Discourse on the Move: Using corpus analysis to describe discourse structure

Studies in Corpus Linguistics #28

by Douglas Biber, Ulla Connor, Thomas A. Upton

"Discourse on the Move" is the first book-length exploration of how corpus-based methods can be used for discourse analysis, applied to the description of discourse organization. The primary goal is to bring these two analytical perspectives undertaking a detailed discourse analysis of each individual text, but doing so in terms that can be generalized across all texts of a corpus. The book explores two major approaches to this top-down and bottom-up . In the top-down approach, the functional components of a genre are determined first, and then all texts in a corpus are analyzed in terms of those components. In contrast, textual components emerge from the corpus analysis in the bottom-up approach, and the discourse organization of individual texts is then analyzed in terms of linguistically-defined textual categories. Both approaches are illustrated through case studies of discourse structure in particular fund-raising letters, biology/biochemistry research articles, and university classroom teaching.

Genres: Linguistics

303 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Douglas Biber: Regents’ Professor in the Applied Linguistics Program (English Department) at Northern Arizona University.