Discourse Analysis

Discourse analysis is concerned with the study of language use beyond the boundaries of the sentence. The term refers to analysis of larger linguistic units such as conversations or written texts, and most discourse analysts ultimately aim to understand the relationship between language and society. The scope of discourse analysis is vast, drawing on a variety of disciplines and encompassing an array of perspectives. Within bilingual education, researchers generally have taken a sociocultural approach to analysis, building largely on the work of Dell Hymes, who pioneered the field known as the ethnography of communication. In the 1970s, several foundational volumes were published elaborating this approach, which argues that language must be studied as communication in its sociocultural context. In 1972, Hymes collaborated with John Gumperz to edit Directions in Sociolinguistics; in the same year, with Courtney Cazden and Vera John, Hymes proposed how this approach could be applied to classroom research in Functions of Language in the Classroom. In 1974, he addressed the importance of using the approach as a basis to study bilingual education in Foundations in Sociolinguistics. The contributions of Gumperz provide another sociocultural dimension by focusing on people's interpretation processes within discourse. His Discourse Strategies and Language and Social Identity, both published in 1982, are important to those interested in bilingual education because of the focus on interethnic discourse in various contexts. Gumperz and colleagues show that people's miscommunication can occur because of differences in communicative styles.

Researchers in bilingual education who take an ethnographic approach to discourse analysis argue that it contributes to a more fully satisfactory portrait of communicative practices in communities and classrooms where two or more languages are at play. With the increasing numbers of immigrant children entering the nation's schools, analysis of classroom discourse offers detailed descriptions of these students and their teachers engaging in learning moments sometimes effectively, sometimes inadequately, and always in a complex world of social interaction. This research approach has begun to make classroom communication, in all its complexity, better understood. Topics examined include the kinds of specialized “discourses” students must learn in school to attain academic achievement, the different communicative styles children bring from home to school, language choice in bilingual classroom situations, and the nature of communication in “mainstream” and English as a Second Language (ESL) classrooms. Beyond these descriptive analyses, researchers are also interested in the role of power in discourse. This entry focuses on studies of discourse in classrooms that include language minority students.