DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

Written by Khusnul Hotimah

ABSTRACT

Discourse Analysis is defined as analysis of language beyond the sentence.

It is divided into three approached to introduce the students with some strategies
that commonly used in DA, there are speech act, ethnography of communication
and pragmatics. Each approach has each division to make the explanation clear.
Speech act is classified into locutionary act, illocutionary act and perlocutionary act,
whereas ethnography of communication has a methodology that is known as the
SPEAKING (setting and scene, participants, ends, act of sequences, keys,
instruments, norms of interaction and genres) and pragmatics which is focused on
how people comprehend and produce a communicative act in a concrete speech
situation, had two classifications, there are contrastive pragmatics or cross-cultural
pragmatics and interlanguage pragmatics. This paper is aimed to understand more
about what discourse analysis and some approaches that proposed by Shiffrin are.

Key Words: Discourse Analysis, Speech Acts, Ethnography of Communication and

Pragmatics

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A. Introduction
Nowadays, Discourse Analysis (DA) becomes one of studies that
the most commonly discussed by people who are interested in linguistics
field. It seems from many research that conducted about DA and some
branches of it. DA has attractiveness itself to be learned for some people.
The developing technology throughout the year makes more data that can
be examined in terms of language. For examples social media and
everything in the form of electronic or digital like books, newspapers,
magazines, etc. The development of this era is also in tandem with the
advance knowledge of the language field, so that, it can be understood in
depth and associated with other fields. In addition, the community is also
more aware and sensitive to the role of language is so amazing that the
language is not only understood limited to the meaning of language, but
sometimes there are other meanings in it that must be understood in depth.
Unfortunately, not all people understand deeply what DA is. Therefore, this
paper is aimed to explain about the definition and the classification of
discourse analysis.

B. Discourse Analysis
Discourse Analysis is commonly defined as analysis of language
beyond the sentence. Stubbs (1983:1) states that discourse analysis focuses
on language use beyond the boundaries of a sentence or utterance, the
interrelationships between language and society, and the interactive of
dialogic properties of everyday communication. In addition, DA also
concerns with language use in social contexts, and in particular with
interaction or dialogue between speakers. The data in DA is typically based
on the linguistics output of someone taken from written texts or tape
recordings.

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 This section will be focusing in three approaches from the six
approaches that proposed by Shiffrin, there are speech acts, ethnography of
communication, and pragmatics.
1. Speech Act
The term of speech acts was initiated by Austin in his book How to
Do Things with Words (1962) and developed by Searle (1969). Speech
act theory is on what an utter (U) means by utterance (x) rather than
what x means in a language. In addition, people do not only produce
utterances but also perform action via utterances.
Speech act is divided into three types: Locutionay act is known as
the act of saying something, illocutionary act is called as the act of doing
something and whereas perlocutionary act is called by the act of
affecting someone (Leech 1983: 199). Searle proposed illocutionary
acts into 5 classes: (1) representatives, (2) directives, (3) commissives,
(4) expressives, and (5) declaratives.
Beside the types of speech acts, Austin also classified verbs into
performatives and constatives.
a. Performatives verb
Performative verb is a verb that explicitly conveys the kind
of speech acts being performed, such as promise, invite,
apologize, etc.
Austin classified performatives verbs into five major classes,
there are: Verdictives is acts that consist of delivering a finding,
e.g., acquit, hold (as a matter of law), read something as, etc.,
Exercitives: acts of giving a decision for or against a course of
action, e.g., appoint, dismiss, order, sentence, etc., Commissives:
acts whose point is to commit the speaker to a course of action,
e.g., contract, give one’s word, declare one’s intention, etc.,
Behabitives: expressions of attitudes toward the conduct,
fortunes, or attitudes of others, e.g., apologize, thank,
congratulate, welcome, etc., and Expositives: acts of expounding

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 of views, conducting of arguments, and clarifying, e.g., deny,
inform, concede, refer, etc.
b. Constatives verbs are those which do not denote an action. They
are not used only in descriptions and assertion.

