This chapter establishes what it means to do discourse analysis. This is done by defining discourse analysis and providing examples of discourse. The chapter offers a practical overview of how the discourse in discourse analysis fits within the research process. The examples of discourse that are introduced in this chapter are grammar, actions and practices, identities, places and spaces, stories, ideologies, and social structures. After reading the chapter, readers will know what discourse analysis is; understand that there are many types of discourse; know that discourse is an object of study; and understand how an object of study fits within a research project.

The chapter establishes the role of context in an analysis. This is done by defining context, presenting a context continuum that can be used to understand an object of study, and introducing the types of conditions that shape understandings of discourse. Six different approaches to studying context are discussed in this chapter: systemic functional linguistics, the SPEAKING model, frames, indexicality, contextualization cues, and next-turn proof procedure. After reading this chapter, readers will understand what context is and why it is important; be able to study context using different models and constructs; and know how discourse and context work together to create meaning.

This chapter reviews the perspectives and levels of an analysis that inform how an observation is made. This is done by demonstrating that there are two perspectives (language use and the human factor) and five levels (summation, description, interpretation, evaluation, and transformation) of analysis in discourse analysis. These perspectives and levels can be used to understand the frameworks of established methodologies, such as conversation analysis, critical discourse analysis, and narrative analysis. After reading this chapter, readers will know that the analytic process can combine different perspectives and levels of analysis.

The chapter demonstrates that selecting an object of study is a consequential part of doing discourse analysis. Selecting an object of study requires considering many planning and analytic issues that are often neglected in introductory books on discourse analysis. This chapter reviews many of these planning and analytic issues, including how to organize and present data. After reading the chapter, readers will know how to structure an analysis; understand what data excerpts are and how to introduce them in an analysis; be able to create and present an object of study as smaller data excerpts; and know how to sequence an analysis.

This chapter demonstrates that a researcher is attached to the analytic process in ways that make it difficult to be completely independent and objective when doing research. Issues of objectivity and subjectivity are discussed, which offer a frame to understand the ways in which a researcher’s cultural familiarity with an object of study, as well as their professional vision and institutional positionality, inform the analytic process. After reading this chapter, readers will understand that discourse analysis research is inherently subjective; know that a researcher’s cultural familiarity with an object of study is crucial to doing discourse analysis; be able to identify and adopt multiple analytic perspectives; be capable of applying reflexive practices to the analytic process; and understand, and know how to deal with, the power dynamics that exist in discourse analysis research.

This chapter summarizes the main points established in prior chapters and reviews how research questions factor into doing discourse analysis. The aim of the chapter is to help readers synthesize the different aspects of conducting discourse analysis research into a coherent set of principles. This is done by introducing a practical model for doing discourse analysis. After reading this chapter, readers will be able to recall the mains points of doing discourse analysis; be capable of using a model for doing discourse analysis to conduct research; know a number of practical tips for doing discourse analysis; and be able to construct research questions that are relevant to discourse analysis research.

The chapter defines theory and establishes how it informs discourse analysis. Theory is defined as an idea that explains what discourse is, how discourse should be understood, or both. Conversely, a theory is not an opinion, thought, or belief, which are simply intuitions without an explanatory framework. Topics discussed in this chapter include theories of knowledge and applied theories. After reading this chapter, readers will know how to define theory; understand how theory relates to the analytic process; know the difference between a theory of knowledge and an applied theory; and be able to identify the different types of applied theory that exist.

While the desire for “One Nation, One Language” has played a key role in language policies around the world, I argue that it is not really what drives the English-only movement in the United States. Some previous work on language and power oversimplifies how power works, since a policy seeming quaint and innocuous (and therefore impervious to criticism) can be just as powerful as a policy framed in terms of nationalism or globalization. Instead, drawing on Jan Blommaert’s theory of “upscaling,” I argue that downscaling plays just as pivotal a role in the English-only movement, and I examine examples that cut across my interviews, archival research, observations, and policy documents. I begin by analyzing examples of downscaling on its own, then turn toward situations where people engage in both upscaling and downscaling in a single text or interaction. Ultimately, scaling in either direction can be a way to claim linguistic authority. At the same time, sometimes policymakers do not walk this tightrope successfully, and there can be discursive dissonance. I argue that this sort of dissonance played a role in the eventual downfall of Frederick County’s Official English ordinance.

Chapter 4 provides the theoretical framework for suspects’ invocations for counsel in the book’s corpus. The analysis will focus on the discursive features of suspects’ invocations for counsel during custodial interrogation, as well as the sequences of talk that follow the suspects’ invocations. This part of the analysis will use applied game theory, specifically hypergame theory, to describe police-suspect exchanges after a suspect invokes counsel. The model of the invocation game of police interrogation extends signal analysis from simple signaling games into extended conversations based on strategic objectives. This application of game theory to the invocation stage of an interrogation shows how an interrogator can manipulate a custodial suspect to change their preference to invoke counsel due to the ambiguities created by case law, which designates interrogators as arbiters of what constitutes an unequivocal invocation of the right to counsel, and stylized by formal training that encourages interrogators to engage in strategic discourse with suspects to maintain the possibility of obtaining statements.

The notion of “context” is currently being deployed in Discourse Analysis within approaches that subscribe to its constitutive nature. Rather than being extraneous to talk and text, context is conceptualized as an integral part of discourse, in a mutually constitutive text-context relationship. This chapter will cover key insights from three influential and affiliated ways of analyzing context: context as dynamically and interactionally achieved; context as rooted in metapragmatic awareness; and context as historicized and multidimensional. The chapter will then illustrate how these three key insights manifest themselves in the framework of small stories research. After presenting these three features of context, the chapter will focus on two core issues at the forefront of current concerns, namely ambiguity in delineating “context,” and occurrences where what can be postulated as “relevant context” is not readily retrievable from textual data. Picking up on these issues, we argue that future research will need to address discourses and contexts becoming ever more fragmented, dispersed, and even disintegrated through new communication technologies. In this respect, an analytical focus on metapragmatic awareness may aid the identification of interactionally relevant features of context as well as of the (re)affirmation of participants’ shared meanings.

This opening chapter first discusses the important position politeness research holds in pragmatics. Four areas of research are selected for the purpose: speech acts, discourse analysis, conversation analysis, and interaction on the Internet, with the overarching aim to show that politeness offers insights for how meaning is made and transmitted in each of these areas. The second part of the chapter is devoted to the discussion on the important role Chinese politeness plays in politeness research in general. Since the notion of Chinese face is a pillar of Brown and Levinson’s notion of face, an in-depth understanding of Chinese face and, subsequently, Chinese politeness, stands to benefit the understanding of Brown and Levinson’s thinking in their theory. In addition, research on Chinese face has been drawing an increasing amount of attention from scholars of politeness in recent decades, accumulating a literature the size of which few other languages can parallel and offering insights to the understanding of politeness that are unique and significant, a thorough exploration of Chinese politeness can inform the field about politeness theorizing.