RSSReview: The Bloomsbury Companion to Discourse Analysis
Sep 30
EDITOR: Ken Hyland
EDITOR: Brian Paltridge
TITLE: The Bloomsbury Companion to Discourse Analysis
SERIES TITLE: Bloomsbury Companions
PUBLISHER: Bloomsbury Publishing (formerly The Continuum International Publishing Group)
YEAR: 2013
REVIEWER: Inas Youssef Mahfouz, American University of Kuwait
SUMMARY
This book belongs to the Bloomsbury Companions series. It is a panoptic
textbook that provides an overview of discourse analysis. The book consists of
an introduction by the editors and two equal parts. “Part I: Methods of
Analysis in Discourse Research” comprises nine chapters covering the main
theoretical approaches and issues involved in discourse analysis. “Part II:
Research Areas and New Directions in Discourse Research” comprises twelve
chapters that cover different practical directions in discourse analysis.
The book begins with a short introduction where the editors define discourse
as ”an overloaded term, covering a wide range of meanings” (1) and discuss
how discourse analysis has developed quickly over the past decades. Finally,
they describe the subsequent chapters of the book and their purposes.
The first chapter, ”Data collection and transcription in discourse analysis”
by Rodney H. Jones, focuses on the collection and transcription of data from
spoken interactions. Data collection and transcription are regarded as
cultural practices that have changed over the years as a result of the
development of several tools such as tape recorders, video cameras and
computers. The chapter ends with an emphasis on observing ethical issues of
data collection and transcription.
Data collection is typically followed by analysis and this is the topic of
Chapter two, ”Conversation Analysis”. In this chapter Sue Wilkinson and
Celia Kitzinger explore the six features of conversation or
talk-in-interaction, namely: “turn-taking, action formation, sequence
organization, repair, word selection and the overall structural organization
of talk” (p. 25). Then the chapter concentrates on turn-taking systems to
illustrate that regardless of the accumulated research on conversation
analysis, much investigation is still needed.
In Chapter three, ”Critical discourse analysis”, Ruth Wodak traces the
development of the different approaches to critical discourse analysis (CDA)
and their similarities and differences. Wodak ends the chapter pinpointing the
cornerstones of CDA, namely its reliance on diverse techniques, use of
existing data, and emphasis on applying linguistic expertise to solving
problems.
In ”Genre Analysis”, Chapter four, Christine M. Tardy investigates theory
and research in genre analysis. Tardy focuses on grant proposals and analyzes
20 successful proposals to shed light on how rhetorical and linguistic choices
impact a text.
Mike Baynham elaborates on different approaches pertaining to analyzing
narratives in Chapter five, “Narrative Analysis”. Baynham discusses three
approaches to narrative: discourse analysis, conversational analysis, and
linguistic ethnographic approaches. The chapter also provides two case studies
of narrative analysis and ends with some suggestions for future research.
In Chapter six, ”Ethnography and Discourse Analysis”, Dwight Atkinson,
Hanako Okada and Steven Talmy investigate the complementarity between
ethnographic research and discourse analysis. They show how ethnographic
studies have been enriched with the addition of linguistic detail and vice
versa.
In Chapter seven, ”Systemic Functional Linguistics,” J.R. Martin surveys SFL
and its development in Britain and Australia over the past six decades. The
chapter provides a sample study of a magazine extract and pinpoints new
directions to using SFL in discourse analysis at the end.
Chapter eight, ”Multimodal Discourse Analysis”, by Kay L. O’Halloran,
explores multimodal discourse analysis (MDA) as an evolving approach to
discourse analysis. MDA “extends the study of language per se to the study of
language in combination with other resources, such as images, scientific
symbolism, gesture, action, music and sound” (p.120). The chapter discusses
different approaches to MDA, theoretical and practical issues involved, and a
sample MDA text analysis.
The first part ends with a chapter on “Corpus Approaches to the Analysis of
Discourse.” In this chapter, Bethany Gray and Douglas Biber preview the use of
corpora to analyze language. The authors end their chapter with an emphasis on
the new insights about language that corpus-based analysis can bring.
Part II, ”Research Areas and New Directions in Discourse Research,” provides
practical illustration which complements the theoretical foundation provided
in Part I. This part includes 12 chapters about a wide variety of issues.
The first chapter in this part, Chapter ten, examines types of spoken
discourse and their features. The author, Joan Cutting, pinpoints how certain
social variables such as gender and social class can influence the selection
of features for analysis.
In Chapter 11, Ken Hyland probes into the nature of “Academic Discourse,” its
importance, methods of analyzing it, and the amount of information available
about this type of discourse. The chapter ends with a sample study on
citations to illustrate the ways in which academics interact with their
students and how this interaction is grounded on the repertoires of their
disciplines.
Janet Holmes investigates “Discourse in the Workplace” in Chapter 12. The
chapter focuses on spoken workplace discourse; the author begins by discussing
current research in three categories: types, power and solidarity, and gender
and ethnicity. Holmes provides a sample study, which focuses on a senior
manager who enacts leadership to his team and constantly provides directions
while maintaining a consultative style. Holmes ends her chapter with some
pointers for future research.
