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Name : Helmi Abdillah

NIM : 08320049
A. Discourse Analysis
The definition offered by The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language (Crystal, 1992) says:
Discourse analysis is the study of how sentences in spoken and written language form larger
meaningful units such as paragraphs, conversations, interviews, etc.
a) how the choices of articles, pronouns, and tenses affects the structures of the discourse
b) the relationship between utterances in a discourse
c) the moves made by speakers to introduce a new topic, change the topic, or insert a higher role
relationship to the other participants.
Discourse analysis is delimited as the analysis of language beyond sentence level. This contrasts
with typical studies of modern linguistics, which are chiefly concerned with the study of the
structure of language, such as sound segments (phonetics and phonology), parts of words
(morphology), meaning (semantics), and the order of words in sentences (syntax). Discourse
analysts study the larger chunks of language as they flow together . In recent studies of cohesion
and coherence, small bits of language like “oh”, “well” and interjections are covered.
B. Pragmatics
Pragmatics studies how people comprehend and produce a communicative act or speech act in a
concrete speech situation which is usually a conversation. It distinguishes two intents or meanings
in each utterance or communicative act of verbal communication. One is the informative intent or
the sentence meaning, and the other the communicative intent or speaker meaning. The ability to
comprehend and produce a communicative act is referred to as pragmatic competence which often
includes one's knowledge about the social distance, social status between the speakers involved, the
cultural knowledge such as politeness, and the linguistic knowledge both explicit and implicit.

C. Pragmatics v.s. Discourse Analysis


Discourse analysis is allied to pragmatics on the one hand, and their fields of investigation are quite
different on the other. Pragmatics is traditionally labeled in contrast with semantics, and primarily
concerned with language in use. In modern linguistics, pragmatics is applied to the study of
language from the point of view of users, especially of the choice they make, the constraints they
encounter in using language in social interaction and effects their use of language has on the other
participants in an act of communication. Discourse analysis is specifically about the understanding
and examination of spoken or written language in actual communication. Discourse analysis is to
some extent more application-oriented as opposed to pragmatics; pragmatics sustains Discourse
analysis with theoretical preparation in turn.

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