An Introduction to Discourse Analysis

Theory and Method

James Paul Gee

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781317820574
• Edition: 4
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Discourse analysis considers how language, both spoken and written, enacts social and cultural perspectives and identities. Assuming no prior knowledge of linguistics, An Introduction to Discourse Analysis examines the field and presents James Paul Gee's unique integrated approach which incorporates both a theory of language-in-use and a method of research.

An Introduction to Discourse Analysis can be used as a stand-alone textbook or ideally used in conjunction with the practical companion title How to do Discourse Analysis: A Toolkit. Together they provide the complete resource for students studying discourse analysis.

Updated throughout, the fourth edition of this seminal textbook also includes two new chapters: 'What is Discourse?' to further understanding of the topic, as well as a new concluding section. A new companion website www.routledge.com/cw/gee features a frequently asked questions section, additional tasks to support understanding, a glossary and free access to journal articles by James Paul Gee.

Clearly structured and written in a highly accessible style, An Introduction to Discourse Analysis includes perspectives from a variety of approaches and disciplines, including applied linguistics, education, psychology, anthropology and communication to help students and scholars from a range of backgrounds to formulate their own views on discourse and engage in their own discourse analysis.

This is an essential textbook for all advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students of discourse analysis.

CHAPTER ONE

Introduction

■ Language as Saying, Doing, and Being

■ Language and Practices

■ Language and “Politics”

■ Two Forms of Discourse Analysis: Descriptive and “Critical”

■ About this Book: Theory and Method

■ More about this Book

■ Readings

Language as Saying, Doing, and Being

What is language for? Many people think language exists so that we can “say things” in the sense of communicating information to each other. However, language serves a great many functions in our lives. Giving and getting information is by no means the only one. Of course, language does allow us to inform each other. But it also allows us to do things and to be things, as well. In fact, one of the main points of this book will be that saying things in language never goes without also doing things and being things.

Language allows us to do things; it allows us to engage in actions and activities. We promise people things, we open committee meetings, we propose to our lovers, we argue over politics, and we “talk to God” (pray). These are among the myriad of things we do with language beyond giving and getting information.

Language allows us to be things. It allows us to take on different socially significant identities. We can speak as experts – as doctors, lawyers, anime aficionados, or carpenters – or as “everyday people”. To take on any identity at a given time and place we have to “talk the talk” and “walk the walk”. When they are being gang members, street gang members talk a different kind of talk than do honor students when they are being students. Furthermore, one and the same person could “talk out” and act out both things at different times and places.

In language, there are important connections among saying (informing), doing (action), and being (identity). If I say anything to you, you cannot really understand it fully if you do not know what I am trying to do and who I am trying to be by saying it. To understand anything fully you need to know who is saying it and what the person saying it is trying to do.

Let’s take a simple example. Imagine a stranger on the street walks up to you and says “Hi, how are you?” The stranger has said something, but you do not know what to make of it. Who is this person? What is the stranger trying to do?

Imagine you find out that the stranger is taking part in a game where strangers ask other people how they are in order to see what sorts of reactions they get. Or imagine that the person is a friend of your twin and thinks you are your sibling (I have a twin and this sort of thing has often happened to me). Or imagine the stranger is someone you met long ago and have long forgotten, but who, unbeknownst to you, thinks of you as a friend. In one case, a gamer is playing; in another case, a friend of your sibling’s is mistakenly being friendly; and, in yet another case, someone who mistakenly thinks he is a friend of yours is also being friendly. Once you sort things out, everything is clear (but not necessarily comfortable).

My doctor, who also happens to be a friend, tells me, as she greets me in her office: “You look tired”. Is she speaking to me as a friend (who) making small talk (what) or is she speaking to me as a doctor (who) making a professional judgment (what) about my health? It makes quite a big difference whether a friend (who) is playfully insulting (what) his friend in a bar or a hard core biker (who) is threatening (what) a stranger, though they may say the same words. The words can be the same, but they will mean very different things. Who we are and what we are doing when we say things matters.