”Discourse and Gender,” Chapter 13, examines the role of discourse in gender
and language research. Paul Baker skillfully sums up recent research and
analyzes the concept of the ”cougar” (”an emerging identity category used
to describe women who have younger male partners”). The chapter ends with
insights on using discourse to develop the field of language and gender.
Chapters 14, 15, and 16 focus on trends in discourse analysis studies that
appeared towards the end of the twentieth century. Chapter 14 investigates
“News Discourse,” whether written (as in newspapers) or spoken (as in
broadcasted interviews). Furthermore, the author, Martin Montgomery, sheds
some light on considerations of power and ideology in news discourse. In
Chapter 15, ”Discourse and Computer-Mediated Communication”, Julia Davies
tackles online discourse. The chapter adopts a multimodal approach to
analyzing online texts by examining their fabric, nature, and context. John
Olsson focuses on “the interface between language, crime and law, where ‘law’
includes law enforcement, judicial matters, legislation, … and even disputes
which only potentially involve some infraction of the law” (Olsson n.d.) in
chapter 16, ”Forensic Discourse Analysis: A work in progress”. The chapter
discusses the origins of forensic discourse analysis, its focus, and the
structure of forensic discourse. The chapter ends with a clear emphasis on the
cross disciplinary cooperation between linguists and those working in the
legal profession.
The remaining chapters in this part focus on discourse in a variety of
contexts. Tope Omoniyi investigates “Discourse and Identity” in Chapter 17.
The chapter discusses the definition of ‘minority’ and synthesizes current
research in this area. The author ends by emphasizing the impact of
globalization in creating new contextualizations of ‘minority’.
Chapter 18, ”Discourse and Race,” by Angel Lin and Ryuko Kubota, examines
the idea of race in discourse. The authors pinpoint key studies in this field
and provide some pointers for future research.
Jennifer Hammond investigates “Classroom Discourse” in Chapter 19. The author
sheds light on analyses of turns, sequences and meanings in classroom talk
along with the theoretical, methodological, practical issues and procedures
involved. She provides a sample study which describes pedagogical practices
used with ESL students in mainstream schools. The author ends her chapter with
some procedures for future research.
In chapter 20, ”Discourse and Intercultural Communication,” John Corbett
highlights the different approaches to researching intercultural
communication: questionnaires, group interviews and analyses of actual
interaction. The author concludes that all three approaches should be
interwoven together to reach accurate results.
The last chapter of the book, ”Medical Discourse,” by Timothy Halkowski,
investigates the different participants involved in medical discourse, i.e.
doctors, patients, nurses and the role played by each to unravel the how
‘illness-ing’, ‘patient-ing’, and ‘doctor-ing’ may affect interaction. The
chapter concludes with a note on expanding the scope of research on medical
discourse to include how medical teams manage their daily work.
EVALUATION
“The Bloomsbury Companion to Discourse Analysis” is a rich all-encompassing
textbook which succeeds in covering all concepts, movements, and approaches
related to discourse in one invaluable volume. The book includes two parts
with 21 chapters tackling discourse analysis from both theoretical and
practical perspectives. The different theoretical methods of doing discourse
analysis are presented in the first part of the book. The second part of the
book includes 12 chapters that provide practical analyses of the different
theoretical approaches to doing discourse analysis discussed in the first
part. The almost symmetrical structure of the two parts of the book reflects
the meticulous choices editors have made to put this volume in its current
state.
The internal organization of the chapters makes them easy to read and
understand. In part one, each chapter discusses a certain approach to
researching discourse, assumptions underlying it, and the instruments and
tools related to it. Each chapter ends with a short list of key readings for
those who want to expand their knowledge of the approach discussed. In the
second part, each chapter focuses on a key area in discourse analysis and
provides a sample analysis, pointers for future research, as well as a list of
key readings. The topics of the chapters in both parts of the book are varied,
ranging from traditional approaches to discourse analysis such as conversation
analysis, genre analysis, and narrative analysis to nascent approaches such as
multimodal discourse analysis and the analysis of computer-mediated
communication. The editors have also provided a glossary at the end which
gives brief definitions of most of the terms appearing in the book.
Overall, this volume is an invaluable reference for researchers interested in
discourse analysis. The chapters are not only carefully chosen and accurately
organized, but they are also written by experienced scholars. The content,
clarity, logical organization, and expert guidance provided in this volume
make it truly the best ‘companion’ to discourse analysts of all backgrounds.
References:
Olsson, J. (n.d.). ‘What is Forensic Linguistics?’ Retrieved August 25, 2014,
http://thetext.co.uk/docs/what_is.doc
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Inas Y. Mahfouz is an associate professor of Language and Linguistics at Ain
Shams University. Her primary research interests include discourse analysis,
computational linguistics and Systemic Functional Linguistics.
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