Dimensions
156 x 234 x 25mm
This book is for researchers and students interested in exploring how speakers and writers construe meaning through discourse.
It draws on tools for discourse analysis developed in systemic functional linguistics and register and genre theory but requires no prior knowledge of functional linguistics, avoiding academic complexity wherever possible. Rather it builds a highly accessible set of analytic tools that can be used with ease by workers from a range of disciplines.
These tools are introduced in clear steps through analyses of a set of stories, arguments, reviews, procedures and other texts, that exemplify how meanings are constructed and contested in a culture, by focusing on current issues of truth and reconciliation in post-apartheid South Africa.
Readers are guided through these text analyses from five complimentary perspectives on meaning, exploring ways in which:
- people and things are introduced and tracked though a text
- messages are logically related in discourse sequences
- people, things, processes and qualities are construed and related
- people, things and processes are appreciated, judged and valued
- all these elements of meaning are synthesised and organised in waves of information through a text.
By means of these detailed analyses, the book provides a highly practical resource for application in any field in which discourse analysis has a role, including educational research, critical discourse analysis, cultural studies, text linguistics and language and literacy teaching.
