Discourse on the Move

Using corpus analysis to describe discourse structure

Douglas Biber, Ulla Connor and Thomas A. Upton
Northern Arizona University / Indiana University - Indianapolis
Discourse on the Move is the first book-length exploration of how corpus-based methods can be used for discourse analysis, applied to the description of discourse organization. The primary goal is to bring these two analytical perspectives together: undertaking a detailed discourse analysis of each individual text, but doing so in terms that can be generalized across all texts of a corpus. The book explores two major approaches to this task: ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’. In the ‘top-down’ approach, the functional components of a genre are determined first, and then all texts in a corpus are analyzed in terms of those components. In contrast, textual components emerge from the corpus analysis in the bottom-up approach, and the discourse organization of individual texts is then analyzed in terms of linguistically-defined textual categories. Both approaches are illustrated through case studies of discourse structure in particular genres: fund-raising letters, biology/biochemistry research articles, and university classroom teaching.
[Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 28]  2007.  xii, 290 pp.
Publishing status: Available
HardboundAvailable
ISBN 9789027223029 | EUR 105.00 | USD 158.00
 
e-BookSold by e-book platforms
ISBN 9789027291912 | EUR 105.00 | USD 158.00
 
 

Table of Contents

Preface
xi–xii
1. Discourse analysis and corpus linguistics
1–20
Part I. Top-down analysis of discourse organization
2. Introduction to move analysis
Co-authored with Budsaba Kanoksilapatham
23–41
3. Identifying and analyzing rhetorical moves in philanthropic discourse
43–72
4. Rhetorical moves in biochemistry research articles
Budsaba Kanoksilapatham
73–119
5. Rhetorical appeals in fundraising
Co-authored with Molly Anthony and Kostyantyn Gladkov
121–151
Part II. Bottom-up analyses of discourse organization
6. Introduction to the identification and analysis of vocabulary-based discourse units
Co-authored with Eniko Csomay, James K. Jones and Casey M. Keck
155–173
7. Vocabulary-based discourse units in biology research articles
Co-authored with James K. Jones
175–212
8. Vocabulary-based discourse units in university class sessions
Eniko Csomay
213–238
Conclusion: Comparing the analytical approaches
239–259
Appendix 1: A brief introduction to multi-dimensional analysis
261–266
Appendix 2: Grammatical and lexico-grammatical features included in the multi-dimensional analyses
267–271
References
273–285
Index
287–289

Quotes

“The integration of corpus-based approaches with top-down discourse analysis in this volume is a significant achievement, and its clearly described procedures will be valuable to anybody attempting further work of this kind.”
John M. Swales, University of Michigan, in Language 85(3): 694-696
Discourse on the Move is interesting and inspiring. It is a valuable work of synthesis, where several previous approaches are combined to produce more extensive and comprehensive findings. The book is aimed at corpus linguists, but it can be informative also for those computational linguists, NLP researchrs and language engineers who are keen to incorporate language variation and genre specifics into computational models.”
Marina Santini, University of Glasgow, in Computational Linguistics Vol. 35(1), 2009

Subjects

Benjamins Subject classification

BIC Subject

CFG: Semantics, Pragmatics, Discourse Analysis

BISAC Subject

LAN009000: LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics
U.S. Library of Congress Control Number:  2007029145
This page is part of John Benjamins Publishing Company website. Click 'embed' to view its contents in the fully-featured web application. Embed