Discourse is ‘‘a general
term for examples of language use, i.e. language which has been produced as the
result of an act of communication. Whereas grammar refers to the rules- …phrase,
and sentence, discourse refers to larger units of language such as paragraphs,
conversations and interviews.
And
discourse analysis is ‘‘the study of
how sentences in spoken and written language form larger meaningful units such
as paragraphs, conversation, interviews, etc. For example, discourse analysis
deals with :
i.
how
the choice of articles, pronoun and tenses affects the structure of the
discourse
ii.
the
relationship between utterances in a discourse
iii.
the
moves made by the speaker to introduce a new topic, change the topic, or assert
a higher relationship to the other participants’’.
There are two forms of discourse analysis:
i.
Conversational
analysis: the analysis of spoken discourse
ii.
Test
linguistics: the study of written discourse
However the
recent analyses are carried out in the classroom to find out the effectiveness
of teaching methods, and the types of teacher-student relationships.