Discourse Analysis

Abstract

Abstract The main objective of Discourse Analysis is the study of language in use, either oral or written, and verbal or nonverbal, by particular speakers on particular occasions. Discourse Analysis focuses not only on what is said but also on how it is said, to whom, when, and where. In political communication, it is important to take into account not only what politicians say but how, when, to whom, and in what context. Sometimes their gestures say much more than their words. There are different schools in Discourse Analysis and all of them focus on language not as an abstract system but rather as the means of communication. Some of the most widely known perspectives are: Pragmatics, Interactional Sociolinguistics, Conversational Analysis, Ethnography of Communication, Variation Analysis, Functional Perspective, Discursive Psychology, and Critical Discourse Analysis. They study how people use language and how they do things with language (express feelings, entertain others, or exchange information). Depending on the perspective, studies can focus on: cooperative principle and conversational maxims, speech acts, explicature and implicature, inferences, felicity conditions, face‐work, politeness, topic organization, turn‐taking, language variation, information structure, expression of attitude and emotion, or power relations.