse and contains intuitive cognitive and social psychological notions about memory organization and attitude change in communicative contexts. After some important revivals in the Middle Ages and the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, however, rhetoric lost much of its importance in the curricula of schools and in academic research. The emergence of historical and comparative linguistics at the beginning of the nineteenth century and the birth of structural analysis of language at the beginning of the twentieth century replaced rhetoric as the primary discipline of the humanities. Fragments of rhetoric survived only in school textbooks of speech and communication, on one hand, and in stylistics or the study of literary language, on the other.(hugh trappez lomax,2008) According to micheal macarthy discourse is concerned with the study of relationship between language and the context in which it is used. It grew out of work in different disciplines in the 1960s and early 1970s, including linguistics, semiotics, psychology, anthropology and sociology. Discourse analysis study language in use: written texts of all kinds, and spoken data, from conversation to highly institutionzed forms of talk. Brown and yule (1983) stated that the analysis of discourse is, necessarily, the analysis of language in use. As such, it can not be restricted to the description of linguistic form independent of the purpose of funcions which those forms are designed to serve in human affairs. Thus discourse analysis is focused on investigating what language is used for

References:

-Paltridge, B. 2007. Discourse Analysis: An Introduction. Bloomsbury Academic -Johnstone, B. 2008. Discourse analysis. 2nd edition. Black well publishing Ltd. -Gee,j ,p. 2006.An Introduction to Discourse Analysis: Theory and Method. 2nd Edition. Newyork: routledge. --Brown, G and Yule, G. 1983. Discourse analysis.Cambridge: Cambridge university press. Stef Slembrouck (1998-2003) - WHAT IS MEANT BY DISCOURSE ANALYSIS? , http://bank.rug.ac.be/da/da.htm, (1 of 48) [10/10/2003 7:29:09 AM]. -Hyland, K and Paltridge, B. 2011. The continuum companion to discourse analysis. New york: continuum international publishing group. -Mccarthy, M. 1991. Discourse Analysis for Language Teachers (Cambridge Language Teaching Library). Cambridge:Cambridge university press. -(M.H. Abrams and G.G. Harpham, 2005. A Glossary of Literary Terms. Newyork:routledge. -Alan Davies, Catherine Elder, Hugh Trappes-Lomax.2008. discourse analysis, published on line 21 jan2008.