DA Vs Pragmatics

[Christian Kjaer Nelson]

"Discourse analysis" has never been a label for a unified approach to the
study of social interaction. Nevertheless, at the time that Levinson wrote
his book, most of what was being done, aside from conversation analysis, fit
his description of "discourse analysis." Clearly things have changed, as I
learned the last time I discussed this with Jonathon Potter on the languse
list (or was it "ethno"?)--"discourse analysis" has now become synonymous
with "social interaction analysis" (i.e., the designation of a field) for
many people out there. But Levinson can't be criticized for not having
guessed the direction the term would take.

BTW, Levinson did NOT equate discourse analysis with the Birmingham school,
but with a variety of schools (the text grammarians and several, like the
Birmingham school, that were heavily influenced by speech act theory).
Further, I don't see how his critique of discourse analysis cannot be
applied to those scholars and schools to which he intended it to apply. If
it does not fit, I'd love to hear, in some convincing amount of detail, how
it doesn't.

Christian Nelson

----- Original Message -----
From: Thomas Bloor <T.Bloor at ASTON.AC.UK>
To: <DISCOURS at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG>
Sent: Monday, March 13, 2000 6:45 PM
Subject: Re: DA Vs Pragmatics


> Dominique
>
> Re Steve Levinson's 'Pragmatics'; it has often been suggested that he
> presents a misleading distinction between discourse analysis and
> pragmatics. Although I admire Levinson's book greatly, I fully endorse
this
> assessment. He sets very narrow limits for what he considers to be DA and,
> if I remember correctly, seems to equate it almost exclusively and very
> mistakenly with the Birmingham (Sinclair/Coulthard) model; also, I have
> doubts about his internal evaluation of this model itself. Of course, it
> was published 17 years ago and a lot has happened in DA since then, but I
> think that even at the time, Steve got this wrong. (Read the book, though.
> It is excellent on many issues.)
>
> Tom
>
>
>
> >  Hi Gisela (Redeker) and Elisabeth (Traugott),
> >
> >many thanks for your answer (Gisela) and reflexion (both of you) on the
> >relation between Discourse Analysis and Pragmatics; as I'm just doing a
> >Master's Degree in Applied Linguistics, I don't have as much knowledge as
> >both of you about this topic, but I have a deep interest. I will keep
> >these comments and reflexions in my PC files for further references.
> >As Gisela suggested me, I could find an answer to my question in
> >"Levinson, S. 1983. Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
> >Chapter 6".
> >I'm also going to visit again Teun's home page and look for what you tell
> >me, Gisela.
> >
> >
> >Regards
> >
> >Dominique
>
>
> Thomas Bloor
> Language Studies Unit
> Aston University
> Birmingham, UK
> B4 7ET
>
> Phone:0121 359 3611 xt 4212/4236
> Fax:0121 359 2725
>