Advanced Discourse

Analysis
Prepared by:
Mr. Joshua A. Apolonio, LPT
Doctor of Philosophy in English Language Studies
 Coverage:

• Crossing, Code-Switching, and Double Voicing

• Intertextuality and Indexicality
• The socio-cultural narratives – George Lakoff’s
model
• The social role, practice/use of discourse analysis/
Multi Modes discourses
 Language Crossing
• Language crossing involves code alternation by people
who are not accepted members of the group associated
with the second language that they are using (code
switching into varieties that are not generally thought to
belong to them).
• A fuller account of the intricate dialectic between
language, peer group belonging and ethnic otherness that
lies at the heart of language crossing emerges as the
paper proceeds.
• Language crossing involves a sense of movement across
quite sharply felt social or ethnic boundaries, and it raises
issues of legitimacy that participants need to reckon with
 Code-Switching

• Code-switching is when a speaker alternate

between two or more languages in a middle
of a conversation.
• It can also occur when a speaker alternate
between two or more varieties of languages.
 The varieties could be:

• Dialects
• Registers
• Styles
• Other form of language
 Some reasons why people code-
switch:
• to bridge the gap in or lack of an appropriate terminology;
• to make communication possible between different cultures
and language groups;
• for effective communication and to accommodate other
language use in conversations with different people at
different levels;
• to explain a point or yourself in another language as certain
words or phrases are more suited in a specific language;
• to affirm one’s identity and sometimes social status;
• to emphasize or confirm something.
 Subtypes

• Intersentential Codeswitching
• Intrasentential Codeswitching
• Tag switching
 Inter sentential switching

• It involves a significant amount of syntactic

complexity and conformity to the rules of both
languages; therefore speakers performing this
kind of switching are usually fairly proficient in
the participating languages.
• For example:
Grandpa called. Anong nangyari?
 Intra sentential switching

• It refers to the switching that occurs inside the

same clause or sentence which then contains
elements of both languages.
• For example:
I had a hard time parking the sasakyan
kaninang umaga.
 Tag Switching

• Simply the insertion of a tag in one language in an

utterance which is entirely in the other language.

• For example:
He is such a great teacher, ‘di ba?
 Code Mixing

• “Using two languages such a third, new

code emerges, in which elements from
the two languages are incorporated into
a structural definable pattern”
 Types of Code Mixing
• 1. Insertion (word phrase)
• Approaching that depart from the notion of insertion
new to constraint in term of the structural properties
some base or matrix structures. Here the process of
code mixing is conceived as something borrowing.

• For example:
May toothpaste ka ba diyan?
• 2. Alternation
• Approaches departing from alternation view the
constraint on mixing in terms of capability or
equivalence of the language involved at the
switch point.
• Example: “Ilang kopya ang naprint mo?”
• 3. Congruent lexicalization (dialect)
• The notion of congruent lexicalization
underlies the study of style shifting and
dialect/standard variation rather than bilingual
language use proper.
• For example, “Hey, how are you? I’m Sam.
Kinagagalak kitang makilala. Nice to meet
you.”
 Double-voicing
• Double-voiced discourse is a phrase coined
by the Russian philosopher and linguistic
theorist named Mikhail Bakhtin.
• As opposed to single-voiced discourse (where
a topic is expressed in a straightforward
way), speakers who practice double-voicing
speak with a dual agenda: to express a
particular opinion and at the same time
adjust the way they speak to take into
account their counterpart’s views and
• Some engage in double-voiced discourse
to guard themselves against criticism. In order
not to lose face by saying something silly,
have you found yourself preluding your
opinions by saying..
• “This may not be the best idea, but here’s
what I think…”
• “I may not be an expert like all of you, but
may I suggest…”
• Double-voiced discourse is also used to avoid
or lessen confrontation and conflicts. Rather
than state a matter directly, we may use
some apologetic words to lessen the
perceived potential severity of the issue.
• One common example is when interrupting
your boss’ time, have you ever started a
sentence with..
• “I’m sorry to be disturbing you, but can
I…?”
 Intertextuality and Indexicality
• Intertextuality is a literary discourse strategy
utilized by writers in novels, poetry, theatre
and even in non-written texts (such as
performances and digital media).
• Indexicality is the capacity of language to
point to something without directly referring
to it. All language has the capacity for
indexical function, but some expressions and
communicative events suggest more
indexicality than do others.
 Intertextuality
• 1. A recognition that no text exists independently of other texts
• 2. Texts relate to other texts in complex ways
• 3. Intertextuality highlights the connections, assumptions and multi-
vocality of discourse
• 4. What other texts and voices are incorporated into this text? How
are they incorporated? What other texts and voices are excluded
from this text? What is this text assuming already to be true?
-Mikhail Bakhtin
Examples of intertextuality are an author's borrowing and
transformation of a prior text, and a reader's referencing of one text in
reading another.
 Indexicality
• This concept encompasses all of the ways
communicative acts are situated in relation to
spatiotemporal, historical, discursive, social,
interactional, and other contexts. Interactants draw
on contextual parameters to create and interpret
particular meanings for signs in use.
• Indexical features of discourse like deictics,
contextualization cues, stance indicators,
membership categorization, and linguistic variation
are addressed.
 Direct Indexicality
• Direct Indexicality, Dude
"Direct indexicality is a meaning relationship that
holds directly between language and the stance, act,
activity, or identity indexed.
• "An illustration of this process can be seen in the
American-English address term dude (Kiesling,
2004). Dude is used most frequently by young white
men and indexes a stance of casual solidarity: a
friendly, but crucially not intimate, relationship with the
addressee. This stance of casual solidarity is a stance
habitually taken more by young white American men
 Indexical Expressions
• "The most frequently noted indexicals are
personal pronouns ('I,' 'we,' 'you,' etc.),
demonstratives ('this,' 'that'), deictics ('here,' 'there,'
'now'), and tense and other forms of time positioning
('smiles,' 'smiled,' 'will smile'). Our understanding of
both spoken utterances and written texts must be
anchored in the material world.
• For example: 'Would you take this over there?'
 The socio-cultural narratives –
George Lakoff’s model
• Conceptual Metaphor
• Cognitive metaphor theory is capable of explaining
universal aspects of language and culture as well as
cultural variations (Kovecses, 2002). While
languages’ phenomenological foundations are
universal, societies and social groups differ in terms
of the associations they make between conceptual
metaphors and abstract target domains.
• Social cultural analysis regards discourse as
interactional activities and emphasizes the social
function of language. This method not only analyses
word and sentence expression form and meaning, but
also analyzes all kinds of social cultural factors related
to discourse. This method insists that the speaker as
an individual and one entity of a society not only want
to transmit information or expresses thoughts, but
also attempt to engage in certain social activities in
different social situations and social institutions.
• In cognitive linguistics, the conceptual domain
from which we draw the metaphorical
expressions required to understand another
conceptual domain is known as the
source domain. The conceptual domain that is
interpreted in this way is the target domain.
Thus the source domain of the journey is
commonly used to explain the target domain of
life.
• For example, in our culture, if the source
concept is "death," the common target
destination is "leave-taking or departure."
 Three Overlapping Categories of
Conceptual Metaphors
Cognitive linguists George Lakoff and Mark Johnson have identified
three overlapping categories of conceptual metaphors:
• An orientational Metaphor is a metaphor that involves spatial
relationships, such as up/down, in/out, on/off, or front/back.
• An ontological Metaphor is a metaphor in which something
concrete is projected onto something abstract.
• A structural Metaphor is a metaphorical system in which one
complex concept (typically abstract) is presented in terms of some
other (usually more concrete) concept.
 Orientational Metaphor

