ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of the book. This book talks about discourse analysis as a general label that encompasses various approaches to discourse such as conversation analysis, interactional sociolinguistics, and critical discourse analysis. It is important to acknowledge, however, that the term "discourse analysis" is sometimes reserved for more specific traditions or approaches. In sociology and social psychology, for example, discourse analysis originated in the sociology of scientific knowledge associated with the work of Nigel Gilbert and Michael Mulkay. In linguistics, the enterprise of discourse came about as an attempt by linguists to go beyond the sentence level in the study of language. The belief was that just as sentences were built from identifiable elements and rules, so should be discourse. The book provides an initial sampling of what the work of doing discourse analysis looks like, that is, what doing close reading means in actual discourse analytic work.