This book is concerned with a theory of how we use language to say things, do things, and be things. It is concerned, as well, with a method of how to study saying, doing, and being in language. When I talk about “being things,” I will use the word “identity” in a special way. I do not mean your core sense of self, who you take yourself “essentially” to be. I mean different ways of being in the world at different times and places for different purposes, for example, ways of being a “good student,” an “avid bird watcher,” a “mainstream politician,” a “tough cop,” a video game “gamer,” a “Native American,” and so on and so forth through a nearly endless list.

Language and Practices

One of the best ways to see something that we have come to take too much for granted (like language) is to look at an example that makes it strange again. So consider Yu-Gi-Oh, a popular-culture activity, but one whose use of language will seem strange to many.

Here are some facts about Yu-Gi-Oh: Yu-Gi-Oh is a card game that can be played face-to-face or in video games. There are also Yu-Gi-Oh television shows, movies, and books (in all of which characters act out moves in the card game). There are thousands of Yu-Gi-Oh cards. Players choose a deck of 40 cards and “duel” each other. The moves in the game represent battles between the monsters on their cards. Each card has instructions about what moves can be made in the game when that card is used. Yu-Gi-Oh is a form of Japanese “anime,” that is, animated (“cartoon”) characters and their stories shown in “mangas” (comic books), television shows, and movies. Japanese anime is now a worldwide phenomenon. If this all seems strange to you, that is all to the good.

Below I print part of the text on one card:

When this card is Normal Summoned, Flip Summoned, or Special Summoned successfully, select and activate 1 of the following effects: Select 1 equipped Equip Spell Card and destroy it. Select 1 equipped Equip Spell Card and equip it to this card.

What does this mean? Notice, first of all, that you, as a speaker of English, recognize each word in this text. But that actually does you very little good. You still do not really know what it means, if you do not understand Yu-Gi-Oh.

So how would you find out what the text really means? Since we are all influenced a great deal by how school has taught us to think about language, we are liable to think that the answer to this question is this: Look up what the words mean in some sort of dictionary or guide. But this does not help anywhere near as much as you might think. There are web sites where you can look up what the words and phrases on Yu-Gi-Oh cards mean, and this is the sort of thing you see if you go to such web sites:

Equip Spell Cards are Spell Cards that usually change the ATK and/or DEF of a Monster Card on the field, and/or grant that Monster Card special abilitie(s). They are universally referred to as Equip Cards , since Equip Cards can either be Equip Spell Cards, or Trap Cards that are treated as Equip Cards after activation. When you activate an Equip Spell Card, you choose a face-up monster on the field to equip the card to, and that Equip Spell Card’s card’s effect applies to that monster until the card is destroyed or otherwise removed from the field. When the equipped monster is removed from the field or flipped face-down , all the Equip Spell Cards equipped to that monster are destroyed. A fair few Equip Spell Cards are representations of weapons or armour.

htt­p:/­/yu­gio­h.w­iki­a.c­om/­wik­i/E­qui­p_S­pel­l_C­ard­s

Does this really help? If you do not understand the card, you do not understand this much better. And think how much more of this I would have to give you to explicate the whole text on the Yu-Gi-Oh card, short though it is.

Why didn’t it help? Because, in general, if you do not understand some words, getting yet more of the same sorts of words does not help you know what the original words mean. In fact, it is hard to understand words just by getting definitions (other words) or other sorts of verbal explanations. Even if we understand a definition, it only tells us the range of meanings a word has, it does not really tell us how to use the word appropriately in actual contexts of use.

So if you had to learn what “Yu-Gi-Oh language” actually meant, how would you go about it? You probably would not choose to read lots of texts like the one above from the web site. Even if you did, I assure you that you would still be lost if you actually had to play Yu-Gi-Oh.

The way you could best learn what the language on the card meant would be to learn to play the game of Yu-Gi-Oh, not just read more text. How would you do this? You could watch and play games, let others players mentor you, play Yu-Gi-Oh video games which coach you on how to play the game, watch Yu-Gi-Oh television shows and movies which act out the game, and, then, too, read things.

