Discourse analysis studies human communication through language and other symbolic expressions, focusing on the psychology of interaction. Transformational grammar is a dominant theoretical model, while other fields use different frameworks. Some study the structure of discourse and its influence on social relationships. Natural context is crucial for analysis.
Discourse analysis is the study of how humans communicate with each other through language and other means of symbolic expression. While taking into account the formal structure of language, or linguistics, analysts of written, spoken, and gestural language primarily study the psychology of human interaction. The assumption is that, to the extent that the fundamental tool of language is universal, its utility must also have universal principles. For example, the repartee of a social greeting is thought to be an innate pattern, perhaps a biological imperative. There are several methods of discourse analysis, but they have one difficulty in common, namely the need to study samples in a natural context.
The first theories of human speech arose from the analysis of written translations of foreign languages. Among these is the theory of transformational grammar which postulates that language has deep structures on the relationship between its semantics: words, sentences and other expressions with discrete meaning. The grammar of a specific language is a surface structure that represents the transformations of fundamental and universal relationships. Within this framework, discourse analysis methods include graphical mapping of transformation into relationships and creating computational rules for their grammatical changes. It is a useful method for understanding the creation and evolution of “natural languages”, including sublanguages such as the complex jargon of some professions.
Transformational grammar has been particularly advanced by the work of the American cognitive linguist and psychologist Noam Chomsky. It is one of the dominant theoretical models for the analysis of text and written communication, especially with linguistic translation. For other fields of study such as early developmental psychology, where correct syntax and grammar are increasingly accurate representations of thinking, speech analysis methods also employ the transformational, sometimes called generative, grammar framework.
Many social science fields, such as anthropology, international relations, and media studies, may be more interested in understanding discourse as social interaction. They may use different theoretical frameworks and corresponding methods of discourse analysis. For example, so-called critical discourse analysis proposes that language is fundamentally a tool of social power and that its methods typically scale human conversations to parameters such as inequality and dominance. Interactional sociolinguists propose that language is deeply cultural and that determining the degree of shared context in discourse is essential to its analysis.
Some fields of study, such as conversation analysis and discursive psychology, study the structure of discourse itself – the sequential patterns of verbal interaction – and its influence on the course of a social relationship. They include seemingly universal linguistic phenomena such as alternating speech, declarative or propositional intonation, and interference with guttural utterances. Statistical correlations of the timing and patterns of a conversation with people’s feelings at its conclusion are some of his methods of analysis.
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