Discourse Analysis: An Introduction

Citation

Paltridge, B. (2021). Discourse Analysis: An Introduction (3rd ed.). Bloomsbury Academic.

Chapter Summary

The third edition (about 330 pages) follows a first edition of 2006 and a second of 2012. It opens with a preface to the third edition and has eleven chapters, followed by an appendix of answers to the exercises, a glossary of key terms, a bibliography and an index. The publisher describes the plan: after an introductory chapter, each chapter explores a different approach to discourse, tracing its development and recent trends, and each is supplemented with exercises, discussion questions and further reading. A companion website adds lecture slides, extended readings and bibliographies. The author is Professor of TESOL at the University of Sydney.

Chapter 1: What is Discourse Analysis?

The opening chapter defines the field and sets out the core theoretical and methodological premises on which the later chapters build.

Chapters 2–3: Discourse and Society; Discourse and Pragmatics

Two chapters on language in its context. Chapter 2 relates discourse to society, and Chapter 3 links discourse analysis with pragmatics, the study of meaning in use.

Chapters 4–5: Discourse and Genre; Discourse and Conversation

Chapter 4 treats discourse in terms of genre, the patterned kinds of texts and events that communities use. Chapter 5 turns to spoken interaction and the analysis of conversation.

Chapters 6–7: Discourse Grammar; Corpus Approaches to Discourse Analysis

Chapter 6 deals with the grammar of discourse, how language is organized above the level of the sentence. Chapter 7 introduces corpus methods, using large collections of texts to study discourse.

Chapters 8–9: Multimodal Discourse Analysis; Discourse and Digital Media

Chapter 8 extends analysis beyond language to images and other modes. Chapter 9, on discourse and digital media, is new in this edition.

Chapter 10: Critical Discourse Analysis

The last of the approach chapters treats critical discourse analysis, which examines the relation between discourse, power and ideology.

Chapter 11: Doing Discourse Analysis

The book closes with a practical chapter on carrying out a discourse analysis project, drawing together the approaches presented in the earlier chapters.

Key Concepts

Chapter 1: Foundations

• Discourse: language studied in use and in context, beyond the single sentence.
• Discourse analysis as a toolkit: the publisher presents the book's approaches as complementary tools rather than one method.

Chapters 2–5: Context, meaning, genre and talk

• Discourse and society: how language use relates to social identities and settings.
• Pragmatics: meaning that depends on context and speakers' intentions.
• Genre: conventional kinds of texts and communicative events.
• Conversation: spoken interaction as an object of analysis.

Chapters 6–9: Grammar, corpora, modes and media

• Discourse grammar: the organization of language across stretches of text.
• Corpus approaches: studying discourse through large, searchable text collections.
• Multimodality: meaning made through images, layout and other modes together with language.
• Digital media: discourse in online and mediated communication, the subject of the new chapter.

Chapters 10–11: Critique and practice

• Critical discourse analysis: analysis aimed at revealing power and ideology in texts.
• Doing discourse analysis: planning and carrying out an analysis of one's own data.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• Breadth in one volume. Nine approach chapters (2–10) cover society, pragmatics, genre, conversation, grammar, corpora, multimodality, digital media and critical discourse analysis, so a reader can compare traditions before committing to one.
• Built for teaching. The publisher states that every chapter has exercises, discussion questions (new or updated in this edition) and further reading; answers to the exercises are printed in an appendix, and a glossary of key terms supports beginners. This makes the book usable for self-study as well as a course text.
• Current topics added. This edition adds the chapter on digital media and the topics of English as a lingua franca, linguistic landscapes and translanguaging, with examples drawn from contexts ranging from North America to East Asia.
• A route to a project. The final chapter is devoted to doing discourse analysis, which helps students move from reading about approaches to applying them.

Limitations

• One chapter per approach. With eleven chapters in about 330 pages, each approach receives an introductory chapter rather than a full methodological treatment; students who adopt conversation analysis or critical discourse analysis for a project will need specialist sources.
• An applied-linguistics orientation. The author is a professor of TESOL, and the edition's new topics (English as a lingua franca, translanguaging, linguistic landscapes) come from applied linguistics. The book fits language and education students most closely; readers coming from sociology or media studies may want a second source closer to their field.

Where It Fits in the Course

Paltridge is the survey introduction on the discourse analysis list: one chapter per approach, with exercises and answers. It pairs naturally with Jones's Discourse Analysis: A Resource Book for Students, which covers a similar range in a different format (short introductory units, then development, exploration and research case studies). Students who like continuous exposition should start with Paltridge; those who learn by doing analysis tasks may prefer Jones, and using both gives two explanations of each approach.

After this book, Johnstone and Andrus's Discourse Analysis offers a single heuristic for analysing how texts are shaped by and shape the world, with research project suggestions, and Gee's An Introduction to Discourse Analysis sets out one theory-and-method approach in depth. Schiffrin's Approaches to Discourse compares six frameworks in detail on the same data, a natural next step for students who must choose and justify a framework, and Fairclough's Critical Discourse Analysis collects the major papers behind the approach introduced in Chapter 10.

How to Use This Book

The book suits undergraduates and master's students in applied linguistics, TESOL, English language and communication taking a first discourse analysis course, and researchers from neighbouring fields who need an orientation. No previous discourse analysis is assumed; some familiarity with basic grammatical terms will help with Chapter 6.

• Start with Chapter 1, which sets up the terms and premises used throughout.
• Read Chapters 2–5 in order as the core of a first course: society, pragmatics, genre and conversation.
• Choose among Chapters 6–10 according to the course or project: corpus work (7), images and other modes (8), online communication (9), or power and ideology (10).
• Finish with Chapter 11 before starting your own project.

Do the exercises before checking the appendix answers, and use the discussion questions with a study partner or in seminars. For each approach you might use, follow the chapter's further reading into a specialist book, and try the approach on a small set of texts or a short recording of your own.