The role of discourse analysis in teaching foreign languages

According to our research, in the second half of the twentieth century, at the intersection of several sciences: hermeneutics, sociology, pragmatics, semiotics, linguistics, informatics, rhetoric, psychology, it emerged as a scientific discipline - the theory of text, known in European science under the term “theory of discourse”. It, regardless of the number of interdisciplinary intersections, has a full-fledged individual ontological status and includes any sequence of signs. It is worth noting that its main object is a verbal text, in this regard, the data accumulated in linguistics in the process of describing and characterizing the text are important.

In contrast to grammatical analysis, which focuses on a singular sentence, discourse analysis, by contrast, focuses on the wide and common use of language within and between specific groups of people. In addition, grammarians usually construct examples themselves, which are subsequently analyzed, while discourse analysis relies on the speech (oral and written) results of the works of a large number of people, as the goal is to identify the popular uses of the language.

Method

The methods and concepts of recent study of discourse make possible an analysis of the discourses, in their relation to institutional practices, through which a division of texts has been marked out and literature has been constituted as the object of a certain enshrinement. [29;66]

For at least ten years now, ‘discourse’ has been a fashionable term. In scientific texts and debates, it is used indiscriminately, often without being defined. The concept has become vague, either meaning almost nothing, or being used with more precise, but rather different, meanings in different contexts. But, in many cases, underlying the word ‘discourse ‘is the general idea that language is structured according to different patterns that people’s utterances follow when they take part in different domains of social life, familiar examples being ‘medical discourse’ and ‘political discourse’. ‘Discourse analysis’ is the analysis of these patterns. But this common sense definition is not of much help in clarifying what discourses are, how they function, or how to analyses them. Here, more developed theories and methods of discourse analysis have to be sought out. And, in the search, one quickly finds out that discourse analysis is not just one approach, but a series of interdisciplinary approaches that can be used to explore many different social domains in many different types of studies. And there is no clear consensus as to what discourses are or how to analyze them. Different perspectives offer their own suggestions and, to some extent, compete to appropriate the terms ‘discourse’ and ‘discourse analysis’ for their own definitions. Let us begin, however, by proposing the preliminary definition of a discourse as a particular way of talking about and understanding the world (or an aspect of the world).

Literary review

G. Brown and G. Yul [2, p. 24] note that in "discourse analysis" the field for research is rarely formed on the basis of one sentence (or even on the basis of one text). For their observations, the authors of discourse analysis should, first of all, collect the required amount of data - in our case - text units. Then, find in audio recordings or handwritten texts, such phenomena such as the specificity of each text, common features and similarity of the text with other texts, non-standard forms in the studied text and their correspondence to the semantic load. In simple terms, this means that discourse analysis is about observing spoken, cultural, and actual use of a language, while grammar analysis relies entirely on sentence structure, word use, and stylistic choices at the sentence level, which can often include culture. but not the human element of discourse.

Result

The sentence, an undefined creation of limitless variety, is the very life of human speech in action. We conclude from this that with the sentence we leave the domain of language as a system of signs and enter into another universe, that of language as an instrument of communication, whose expression is discourse. [7:47]

Three different approaches to social constructionist discourse analysis – Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s discourse theory, critical discourse analysis, and discursive psychology. All three approaches share the starting point that our ways of talking do not neutrally reflect our world, identities and social relations but, rather, play an active role in creating and changing them. We have selected these approaches from the range of different perspectives within discourse analysis on the grounds that we think that they represent particularly fruitful theories and methods for research in communication, culture and society. They can be applied in analysis of many different social domains, including organizations and institutions, and in exploration of the role of language use in broad societal and cultural developments such as globalization and the spread of mass mediated communication...Michel Foucault has played a central role in the development of discourse analysis through both theoretical work and empirical research.

In almost all discourse analytical approaches, Foucault has become a figure to quote, relate to, comment on, modify and criticize. We will also touch on Foucault, sketching out his areas of contribution to discourse analysis – not only in order to live up to the implicit rules of the game, but also because all our approaches have roots in Foucault’s ideas, while rejecting some parts of his theory. [19;56]

Discourse theory aims at an understanding of the social as a discursive construction whereby, in principle, all social phenomena can be analyzed using discourse analytical tools. First, we present the discourse theoretical approach to language, and then extend the theory to cover the entire social field. Because of its broad focus, discourse theory is suitable as a theoretical foundation for different social constructionist approaches to discourse analysis. But since Laclau and Mouffe’s texts aim at theory development, they do not include so many practical tools for textually oriented discourse analysis. As a result, it can be fruitful to supplement their theory with methods from other approaches to discourse analysis.

The pedagogic consequence of this new functional perspective is that language and communication are placed in a wider framework. They can no longer be defined as pedagogic aims in themselves, but as a means of adaptation and survival in the world. Another consequence is that, if the choice of a specific lexical-grammatical structure is presented as one level of adaptation, side by side with other levels (choice of pronunciation, style, situation, channel, function), we should start thinking of distributing our teaching efforts accordingly, instead of giving grammar so much priority over the other levels.

It has also been settled that what is essential to be successful in language learning is interaction, in both written and spoken form. In addition, students’ failures in communication which result in negotiation of meaning, requests for explanation or reorganization of message contribute to language acquisition. One of the major concerns of discourse analysts has been the manner in which students ought to be involved in the learning process, how to control turn-taking, provide feedback as well as how to teach different skills most effectively on the grounds of discourse analysis’ offerings conversation takes his turn to speak to link his utterance to what has been said before.

Conclusion.

In recent years, discourse analysis has evolved in parallel with rhetorical research in order to include a much wider range of topics, from mass to private use of language, from official to spoken rhetoric, and from oratory to written and multimedia discourse. According to K. Eisenhart and B. Johnston, discourse analysis and analysis of rhetoric have similar goals, since they allow analyzing texts from the point of view of a situational semantic field, as well as taking into account the mass, features culture and even the way textual material is presented.

Thus, discourse analysis in teaching provides an opportunity to stimulate students to self-study and the development of critical thinking, which is vital not only in all areas of academic education, but also for lifelong education in general.