Hello!
Discourse analysis is basically analysing discourse. hah, really... didn't know that! And well, what is discourse you say? Discourse is basically any "chunk" of text. Seriously! Take any text. For example, you might be reading a poem, and it might have a lot of 'deeper' meaning underneath the basic dictionary definition of its words, of its body of the text. Your teacher might want you to find examples of 'colour' expressing the poet's mood. So off you go, you scan the text of the poem, which is the discourse, to find the words 'blue', 'red' and 'green' that might help the writer to express himself, to show that he or she is angry, sad or jealous.
Discourse can be anything, and it doesn't have to be written text. Discourse can be spoken text too, and you will find that the majority of ELang's course is in binary form where you also deal with written and spoken texts in comparing and contrasting ways. Discourse can even be a transcript of a radio interview, and you could 'analyse' the function of silence in discourse, or vocal features such as laughter and interruptions and how they add to the authenticity of a radio interview, as opposed to something scripted or pre-prepared.
Discourse analysis is important for many factors. It can help cohesion and coherence. Cohesion is things that are used in texts to make the article, blog, banner, narrative, etc. stick together. Eg. The use of an author using the pronoun 'he' in place of, say, the noun 'Peter' all the time avoids repetition and, well, being boring. You don't want to read 'Peter went to the supermarket. Peter then went down aisle 7. Suddenly, Peter saw a ghost!' loljks I am far from creative, but I think my point has been made! You will want to kill Peter after 3 lines. Coherence, however, is how words, phrases, any 'bits' of text "make sense" to the reader or listener.
You can use the previous example about colours in a poem for coherence. So by associating colours to mood, the audience has a better understanding of the text and its connotations. It also works for cohesion, as the words 'blue' 'green' 'red' all come from the same semantic field - all words about colour. You can have HEAPS of semantic fields or 'domains', from football to school to laptops to bread, they're like categories that group together similar words that are associated together with different topics. So if you're watching an advertisement about, say, TV screens, you as the listener and viewer will be constantly reminded that TV screens are what is being offered to you by the use and repetition of technical terminology or 'jargon' such as 'LCD', 'pixels', etc.
I hope this all made sense, but fear not if you don't understand what I've just written as it may well be all new to you. Throughout the year you will learn all this new terminology and will feel more and more comfortable using it to explain the way words work throughout the year, in SACs and exam purposes. Nevertheless, feel free to ask for clarification or pm me if you feel the need! Cheers
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