About this Book

Most discourse research follows either of the three major paradigms (positivistic, constructivistic, and critical) in the four domains of analysis which encompass rules and principles, contexts and cultures, and functions and structures, as well as power and politics. Discourse domains reflect which area the investigation is primarily concerned with or focused on. Yet still the analysis of discourse is not confined by and limited to the above framework. At risk of sounding repetitive, it must once more be stressed that a discourse analysis concerns practically with any form of texts; be it written, spoken or visual, etc. A written and oral discourse, both viewed as a language and social reality can be portrayed, investigated, and analyzed by deploying various research approaches. These approaches include (despite being not limited to): (1) Content Analysis, (2) Grounded Theory, (3) Ethnography of communication, (4) Genre Analysis, (5) Ethnomethodological Conversation Analysis (CA), (6) Semiotic, (7) Pragmatics, (8) Critical discourse analysis (CDA), (9) Functional Pragmatic Method, (10) Hermeneutics, (11) Mediated, and (12) Multimodal approaches.