Discourse Analysis - ALINV511B

• Title: Discourse Analysis
• Guaranteed by: Institute of Linguistics (21-ULING)
• Faculty: Faculty of Arts
• Actual: from 2019
• Semester: winter
• Points: 0
• E-Credits: 5
• Examination process: winter s.:
• Hours per week, examination: winter s.:1/1, Ex [HT]
• Capacity: unlimited / unlimited (unknown)
• Min. number of students: unlimited
• 4EU+: no
• Virtual mobility / capacity: no
• State of the course: taught
• Language: English
• Teaching methods: full-time
• Teaching methods: full-time
• Note: course can be enrolled in outside the study plan; enabled for web enrollment
• Guarantor: doc. PhDr. Jiří Nekvapil, CSc.
• Teacher(s): doc. PhDr. Jiří Nekvapil, CSc.

Annotation

Last update: doc. PhDr. Jiří Nekvapil, CSc. (15.12.2023)

This course introduces students to major approaches to discourse analysis as it is practiced in various branches of social research including linguistics. A particular focus is on the themes and concepts characteristic of Central European research such as thematic progression, language biographies, and media dialogical networks.

Course completion requirements

Last update: doc. PhDr. Jiří Nekvapil, CSc. (16.09.2021)

Exam requirements:

a) submission of the final paper (3000-4000 words),

b) knowledge of the material and readings from the lectures,

c) overall knowledge of one discourse analysis manual or handbook, e.g. the following: Blommaert, J. (2005): Discourse: A Critical Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Fairclough, N. (2003). Analysing Discourse. Textual Analysis for Social Research. London, New York: Routledge.

Please have your selected manual or handbook approved by your examiner prior to the exam.

Literature

Last update: doc. PhDr. Jiří Nekvapil, CSc. (15.12.2023)

Required readings:

Chang, G. C. and Mehan, H. B.  (2006). Discourse in a religious mode: The Bush administration’s discourse in the war on terrorism and its challenges. Pragmatics 16 (1), 1–23.

Daneš, F. (1974). Functional sentence perspective and the organisation of the text. In F. Daneš (ed.),  Papers on Functional Sentence Perspective. Prague/The Hague, Paris: Academia/Mouton, 106–128.

Fairclough, N. (2016). A dialectical-relational approach to critical discourse analysis in social research. In R. Wodak and M. Meyer (eds.), Methods of Critical Discourse Studies. 3rd Edition. Los Angeles: Sage, 86–108.

Leudar, I. and Nekvapil, J. (2004). Media dialogical networks and political argumentation. Journal of Language and Politics 3 (2), 247–266. [in German published as Dialogische Netzwerke und politische Argumentation im Mediendiskurs. In H. Gruber, F. Menz, O. Panagl (eds.) (2003), Sprache und politischer Wandel. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 213–232.]

Nekvapil, J. (2003). Language biographies and the analysis of language situations: On the life of the German community in the Czech Republic. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 162, 63–83.

Optional readings:

Auer, P. (2014 / 2019). Jazyková interakce [Linguistic Interaction]. Praha: Nakladatelství Lidové noviny (NLN).

Bakhtin, M. M. (1981). The Dialogic Imagination. Austin: University of Texas Press. [selected parts]

Blommaert, J. (2005). Discourse: A Critical Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Brown, G. and Yule, G. (1983). Discourse Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Daneš, F. (1970, reprinted 2014). One instance of Prague School methodology: Functional analysis of utterance and text. In P. Garvin (ed.), Method and Theory in Linguistics. Boston, Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 132-146.

Daneš, F. (1994). Prague school functionalism as a precursor of text linguistics. Cahiers de l’Institut de linguistique et des sciences du langage 5, 117–126.

Fairclough, N. (1992). Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Fairclough, N. (2003). Analysing Discourse. Textual Analysis for Social Research. London, New York: Routledge

Foucault, M. (1971). Orders of discourse. Social Science Information 10 (2), 7–30.

Foucault, M. (1978). The History of Sexuality. New York: Pantheon Books. [selected parts]

Hájek, M., Kaderka, P., Nekvapil, J., Samec, T. (2019). Kdo šetří, má za tři? Diskurz šetrnosti v proměnách české společnosti [A Penny Saved is a Penny Earned? The Discourse of Thrift in a Changing Czech Society]. Praha: SLON. [Summary in English.]

Labov, W. (2013). The Language of Life and Death: The Transformation of Experience in Oral Narrative.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Leudar, I. and Nekvapil, J. (2007). The war on terror and Muslim Britons’ safety: A week in the life of a dialogical network. Ethnographic Studies [online] (9), 44–62. [in French published as La guerre contre la terreur. Une semaine dans la vie d’un réseau dialogique. In B. Dupret & J.-N. Ferrié (2008), Médias, guerres et identités. Les pratiques communicationnelles de l’appartenance politique, ethnique et religieuse. Paris: Éditions des archives contemporaines, 88–113.]

Leudar, I. and Nekvapil, J. (2022). Dialogical Networks: Using the Past in Contemporary Research. London, New York: Routledge.

Nekvapil, J., Kaderka, P. and Smith, S. (2023). Editorial: The changing shape of media dialogical networks. Discourse, Context & Media 54. (available in the rubric Soubory)

Teaching methods

Last update: doc. PhDr. Jiří Nekvapil, CSc. (04.10.2022)

 

This course might be partly taught using the platform Zoom or MS Teams (pending on the pandemic situation). In that case details for joining the course online would be provided to registered students in due time.

Syllabus

Last update: doc. PhDr. Jiří Nekvapil, CSc. (08.12.2023)

Main Themes

 

•         What is discourse

•         Text Linguistics: Thematic Progression

•         Narrative Analysis: W. Labov’s Structural Approach

•         Narrative Analysis as Methodology: Language Biographies

•         Media Dialogical Networks

•         Bakhtinian Research

•         Foucaultian Approaches

•         Critical Approaches to Discourse (Critical Discourse Analysis, American Linguistic Anthropology, Noam Chomsky)