Paper Group 2 of Discourse Analysis 4

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Discourse and Society

PAPER

Submitted to Fulfill Course Assignments

Discourse Analysis

Lecturer : Dewi Kurniawati, M.Pd

By : Group 2

Class 6E

Mellya Fidyahwati 1911040395

Tri Rahayu 1911040505

ENGLISH EDUCATION STUDY PROGRAM

TARBIYAH AND TEACHER TRAINING FACULTY

STATE ISLAMIC UNIVERSITY OF RADEN INTAN LAMPUNG

2021-2022

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DISCUSSION

A. Definitions of Discourse and Society


According to the contemporary language dictionary, the word discourse has
three meanings. First, conversation; saying; speech. Second, the whole conversation
which is a unity. Third, the largest language unit whose realization is in the form of a
complete essay. Discourse is the most complete language unit above the sentence and
the highest grammatical unit in the grammatical hierarchy. As the most complete
language unit, discourse has concepts, ideas, thoughts, or ideas that can be understood
by readers and listeners. As the highest grammatical unit, discourse is formed from
sentences that meet grammatical and other discursive requirements. The grammatical
requirement in discourse is that the discourse must be cohesive and coherent. Cohesive
means that there is a harmonious relationship between the elements in the discourse.
While coherent means discourse integrated so that it contains a neat and correct
understanding. Coherent but not cohesive discourse.
Example: Andi and Budi go to Hitecmall, he wants to buy a laptop.
The example is not cohesive because he said it was not clear who he referred to, to Andi
or Budi, or to both. So it can be concluded that a good discourse is a cohesive and
coherent discourse.
J.S. Badudu (2000) in Eriyanto (2001:2) Discourse is a series of related
sentences, which connect propositions one proposition with another, forming a single
unit, so that a harmonious meaning is formed between the sentences; 2. The most
complete and highest or largest language unit above a sentence or clause with
continuous high coherence and cohesion, which is able to have a real beginning and
end, delivered orally or in writing. From this definition there are several important
elements of discourse, namely:
a. series of sentences
b. related
c. form one unit
d. language unity
e. most complete and highest
f. above a sentence or clause
g. high coherence and cohesion
h. sustainable

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i. has a beginning and an end
j. oral and written
This definition is more complete when compared to other definitions or
discourse limitations presented by other linguists.

Society is a group of people as language users in communicating with other


people, as a form of communication they use different media. According to Sumarlam
(2008: 1), broadly speaking, the means of communication are divided into two types,
namely spoken language communication and written communication. Oral language
communication is the process of delivering and receiving information from the giver of
information to the recipient of the information without using an intermediary. Written
language communication is the process of delivering and receiving information from
the giver of information to the recipient of information by means of an intermediary
(media), one of which is discourse.

B. Discourse Communities
Swales ( 1990 ) provides a set of characteristics for identifying a group of people
as members of a particular discourse community. The group must have some set of
shared common goals, some mechanisms for communication and some way of
providing the exchange of information among its members. The community must have
its own particular genres, its own set of specialized terminology and vocabulary and a
high level of expertise in its particular area. These goals may be formally agreed upon
(as in the case of clubs and associations) ‘or they may be more tacit’. The ways in which
people communicate with each other and exchange information will vary according to
the group. This might include meetings, newsletters, casual conversations or a range of
other types of written and/or spoken communication. That is, the discourse community
will have particular ways of communicating with each other and ways of getting things
done that have developed through time. There will also be a threshold level of expertise
in the use of the genres the discourse community uses for its communications for
someone to be considered a member of that community.
A discourse community is a group of people who share some type of activity.
Members of a discourse community have certain ways of communicating with one
another. They generally have a common goal and may have shared values and beliefs.
A person is often a member of a discourse community. more than one discourse

