Synopsis of what is discourses analysis

Discourse comes from Latin word discursus which means conversation or speech. The term discourse is use to reference texts. Beaugrande suggested Seven criteria to be fulfilled to qualify written or spoken text as a discourse. These include the following: Cohesion Coherence Intentionality Acceptability Informativeness Situationality Intertextuality Types of discourse: informative narrative argumentative The differences between speech and writing are that writing includes some medium which keeps record of the conveyed message while speech involves only air. The first modern linguist who commenced the study of relation of sentences and coined the name 'discourse analysis', which afterwards denoted a branch of applied linguistics, was Zellig Harris (Cook 1990:13). The examination of oral discourse is mainly the domain of linguists gathered at the University of Birmingham, who at first concentrated on the language used during teacher - learner communication, afterwards altering their interest to more general issues.Written texts differ from one another not only in genre and function, but also in their structure and form, which is of primary importance to language teachers, as the knowledge of arrangement and variety of writing influences readers' understanding, memory of messages included in the discourse, as well as the speed of perception.