• Orientational metaphors provide even less

conceptual structure for target concepts than
ontological ones.
• The name derives from the fact that most
metaphors that serve this function have to do
with basic human spatial orientations, such as
up-down, center- periphery, etc.
 Structural Metaphor
• In the structural metaphors: the source
domain provides a relatively rich knowledge
structure for the target concept. In other
words, the cognitive function of these
metaphors is to enable speakers to
understand target A by means of the structure
of source B. This understanding takes place by
means of conceptual mappings between
elements of A and elements of B.
 Example: "Time is money."
• You're wasting my time. hour.
• This gadget will save you • I've invested a lot of time in
hours. her.
• I don't have the time • You're running out of time.
to give you.
• Is that worth your while?
• How do you spend your • He's living
time these days? on borrowed time.
• That flat tire cost me an
 Five Tenets of Conceptual Metaphor
Theory

• Metaphors structure thinking;

• Metaphors structure knowledge;
• Metaphor is central to abstract language;
• Metaphor is grounded in physical experience;
• Metaphor is ideological.
 The Social Role and Use of Discourse
Analysis
• Discourse analysis as a research method can be
found in two major families, linguistic-based
analysis (such as conversation) and culturally or
socially based discursive practices.
• Sociological discourse analysis shares many of the
procedures of other social sciences. Yet
sociologists differ greatly in terms of how they
approach discourse analysis, thus leading to
confusion and doubts regarding the scientific
status of sociological discourse analysis.
 Social Discourse Analysis
• Everything that is said or written in a given state of
society, everything that is printed, or talked about
and represented today through electronic media.
Everything that narrates or argues, if one contends
that narration and argumentation are the two basic
kinds of discursiveness.
• Rather, social discourse cannot be approached as
this empirical «everything» but as a constructed
object: the extrapolation of those discursive rules
and topics that underlie the endless rumor of social
discourses without ever being themselves
objectified.
• These underlying rules comprise a thematic
repertory, an implicit cognitive system (or
perhaps several cognitive systems in
competition), and a regulated topology, a
division of labor in the discursive realm.
• Discourse analysis is the study of social life,
understood through analysis of language in its
widest sense (including face-to-face talk, non-
verbal interaction, images, symbols and
documents).
 What is discourse analysis used
for?
Materials that are suitable for discourse analysis
include:
• Books, newspapers and periodicals
• Marketing material, such as brochures and
advertisements
• Business and government documents
• Websites, forums, social media posts and
comments
• Interviews and conversations
 How is discourse analysis
different from other methods?

• It focuses on the social aspects of

communication and the ways people use
language to achieve specific effects (e.g.
to build trust, to create doubt, to evoke
emotions, or to manage conflict).
 Multimodal Discourse Analysis

• Multimodal discourse analysis is an approach that

looks at multiple modes of communication such as
text, color, and images. It is a method of
discursive analysis that looks at not just how
individual modes communicate, but how they
interact with one another to create semiotic
meaning.
• Kress (2010) states further that, “Using three
modes in one sign - writing and image and
colour as well - has real benefits. Each mode
does a specific thing: image shows what takes
too long to read, and writing names what
would be difficult to show. Color is used to
highlight specific aspects of the overall
message”
• Strictly speaking, then multimodality refers to
a field of application rather than a theory. A
variety of disciplines and theoretical
approaches can be used to explore different
aspects of the multimodal landscape.
• Psychological theories can be applied to look
at how people perceive different modes or to
understand the impact of one mode over
another on memory for example. Sociological
and anthropological theories and interests
could be applied to examine how communities
use multimodal conventions to mark and
maintain identities.
Thank you!