Discourse Analysis and Text Linguistics

What the resources cover

The page starts with how texts hold together. The note Anaphora Cataphora Deixis explains words that point back to something already mentioned or forward to something still to come. The mind map Cohesion in English separates reference into exophora (situational) and endophora (textual), then lists personal and demonstrative forms.

It then widens to discourse as language used in social context. The slide set Topic 8: Discourse Analysis defines text, discourse and discourse analysis. Further maps look at written language, spontaneous speech, narrative analysis, thematic structure and multimodality.

Where to start

1. Read Topic 8: Discourse Analysis for the basic definitions.
2. Open the mind map What is discourse and why analyze it? to see language above the sentence.
3. Move to the cohesion material: the note, the map and the flowcharts on types of cohesion.
4. Go on to the flashcards on speech acts, which cover locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary acts and Searle's classification.

Using quizzes and maps together

Work through a mind map first, then take a quiz on the same area. The self-evaluation quizzes for several units of Discourse Analysis are a good check once you have read the maps. Where an answer surprises you, go back to the matching map or flashcard deck and read that branch again.

Flashcards suit the vocabulary. The spontaneous speech glossary covers terms such as adjacency pairs, back channelling, ellipsis and fillers, so it works well for quick daily recall.

Where it fits

This unit sits in the Meaning, Use and Text strand of Linguistics and philology. Its resources are mostly university-level, with some material aimed at professional candidates, such as the map on analysis and articulation of discourse, cohesion and coherence, and connectives. Teachers can use the maps and slide sets as ready-made starting points.

Choose one resource that matches what you are studying this week, open it, and see how far it takes you.