17 disciplines also find Discourse Analysis relevant, since discourse is often seen as asocial practice that exists in all facets of human endeavour.
5.0 Summary Background issues on Discourse Analysis was our focus in this unit. We started by looking at what we mean by the term Discourse and the discipline Discourse Analysis Afterwards, we traced the origin of Discourse Analysis from its earliest times to Anthropologists
and Sociologists, whose goal was just to look at how the society is organized through the use of discourse. Linguists later got involved in the practice. Lastly, we examined the earliest practices of Ethnomethodology and Conversational Analysis.
6.0. Tutor-marked Assignments Identify the key figures in Ethnomethodology and Conversational Analysis and discuss in details the practices of ethnomethodologists and conversational analysts.
7.0 References/Further Reading Brown, G. and Yule G. (1983)
Discourse Analysis.
Cambridge CUP Johnstone, Barbara (2002)
Discourse Analysis.
Blackwel Publishers Pustejovsky, James (2006) Language as Action Accessed from edu/
jamesp/classes/usem40a06/slides/DiscourseAnalysis.ppt – on January 2 2008.
