Useful Terms and Reference Points in the Study of Discourse Analysis (DA)

Common Terms for General Linguistic and Semiotic Functions or Types of Meaning

Others: Poetic, Narrative, Phatic

For an extended discussion of these general functions and methods of analyzing them, see:
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jaylemke/papers/handbook.htm

For a useful set of inquiry questions to use during analysis, see:
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jaylemke/guides/multimedia_semiotic_analysis_questions.htm

For some basic terminology and concepts of Systemic-Functional DA, follow link.
 

Approaches to Discourse Analysis (DA)

Functional linguistic DA:

• Systemic DA -- U.K., Australia, Canada (Halliday, Hasan, Martin, Fawcett, Gregory, Berry, Fries, Thibault, Lemke, Kress, O'Toole, O'Halloran, van Leeuwen,  ...)
• British Functionalism -- U.K. (Sinclair, Coulthard, Huddleston, Halliday, Stubbs,  ...)
• Prague School -- Eastern Europe (Jakobson, Mathesius, Firbas, Danes, Dolozel, Trubetskoy, Propp, ...
• Social Semiotics -- Kress, Hodge, Lemke, Thibault, Stillar, Threadgold, ... (see also CDA below)

American Functionalism / Anthropological Linguistics:

• Sapir, Whorf, Hymes, Gumperz, Silverstein, Cazden, Ochs, Woolard, Irvine, Wortham, Michaels, Schiefflin

Sociolinguistics -- Labov, Fishman, Ferguson, Milroy, Cameron, Eckert, ...

Social linguistics -- Gee, Tannen, Rampton, ...

Narrative Analysis -- Propp, Greimas, Labov, ...

Conversation Analysis (CA) -- Sacks, Schegloff, Heritage, Pomerantz, Atkinson, ...

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) -- Fairclough, Kress, van Dijk, Wodak, ...

Bakhtin Circle -- Russia: Bakhtin, Voloshinov, Medvedev, ...

Textlinguistics -- Dressler, de Beaugrande, ...

Corpus Linguistics -- Sinclair, de Beaugrande, Biber, Quirk

Cultural Discourse analysis (non-linguistic) -- Foucault, Serres,

Techniques

Exchange structure analysis -- moves and turns in dialogue by discourse function and role relationships

Speech act analysis -- social and disscourse effect of individual utterances

Argumentation analysis -- evidence and warrant for claims, logical connections

Rhetorical structure analysis -- sequential, hierarchical organization of functional moves in any text

Thematic formation analysis, textual and intertextual -- semantic patterns across clauses and texts

Cohesion analysis -- semantic links between clauses and through extended texts

Narrative analysis -- organization and development of narrative actions and actants

Phasal analysis -- segmentation of text according to changes in grammatical patterns

Semantic co-patterning analysis -- organization of text according to semantic patterns

Heteroglossic analysis -- relative stances of discourse voices to one another

Axiological / Evaluational analysis -- orientational-evaluative stance of source to presentational content

Conversation analysis -- organization of turns at talk in relation to internal evidence of their meanings

Prosodic analysis -- organization of discourse according to rhythms, repetitions, and cycles

Intonational analysis -- organization and meaning of discourse according to pitch and stress variation

Indexicality analysis -- contextual dependence of presupposed and emergent/created meanings