Austin also made classification for the speech act: Ceremonial or

Ritual Speech acts. According to the Austin, some sentences are not
always used to report state affairs, in certain circumstances, must be
treated as the performance of an act. In other words, many utterances
(things people say) are equivalent to action. For examples: “I do” it
means that (take the woman to be my lawful wedded wife) as uttered in
the course of the marriage ceremony. Ordinary Speech Act. In real life
interaction, we talk to other might contain just one word or one sentence
but the speaker and listener understand about what they talk, because
they are usually helped by the circumstances surrounding the utterances
and these are called by speech events. Utterances perform different acts
because of the circumstances and because of the knowledge that we
have of the conditions are rules may include an array of social facts and
knowledge about the grammar of language. For refusal example: “Oh,
I’d love to see that movie with you but this Friday just isn’t going to
work”.
2. Ethnography of Communication
The ethnography of communication initiated by Dell Hymes
concerns with situations and uses, the patterns and functions of speaking
as an activity in its own right. It is an approach to discourse which is
based on linguistics and anthropology. It is focused on a wider range of
communicative behavior whose forms and function can represent
different ways of life. This approach tries to analyze patterns of
communicative practices and such practices are an integrated part of
what one knows and does as a member of particular culture.

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 Hymes proposed a methodology used to discover communicative
events that is known as the SPEAKING grid and will be explained in
the table below.
S Setting and Scene Time and place of an act and the
physical circumstances.

P Participants Speaker and hearer

E Ends Purposes and goals or outcomes

A Act of Sequence Message form and content

K Key Tone and manner

I Instrumentalities The form or style of speech such as

formal or informal, oral or written, etc.

N Norms of interaction The rule that restrict conversations or

social events that
apply when the speech is spoken. For
example, how to talk about it: smooth,
rough, open, etc.
G Genre The type or form of discourse that is
delivered. Examples: Dialogues,
newspapers, poetry, etc.

3. Pragmatics
Pragmatics concerns how people comprehend and produce a
communicative act in a concrete speech situation. It includes one’s
knowledge about the social distance, social status between the speakers
involved, the cultural knowledge such as politeness and the linguistics
knowledge explicit and implicit. Pragmatics also distinguishes two
intents (meanings) in each utterance (communicative act) of verbal

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communication: the informative intent (the sentence meaning) and the
communicative intent (speaker meaning).
Beside the aspect of pragmatics: deixis, presupposition,
performative and implicature, pragmatics also is divided in two that
presented in the following data:
a. Contrastive pragmatics or Cross-Cultural Pragmatics is one of
the branches of linguistics that examines and describes the
similarities and differences in structure or aspects contained in
two or more languages.
b. Interlanguage pragmatics is a branch of pragmatics which
specifically discusses how non-native speakers comprehend and
produce a speech act in a target language and how their
pragmatics competence develops over time.

There are two central concepts pragmatics proposed by Grice:

a. Speaker Meaning has some concepts that provide with the

distinction between two kinds of meaning. Grice divided
speaker meaning into natural meaning (is roughly equivalent to
intentional communication) and non-natural meaning (is lack of
human intentionally).
b. Cooperative Principle is the development of the concept of
implicature which is a theory that is basically about how people
use language. Grice argues that in order to implement the
cooperative principle, every speaker must obey the following 4
maxims or conversation rules: the maxim of quality, the maxim
of quantity, the maxim of relation: be relevant, and the maxim
of manner: be perspicuous.

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C. Conclusion
Discourse Analysis is commonly defined as analysis of language
beyond the sentence that concerns language use in social contexts, and in
particular with interaction or dialogue between speakers.
Discourse Analysis is focusing in three approaches from the six
approaches that proposed by Shiffrin (Fauziati, 2016), there are speech acts,
ethnography of communication, and pragmatics.
The term of speech acts was initiated by Austin in his book How to
Do Things with Words (1962) and developed by Searle (1969). Speech act
is as an action performed by the using of utterances to communicate.
The ethnography of communication initiated by Dell Hymes
concerns with situations and uses, the patterns and functions of speaking as
an activity in its own right.
Pragmatics is concerned with study of meaning as communicated by
a speaker (or a writer) and interpret by a listener (or reader). It has
consequently more to do with the analysis of what people mean by their
utterances than what the words of phrases in those utterances might mean
by themselves.

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REFERENCE

Fauziati, Endang. (2006). Applied Linguitics: Principle of Foreign Language

Teaching, Learning, and Reseraching. Surakarta: Era Pustaka Utama

Hotimah, Khusnul. (2017). An Analysis of Illocutionary Acts of Donald Trump’s

Victory Speech in the United States Election 2016. Banjarmasin: UIN Antasari
Banjarmasin

Yule, G. (1996). Pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University press.