While there is a growing body of psycholinguistic experimental research on mappings between language and vision on a word and sentence level, there are almost no studies on how speakers perceive, conceptualise and spontaneously describe a complex visual scene on higher levels of discourse.
Discourse Analysis for Language Teaching gives a practical introduction to the field of discourse analysis and its relevance for language teaching. It begins by answering the question 'What is discourse analysis?' and examines how discourse analysts approach spoken and written language. Different models of analysis are outlined and evaluated in terms of their usefulness to language teachers. This is followed by chapters on discourse-oriented approaches to grammar, vocabulary and phonology. The final section looks at spoken and written language and considers examples of teaching approaches.
Doctors, nurses, and other caregivers often know what people with Alzheimer's disease or Asperger's 'sound like' - that is they recognise patterns in people's discourse, from sounds and silences, to words, sentences and story structures. Such discourse patterns may inform their clinical judgements and affect the decisions they make. However, this knowledge is often tacit, like recognising a regional accent without knowing how to describe its features.
Lawyers' Language: The Distinctiveness of Legal Language
An interesting examination of law as language use or discourse, this study looks at the transformation of ordinary language into a special discourse for the purposes of the legal system. It is widely accepted that legal discourse is obscure, and often the public resent the fact that access to the law of the land is obstructed by the opaqueness of legal language.
The relationship between language, discourse and identity has always been a major area of sociolinguistic investigation. In more recent times, the field has been revolutionized as previous models - which assumed our identities to be based on stable relationships between linguistic and social variables - have been challenged by pioneering new approaches to the topic. This volume brings together a team of leading experts to explore discourse in a range of social contexts.
