Approaches to Discourse

Book excerpt: Approaches to Discourse is a guide to the various frameworks, concepts, and methods available for the analysis of discourse within linguistics. It compares six dominant approaches to discourse analysis: speech act theory, pragmatics, ethnomethodology, interactional sociolinguistics, ethnography of communication, and variation theory. The author not only considers each approach from several standpoints but she also illustrates each approach through extensive applications to a variety of concrete social and linguistic problems facing discourse analysts. Exercises pose problems to which each approach can be applied. In the second edition of Approaches to Discourse , Schiffrin updates and revises the content, organization and exercises throughout the book. In Part 1, she broadens the discussion of discourse analysis through more definitions, new examples, synopsis of approaches not included in the book, and discussion of data. In Part 2, she adds simpler demonstrations of the approaches, clarifies sample analyses, presents recent trends (in a new section in each chapter called "New Developments"), and revises exercises. She also makes crucial additions and revisions to the chapters on ethnography and variation, and adds a chapter on Critical Discourse Analysis. In Part 3, she condenses the comparative chapters, adds a chapter on the integration of various approaches to discourse analysis, and discusses discourse analysis both inside and outside of linguistics.