Why is this best way to learn what the card means? Because, in this case, it is pretty clear that the language on the card gets its meaning from the game, from its rules and the ways players play the game. The language is used – together with other actions (remember language itself is a form of action) – to play (to enact) the game as an activity or practice in the world.

The language on Yu-Gi-Oh cards does not get its meaning first and foremost from definitions or verbal explanations, that is, from other words. It gets its meaning from what it is used to do, in this case, play a game. This is language as doing.

However, Yu-Gi-Oh is an activity – a way of doing things (in this case, playing a game) – because certain sorts of people take on certain sorts of identities, in this case, identities as gamers and enthusiasts of certain sorts (here, fans of anime and anime card games like Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh and others). This is language as being.

If there were no anime gamers/fans (being), then there would be no anime games and gaming (doing). If there were no anime gamers/fans and no anime games and gaming, then the words on the cards would be meaningless, there would be no saying (information). Saying follows, in language, from doing and being.

Is this Yu-Gi-Oh example just strange and untypical? In this book I want to argue that it is actually typical of how language works. Its very strangeness allows us to see what we take for granted in examples of language with which we are much more familiar and where we have forgotten the role of doing and being in language and remember only the role of saying and communicating.

In the case of the language on the Yu-Gi-Oh card, we said that the language on the card got its meaning, not from dictionaries or other words, but from a game and its rules and the things players do. In a sense all language gets its meaning from a game, though we don’t typically use the word “game”. We use the more arcane word “practice”.

A game is composed of a set of rules that determines winners and losers. Other activities like taking part in a committee meeting, a lecture, a political debate, or “small talk” among neighbors are not games, but they are conducted according to certain “rules” or conventions. These “rules” or conventions do not determine winners and losers (usually), but they do determine who has acted “appropriately” or “normally” or not, and this in society can, indeed, be a type of winning and losing.

These sorts of activities – things like committee meetings, lectures, political debates, and “small talk” – are often called “practices,” though we could just as well use the word “games” in an extended sense. This book will argue that all language – like Yu-Gi-Oh language – gets its meaning from the games or practices within which it is used. These games or practices are always ways of saying, doing, and being.

Language and “Politics”

If you break the rules of Yu-Gi-Oh, either you are playing the game incorrectly or are you are attempting to change the rules. This can get you into trouble with the other players. If you follow the rules, you are playing appropriately and others will accept you as a Yu-Gi-Oh player, though not necessarily as a good one. If you follow the rules – and use them well to your advantage – you may win the game often and others will consider you a good player.

If you care about Yu-Gi-Oh and want to be considered a player or even a good player, then having others judge you as a player or a good player is what I will call a “social good”. Social goods are anything some people in a society want and value. Being considered a Yu-Gi-Oh player or a good Yu-Gi-Oh player is a social good for some people. In that case, how they play the game and how others accept their game play is important and consequential for them.

Above, I said that just as Yu-Gi-Oh language is used to enact the game of Yu-Gi-Oh, so, too, other forms of language are used to enact other “games” or practices. Consider, for example, the practice (“game”) of being a “good student” in elementary school. In different classrooms and schools this game is played somewhat differently. And this game changes over time. What made someone a “good student” in the seventeenth century in the United States – how “good students” talked and behaved – is different than what makes someone a “good student” today.

However, in each case there are conventions (rules) about how “good students” talk and behave (“good students” here being the ones teachers and school personnel say are “good students,” that is why the phrase is in quotes). Many children want to be accepted in this identity, just as some people want to be accepted as good Yu-Gi-O...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• 1 Introduction
• 2 What is Discourse Analysis?
• 3 Building Tasks
• 4 Tools of Inquiry and Discourses
• 5 Social Languages, Conversations, and Intertextuality
• 6 Form-Function Correlations, Situated Meanings, and Figured Worlds
• 7 Figured Worlds
• 8 Context
• 9 Discourse Analysis
• 10 Processing and Organizing Language
• 11 Sample of Discourse Analysis 1
• 12 Sample of Discourse Analysis 2
• 13 Sample of Discourse Analysis 3
• 14 Conclusion
• Glossary
• Index