Aiden’s Linguistics Blog - Discourse Analysis

 Aiden Cunningham

Mr. Roddy
IHSS
7 September 2021

Aiden’s Linguistics Blog - Discourse Analysis

The way we interpret each other, whether it be through indirect means of communication like signs, recordings, and more, or if it is a type of direct communication like a conversation, can vary greatly depending on the person, the surroundings, the current situation, or even the past experiences of the person. The first example the article gives us is by using two signs, which forces our brains to interpret the situation differently based on whether we read the second sign or not. The first sign says “Please use the toilet, not the pool”. Simple enough? Well, the second one says "Pool for members only.". You may not get this at first, but it can be interpreted as “Members can swim in the pool, and non-members can only swim in the toilet”. I can imagine that’s a bit different than the impression you got reading the first sign. I think this is interesting because it really shows how our perception of something can be altered just by adding a little bit to the end, even without changing what we already know. 

The article also includes several other references to how something can change our perception of something. One time a story about the end of the world was read on radio, and people who were tuning in late and didn’t know it was a story believed the events being described to be true. If you heard “I pronounce you man and wife”, without knowing about marriage ceremonies, you would be quite confused. Both of these are examples of context. If you don’t know what’s going on, it is very likely that you will misinterpret what’s going on, and usually it’s not for the better (although that’s not always the case). This is interesting because, even though you may be using words someone’s heard thousands of times -- for example, “Man and wife” -- you may still not understand what’s going on.

The final example the article gives is one about the context in speech, where people, when talking, may expect you to wait until they are fully done, or may be used to you butting in when they are finishing up their sentence. They also may expect you to say words like “mhm”, “wow”, “cool”, “I didn’t know that”, etc, so that they know that you are listening to them and not just spacing out or thinking about something else. This is especially hard to predict, and most people themselves do not know what they like when in conversation, and it is usually quite difficult to tell if you just met someone.

I think that all of these different points are sort of things that make you think more into the way we talk, and when you think more into them, they can definitely be seen as true, and I’m sure most of us have most likely experienced every one of these examples at least once in our life. That’s what makes this article so interesting.


Article: https://www.linguisticsociety.org/resource/discourse-analysis-what-speakers-do-conversation

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