ABSTRACT
As Thomas Huckin pointed out in chapter 1, one starting point for the analysis of texts is meaning. This chapter begins from a different starting point for the investigation of texts, which is the analysis of language through a method known as discourse analysis. In this chapter, I introduce discourse analysis as a method for analyzing the ways that specific features of language contribute to the interpretation of texts in their various contexts. Discourse analysis, broadly defined, is the study of the ways that language is organized in texts and contexts; discourse analysis can investigate features of language as small and specific as aspects of sentence structure, or it can investigate features of texts and contexts as large and diffuse as genres and sociocultural world views. Discourse analysis can be practiced either quantitatively or qualitatively, or with an emphasis on linguistic structure or contextual function, although most discourse studies utilize a combined design of qualitative-quantitative and structural-functional methods and analyses. There are currently a great many approaches to discourse analysis because it is practiced by many researchers in different fields, but we focus here on discourse analysis as it has been developed in the field of linguistics and practiced in the field of composition studies. This chapter first covers basic concepts and approaches in discourse analysis, reviews the literature on one seminal issue within the field, and then describes a method for discourse analysis of written texts called rich feature analysis.
