Language and Discourse Analysis

Study Notes

### Language and Discourse

Focuses on what media and language do rather than just what they are.
Uses linguistic approaches to study language:
- Traditional Linguistics: Studies language as a set of rules (Example: Noam Chomsky)
- Pragmatics: Studies how people use language to perform actions (Examples: threatening, apologizing)
- Conversation Analysis: Examines how conversations are structured and governed.
- Interactional Sociolinguistics: Looks at how language constructs identities and relationships.
- Critical Discourse Analysis: Investigates how language reflects and perpetuates power and ideologies.
Discourse Analysis focuses on language use in social and cultural contexts, analyzing units like conversations and texts.
Other linguistic approaches like Syntax, Semantics, etc., focus on the structure and meaning at the sentence, word or sound level using formal rules.
Discourse Analysis aims to understand how meaning is constructed and communicated through context and interaction.
Areas where discourse analysis is used: language teaching, computational linguistics, media studies, political discourse, and conversational analysis.

### Mediated Discourse Analysis

Examines how media and language together mediate social actions and societal structures.
Mediation, defined by Lev Vygotsky, is the process of facilitating interaction between entities through media, which include both physical and mental tools.
Media, as explained by Marshall McLuhan, are extensions of human capability. This means media expand our abilities (e.g., electric lights extend vision, computers extend cognitive capabilities).

Technological Determinism suggests that media determine what we can do and think.
While media influence us, humans shape and adapt media use creatively.
Social conventions and media ideologies shape how media are used, with beliefs about "appropriate" use varying across cultures and contexts.

Different media communicate in different ways. Example: Text is read in a sequence, while images can be viewed in any order.
This affects how we understand and process information.

Language has clear rules and meanings, while images and gestures can be more ambiguous.
Even though they can be ambiguous, these modes still follow some shared understanding.

### Barthes on Photography

Roland Barthes explains that a photo's meaning depends on its context and the social setting in which it's seen.
Interpreting images can be complex.

### Peirce's Semiotics

Charles Peirce classified signs into three categories:
- Icons: look like what they represent
- Symbols: arbitrary representations
- Indexes: depend on a relation between sign and object.