It means language-in-use or stretches of language (like conversations, narratives, stories, sermons, public letters, arguments, speeches, meetings, and interviews). According to James Gee, notions of who we are and what we are doing are significant in constituting spoken or written texts. If the reader/listener has no idea about the kind of person and activity of the writer/speaker, then he cannot make sense of such text. Therefore, discourses are co-ordinations of people, places, times, actions, interactions, expressions, and symbols that indicate particular identities and accompanied activities (Gee, 2001, P.13-23). Discourse analysis is concerned with the analysis of language in use. It is used to indicate to the analysis of both spoken and written texts. Furthermore, It includes the study of the way written texts are constructed.
However, this analysis is not restricted to the description of linguistic forms. It studies the functions which those forms are designed to serve in human …show more content…
Halliday and Hasan (1976) identify five distinct types of cohesive relations: reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction and lexical cohesion. To illustrate this, grammatical cohesion includes reference, substitution, ellipsis and conjunction. On the other hand, lexical cohesion is divided to reiteration and collocation. These cohesive devices distinguish texts from random sentences. "It is generally accepted that cohesion refers to the grammatical and lexical elements on the surface of a text which can form connections between parts of the text." (Tanskanen, 2006,