ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a selection of approaches to discourse analysis, representing both linguistic/cognitive and social orientations. It describes the aims and methods of selected approaches and mentions some of the scholars associated with each and provides examples of studies that use the approaches that have selected to illuminate a language problem faced by individual users representative of the 'key populations'. These 'key populations' are people who have the potential to benefit from applied linguistic research or practice of some kind. The chapter includes professional language users, linguistically marginalized populations, additional language learners, language professionals and people with language-related impairments. Ethnographic approaches to discourse analysis are part of a sociolinguistic tradition and are closely associated with the work of Hymes. The communicative approach in additional language teaching stresses that the aim of learning a language is communicative competence. The origins of conversation analysis (CA) lie in the sociological approach to language and communication known as ethnomethodology.