Discourse Analysis Course

Lesson 1 • Historical Roots of the Field

Traces discourse analysis from structural linguistics to contemporary critical approaches. Contextualises current methods within their intellectual lineage.

Lesson 2 • Defining Discourse and Its Scope

Clarifies what counts as discourse and how it differs from text, speech, and grammar. Sets the conceptual boundary for all subsequent analytical work.

Lesson 3 • Ethical Principles in Discourse Research

Covers researcher responsibility, data privacy, and representation of participants. Establishes ethical standards applied throughout the course.

Lesson 4 • Core Theoretical Frameworks

Introduces the major paradigms—interactional, cognitive, and critical—that organise the field. Students map each framework to its analytical priorities.

Lesson 1 • Recording and Sampling Strategies

Covers audio, video, and screen-capture recording methods and principled sampling. Ensures data quality and representativeness from the outset.

Lesson 2 • Transcription Systems and Conventions

Introduces Jefferson, CHAT, and simplified transcription notations. Students practise converting raw recordings into analysable text.

Lesson 3 • Data Quality and Validity

Addresses common data artefacts, transcription errors, and validity threats. Students apply quality-control procedures before analysis begins.

Lesson 4 • Building and Annotating a Corpus

Guides students through corpus design, metadata tagging, and annotation layers. Produces a reusable, searchable dataset for analysis.

Lesson 1 • Coherence Relations and Discourse Structure

Introduces rhetorical structure theory and coherence relations such as elaboration and contrast. Students map relational structure in paragraphs and longer texts.

Lesson 2 • Thematic Structure and Information Flow

Covers theme-rheme organisation and given-new information packaging. Students trace how writers guide readers through propositional content.

Lesson 3 • Applying Cohesion Analysis to Real Texts

Students conduct full cohesion and coherence analyses on news, academic, and conversational texts. Integrates all devices into a unified analytical report.

Lesson 4 • Cohesive Devices and Their Functions

Examines reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction, and lexical cohesion. Students identify and classify devices in authentic samples.

Lesson 1 • Gricean Maxims and Conversational Implicature

Explains the cooperative principle and how maxim violations generate implicature. Students infer unstated meanings from authentic exchanges.

Lesson 2 • Pragmatic Analysis of Institutional Talk

Applies speech act and politeness frameworks to workplace, legal, and medical interactions. Students produce annotated pragmatic analyses of institutional data.

Lesson 3 • Speech Act Theory in Practice

Operationalises Austin and Searle's taxonomy for real discourse data. Students classify locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary dimensions.

Lesson 4 • Presupposition and Entailment

Distinguishes presupposition from entailment and examines how background assumptions shape discourse. Students identify presupposition triggers in texts.

Lesson 1 • Adjacency Pairs and Sequential Organisation

Covers first and second pair parts, preferred and dispreferred responses. Students trace sequential expectations across multi-turn exchanges.

Lesson 2 • Opening, Closing, and Topic Transitions

Examines how conversations begin, end, and shift topics through sequential practices. Students analyse openings and closings in phone calls and face-to-face talk.

Lesson 3 • Turn-Taking Mechanisms

Explains transition-relevance places, turn-constructional units, and allocation rules. Students identify turn boundaries and speaker-selection devices in transcripts.

Lesson 4 • Institutional Conversation Analysis

Applies CA to asymmetric institutional settings such as interviews and consultations. Students compare ordinary and institutional talk systematically.

Lesson 1 • Genre Mixing and Hybridity

Examines how genres blend, embed, and evolve in response to social change. Students analyse hybrid texts such as advertorials and infomercials.

Lesson 2 • Theories of Genre

Contrasts Swales, Bakhtin, and systemic functional approaches to genre. Students evaluate each theory's analytical power for their research contexts.

Lesson 3 • Comparative Genre Analysis Across Domains

Students compare the same genre across disciplines or cultures to reveal variation. Builds cross-domain analytical flexibility and critical genre awareness.

Lesson 4 • Move Analysis of Professional Texts

Applies move-step analysis to identify rhetorical stages in professional genres. Students annotate research articles, reports, and proposals.

Lesson 1 • Power, Ideology, and Language

Examines how discourse naturalises power relations and reproduces ideology. Students identify ideological assumptions embedded in everyday language.

Lesson 2 • Conducting a Full CDA Study

Guides students through a complete critical discourse analysis from data selection to write-up. Integrates all CDA tools into a coherent, evidence-based critique.

Lesson 3 • Discourse Historical Approach

Introduces Wodak's discourse historical approach for analysing prejudice and populism. Students trace discursive strategies across historical and contemporary texts.

Lesson 4 • Framing and Metaphor in Public Discourse

Analyses how frames and conceptual metaphors shape public understanding of issues. Students decode framing in news, political speeches, and advertising.

Lesson 1 • Analytical Procedures and Coding

Establishes systematic coding, categorisation, and pattern-identification procedures. Students develop and apply a coding scheme to their own data.

Lesson 2 • Presenting Evidence and Argumentation

Teaches how to select, present, and interpret discourse excerpts as evidence. Students construct well-supported analytical arguments from linguistic data.

Lesson 3 • Formulating Research Questions

Guides students from broad topics to focused, answerable discourse research questions. Ensures alignment between question, data, and method.

Lesson 4 • Selecting and Combining Methods

Covers mono-method and mixed-method designs for discourse research. Students justify methodological choices based on their research questions.