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community. For example A student at a university, a member of a community volunteer
organization and a member of a church group. The way they communicate within each
group, and their values and beliefs vary.
A telephone call centre is an example of a discourse community. Cameron’s (
2000 ) study of telephone call centres in the United Kingdom suggests what some of
the characteristics of this kind of discourse community might be. She found, for
example, that the telephone operators in the call centres she examined were trained to
communicate with customers on the phone in very particular ways. They were trained
to answer the phone ‘with a smile in their voice’. They were asked to pay attention to
the pitch of their voice so that they conveyed a sense of confidence and sincerity in
what they said. They were required to talk neither too loudly nor too quietly. They were
trained not to drag out what they said, or to speed through what they were saying. They
were also required to provide sufficient feedback to their callers so that the callers knew
they had been understood.
Devitt ( 2004 : 42–4) adds to this discussion by proposing three types of groups
of language users: communities , collectives and networks. Communities are ‘groups
of people who share substantial amounts of time together in common endeavors’, such
as a group of people who all work in the same office. Collectives are groups of people
that ‘form around a single repeated interest, without the frequency or intensity of
contact of a community’, such as people who are members of a bee-keeping group, or
voluntary members of a community telephone advice service. Networks are groups of
people that are not as tightly knit as speech communities with connections being made
by one person ‘who knows another person, who knows another person’, such as
connections that are made through email messages sent and received by people who
may never have met each other (and perhaps never will), but are participating in a
common discourse.

C. Language As Social and Local Practice


Language often have a repertoire of social identities and discourse community
memberships. They may also have a linguistic repertoire that they draw on for their
linguistic interactions. That is, they may have a number of languages or language
varieties they use to interact in within their particular communities. This kind of
situation is common in many parts of the world. The choice of language or language
variety may be determined by the domain the language is being used in, such as with

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family, among friends and in religious, educational and employment settings. Social
factors such as who we are speaking to, the social context of the interaction, the topic,
function and goal of the interaction, social distance between speakers, the formality of
the setting or type of interaction and the status of each of the speakers are also important
for accounting for the language choice that a person makes in these kinds of settings
(Holmes 2008 ).
The US legal drama The Good Wife (CBS 2011 ) provides an example of the
use of language by the same speaker in different social, professional and personal
settings. The lead character in the show, Alicia Florrick, returns to the legal profession
after many years of being a homemaker when her husband goes to jail following a sex
and corruption scandal. In the show, she is a lawyer, a mother, the wife of a disgraced
former state attorney and has a romantic relationship with a colleague in the law firm in
which she works. She behaves, and uses language differently, when she is in each of
these different situations, depending on whether she in her office, in a court of law or at
home in her apartment. The way she speaks also depends on the role which is most
prominent at the time, who she is speaking to, and the purpose of the interaction in
which she is engaged.
Each of these examples highlights the point made by Litossoleti ( 2006 ), Eckert
( 2008 ) and Pennycook ( 2010 ) that language is both a social (Litossoleti and Eckert)
and local (Pennycook) practice, and the meanings that are made through the use of
language are based in the ideologies, activities and beliefs of what it means to be in a
particular place, at a particular time and in a particular setting. In the words of Eckert:
people fashion their ways of speaking, moving their styles this way or that as they move
their personae through situations from moment to moment, from day to day, and through
the life course. (2008: 463)

D. Discourse and Gender


Early work in gender and discourse analysis looked at the relationship between
language use and the biological categories of sex. This has now moved to an
examination of the way language is used in relation to the social category, or rather the
socially constructed category, gender. So, since a girl is born and someone says 'She's
a girl!' the child learns how to be a girl in a given society and culture, from the way she
talks to the way she walks, smiles, dresses and combs her hair (Butler 1993, Livia and
Hall 1997).

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Gender, then, is not simply a natural and inevitable consequence of one's
biological sex (Weatherall 2002). Rather, 'part of the routine, constant work of
everyday, mundane social interactions'; that is, the 'product of social practice' (Eckert
and McConnell-Ginet 2003:5). Gender, further, as Swann (2002:47) points out:
has been seen as very fluid, or less well-defined than it once appeared. In line with
gender theory more generally, researchers interested in language and gender are
increasingly focusing on plurality and diversity among female and male language
speakers, and on gender as a performativity – something that is 'done' in context, rather
than a fixed attribute.
Many of the conversations on the TV show Sex and the City are examples of
how the main character, through the use of language, performs gender. In the following
quote, Miranda asks Carrie why she accepted her boyfriend's proposal. In her response,
Carrie enforces and asserts, through the use of her language, her gender identity, that a
woman who, because she loves her boyfriend, should accept his proposal for marriage:

