Part 2: Some key issues in applied linguistics
Discourse analysis and applied linguistics
Another area of research in which applied linguists are active is the analysis of discourse, where the aim is not so much the identification of the patterns and systems that constitute a language as the use of that language for specific communicative purposes. The term 'discourse analysis' carries a number of different meanings, and those who practice it operate within a range of disciplines, from the more socio logical to the more linguistic. Work more strongly associated with the former tends to explore how 'discursive practices [may be] constitutive of knowledge', while that linked with the latter has been termed 'textually oriented discourse analysis' (Fairclough 1993: 38).
Insights from both orientations, though more usually the latter, are 'applied' in language teaching, where learners need to be familiar not only with sentence level constructions but also with the larger patterns which characterize a wide range of text types and social interactions. For discussions of different methods and models of discourse analysis in respect of their usefulness to teachers and students of (English as a) foreign language, see, for example, Cook 1989, McCarthy 1991, McCarthy and Carter 1994. The different genres into which discourse can be subdivided have also been explored in applied linguistics, and research continues into how different text types may be classified, and how the discourse of particular kinds of practice, particularly academic practice, is constituted and learned. Some relevant literature here includes, for example, Dudley-Evans 1994 and Swales 1990. Research into the discourse of various written genres has also been used in suggestions for the teaching of mother-tongue literacy to schoolchildren (Lewis and Wray 1997; Martin 1989; Rothery 1989).
Sociologists may well be more familiar with the approaches to discourse analysis which have developed out of ethnomethodology, with its interest in how people produce and interpret conversation. The seminal theorists associated with this kind of conversation analysis (CA) include Garfinkel, Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson. These conversation analysts have sought to identify, for example, the ways in which speakers open and close conversations, and how turns and transitions between speakers are managed within fractions of a second. Some applied linguists have sought to explore how the findings of CA may be utilized in pedagogic contexts (e.g. Seedhouse forthcoming; Wong 2002), while Firth (1996) uses a CA approach to look at intercultural encounters, analyzing interactions in English between non-native speakers.
