National open university of nigeria school of arts and social sciences

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3.1 Discourse and Sociology

Discourse has a great deal in common with Sociology. Sociology is the study of human beaviour as they interact in the society. The society helps to shape human behavour. Sociologists study every aspect of human beaviour in the society, including linguistics behaviour. However, their goal is to be able to describe the role the society plays in the observed behavioral patterns. Linguists however study human language and explain how the society shapes the language. The field of Sociolinguistics is a hybrid discipline that brings together the methods of linguists and sociologists. The focus is to study how language is used in the society for social interaction. (Hudson, 1980: 1). It will be right to say that Discourse Analysis as a discipline originates from Scociolinguistics, whose major concern is language in use. The whole idea of discourse is a societal phenomenon. Discourse is asocial practice, therefore the methods of investigating it is closely related to those of investigating Sociology. The approach is such that the investigator takes the context as a very important factor therefore the researcher must be present in the field for observation and data collection. The field method is common to both disciplines.

3.2 Discourse and Philosophy

Discourse and Philosophy are also very much related. As we have seen earlier in the course in Module Five in the approach of Pragmatics. Philosophy is a discipline that enquires about such issues as life, knowledge and beliefs and discourse cannot be separated from these issues. Linguistic philosophers have seen the connection between our words and our acts in the Speech Acts Theory. Whenever we utter a statement, we are performing an act, especially when we use performative verbs such as pronounce, as the priest will use while conducting a wedding I pronounce you husband and wife from this day.. They also try to explain the logic of language use, for instance, how we come to interpret utterances that do not have direct meaning. Philosophers also explain how we cooperate in ensuring that our discourse is successful. Our knowledge of culture, norms and beliefs, especially as they relate to our language is explained by philosophers. We usually take these things for granted when we use language, this means that they are presupposed, and most times we have to derive meaning by entailment and inference.

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