Miranda: I'm going to ask an unpleasant question now. Why did you ever say yes?
Carrier: Because I love him . . . a man you love kneels on the street, and gives you a
ring. You said yes. That's what you do. (King 2002)
Discussions about how men and women talk, and what they do when they talk,
have also been extended to how people talk about men and women. Holmes (2004), for
example, compared the use of the terms female and female and found that the social
meaning of these terms has changed over the past 30 years. He found women, for
example, had gone from being characterized as disrespectful to situations where this
was no longer the case (although women were more commonly used in written English
than in spoken English). He also found that while lady/ladies can be used as a sign of
politeness in today's formal settings, it can also be used in informal settings to belittle
and demean (see Mills 2008, Mills and Mullany 2011 for a further discussion of sexist
language). As stated by Holmes (2004: 156),
Gender identity is then a complex construction. All levels of language and
discourse, as well as nonverbal aspects and other types of behavior are involved in doing
gender (Butler 2004). Gender, in turn, interacts with other factors such as social class
and ethnicity (Eckert 2011). As Holmes observes:
gender is just one part of a person's social identity, and it is an aspect, which will be
more or less prominent in different contexts. In some contexts, for example, it may be

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more important to emphasize one's professional skills, one's ethnic identity, or one's age
than one's gender. (1997: 9)

E. Discourse and Identity


A person may have a number of identities, each of which is more important at a
different point in time. They may have an identity as a woman, an identity as a mother,
an identity as someone's partner and an identity as an office worker, for example. The
way people present their identity includes the way they use language and the way they
interact with others. However, identity is not natural. They are constructed, in large
part, through the use of discourse. Identity, then, is not something that remains and
remains the same throughout one's life. It is something that is constantly being built
and rebuilt as people interact with one another. Part of having a certain identity is being
recognized by others. Identity, then, is a two-way construction.
The earliest studies of the relationship between language and identity were based on
a variationist perspective; that is, they look at relationships between social variables
such as social class in terms of variations in the use of linguistic variables such as certain
pronunciation features, or use of non-standard grammar. More recent work, however,
has taken a post-structural perspective on language and identity, viewing identity 'as
something in constant process' (Swann et al. 2004: 140-1) on the grounds that it is
through language, or rather through discourse, that identity is basically falsified. or use
of non-standard grammar. More recent work, however, has taken a post-structural
perspective on language and identity, viewing identity 'as something in constant process'
(Swann et al. 2004: 140-1) on the grounds that it is through language, or rather through
discourse, that identity is basically falsified.

 Identity and casual conversation


Many of the interactions on the show Sex and the City are examples of using
discourse to create, express, and construct social (and other) identities. A common
way in which characters in the show do this is through the use of casual
conversational genre.
Identity is a 'negotiated experience' in which we 'define who we are through
the way we experience ourselves. . . and the way in which we and others reify
ourselves' (Wenger 1998: 149). Identity is not fixed, but is constantly being
reconstructed and negotiated through the way we do things and the way we belong
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(or don't) in a group (Casanave 2002). Our identity is further developed as we
increase our participation in certain communities of practice. These identities, in
turn, are based on a shared set of values, agreed cultural understandings and
ideologies that underlie the use of spoken and written discourse.

 Written academic identity and discourse


Identity is as big a problem in written discourse as it is in spoken discourse.
This is especially the case in students' academic writing. Hyland (2002 c)
discusses the view that is often conveyed to students that academic writing is a
faceless impersonal discourse. Students were told, he said, 'to leave their
personalities at the door' when they wrote and not to use personal pronouns such
as 'I' which indicates what is being said is the student's view or place in something.
As Hyland (2002 c: 352) puts it, 'almost everything we write says something about
us and the kind of relationship we want to build with our readers'. Indeed, one way
expert academic writers do this, at least in some academic disciplines, is through
the use of the pronoun 'I.
Establishing a writer's identity, however, is something that is often difficult for
second language writers. This is often complicated by students bringing the
different 'voices' of writers from their first language setting to second language
writing situations (Fox 1994). Students may come from a background where they
have considerable standing in their field of study and find it difficult to be told they
need to take the voice of a budding academic writer, and hide their point of view,
when they are writing in their second language. Hirvela and Belcher (2001) argue
that teachers need to know more about how students present themselves in their
first language writing and about their first language and cultural identity so that
they can help students deal with identity issues in their second language writing.

