DA, CDA, Text linguistics, Sociolinguistics... Newbie questi
Posted: July 20th, 2013, 6:37 am
Hey all. Just found this site and its incredible. Wish I'd known about it during my BA.
Anyway, I'm starting my MA in September and am interested in pushing my interests in languages further, particularly in the area of pragmatics. Obviously DA is the big dealio at the minute, but as a newcomer to the field, there seems to be a lot of terminology which overlaps and causes confusion.
From what I gather, pragmatics is the major category (like semantics/syntax) and DA is a category within that, closely aligned with things like Speech-act Theory and SFG. DA itself then seems to contain a range of perspectives from the more Foucautian tradition of Discourse as power-play (is this were CDA comes in?) to an approach that is more focused on the relation of sentences and paragraphs within a discourse (text linguistics? Composition studies?).
I also read an article by Nida who was talking g about sociolinguistics in a way that I understood pragmatics, I.e the overall field of studying language in use. Isn't sociolinguistics primarily concerned with the effects of ones social status an situation on speech?
Overall I'm very confused and am trying to find a path into a field that doesn't yet seem to have clearly defined boundaries. From what I pick up on tips forum, DA is more concerned with the micro level of discourse markers and pragmatic reasons for certain syntactic structures. Is that correct?
Thanks
Anyway, I'm starting my MA in September and am interested in pushing my interests in languages further, particularly in the area of pragmatics. Obviously DA is the big dealio at the minute, but as a newcomer to the field, there seems to be a lot of terminology which overlaps and causes confusion.
From what I gather, pragmatics is the major category (like semantics/syntax) and DA is a category within that, closely aligned with things like Speech-act Theory and SFG. DA itself then seems to contain a range of perspectives from the more Foucautian tradition of Discourse as power-play (is this were CDA comes in?) to an approach that is more focused on the relation of sentences and paragraphs within a discourse (text linguistics? Composition studies?).
I also read an article by Nida who was talking g about sociolinguistics in a way that I understood pragmatics, I.e the overall field of studying language in use. Isn't sociolinguistics primarily concerned with the effects of ones social status an situation on speech?
Overall I'm very confused and am trying to find a path into a field that doesn't yet seem to have clearly defined boundaries. From what I pick up on tips forum, DA is more concerned with the micro level of discourse markers and pragmatic reasons for certain syntactic structures. Is that correct?
Thanks