F. Discourse and Ideology


The values and ideologies underlying texts tend to be 'hidden' rather than
openly stated. As Threadgold (1989) observes, texts are neither ideologically free nor
objective. They are also inseparable from social reality and the processes they
contribute to sustaining. For Threadgold, spoken and written genres are not only
linguistic categories, but also 'among the processes by which dominant ideologies are
reproduced, transmitted and potentially changed' (107). In his view, the spoken or
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written genre is never simply a reformulation of a linguistic model, but is always a
politically and historically significant performance process.
There are several ways in which ideology can be explored in a text. The
analysis can begin by looking at the textual features in the text and move from there
to the explanation and interpretation of the analysis. This may include exploring the
underlying ideologies of the linguistic features of the text, dismantling certain biases
and ideological presumptions underlying the text and relating the text to other texts,
and the readers and speakers' own experiences and beliefs (Clark 1995).
One aspect that might be considered in such an analysis is the framing (Gee
2004, Blommaert 2005) of the text; that is, how the content of the text is presented,
and the type of point of view or perspective taken by the author, or speaker. Closely
related to framing is the idea of a foreground; that is, what concepts and issues are
emphasized, and what concepts or issues are underestimated or motivated (Huckin
1997, 2010) in the text. The following scene from Sex and the City is an example.
Carrie just found the engagement ring in her boyfriend Aiden's bag last night. He then
went into the kitchen and threw up. He told his friends about this incident:
Charlotte: You're getting engaged!
Carrie: I threw up. I looked at the ring and I threw up. That's not normal.
Samantha: That's how I react to marriage.
Miranda: What do you think you would do if he asked?
Carrie: I don't know.
Charlotte: Just say yessss!!!
Carrie: Well, it hasn't been long enough, has it?
Charlotte: Trey and I got engaged after just a month.
Samantha: How long before you split up?
Charlotte: We're together now and that's what matters. When it's true, you
just know.
Samantha: Carrie doesn't know.
Carrie: Carrie threw up.
Samantha: So maybe not true. . . (King 2001)

A key cultural value is brought up in this conversation: if a man asks a woman


to marry him, he must 'Just say yes' (also episode title). Other values are based on, or
rather omitted, such as Carrie's views on Aiden's work, ethnic background and social

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class, perhaps because the show's audience already knows it (not because, in this case,
it's irrelevant).

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CONCLUSION

A. Conclusion
Discourse is a series of related sentences, which connect propositions one
proposition with another, forming a single unit, so that a harmonious meaning is formed
between the sentences. The most complete and highest or largest language unit above
a sentence or clause with continuous high coherence and cohesion, which is able to
have a real beginning and end, delivered orally or in writing. the various ways we
express our social identity, communities, Language as social and local practice, gender,
ideology through discourse.

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REFERENCE

https://youtu.be/9cNf0P0ooaU

https://books.google.co.id/books?hl=en&lr=&id=8SjbFBKq35QC&oi=fnd&pg=PR5&dq=inf
o:VMUO9ZzuM4oJ:scholar.google.com/&ots=7sD8BU4FGP&sig=wBynbNacaR87jsad
LXC8HhO0ZJw&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/288289784_Language_as_a_Local_Practice

Paltridge Brian. 2012. Discourse Analysis An Introduction. 2nd edition. New York:
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.

Schiffrin Deborah, Tannen Deborah and Heidi E. Hamilton. 2001. The Handbook of
Discourse Analysis. Malden, Massachusetts 02148 USA : Blackwell Publishers Ltd.

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