DISCOURSE ANALYSIS |
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Discourse analysis (DA) is a general term for number of approaches to analysing language use, regardless of production form (e.g., writing, speaking, signing). The term discourse analysis first entered general use as the title of a paper published by Zellig Harris in 1952. Harris' method was more of an expansion of grammatical analysis than what is now commonly thought of as discourse analysis, and as a result this portion of his work is now largely neglected, other than the title itself. Thus, most discourse analysts following Harris have conducted work that falls under the heading of pragmatics in modern linguistics, rather than syntactics, though many discourse analysts would reject linguists tripartite division of the main characteristics of language--the third characteristic being "semantics."
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LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS |
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Linguistics is the scientific study of human language, and someone who engages in this study is called a linguist.
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SEMANTICS |
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Semantics is a subfield of linguistics that is traditionally defined as the study of meaning of (parts of) words, phrases, sentences, and texts. Semantics can be approached from a theoretical as well as an empirical (for example psycholinguistic and neuroscientific) point of view. The decompositional perspective towards meaning holds that the meaning of words can be analyzed by defining meaning atoms or primitives, which establish a language of thought. An area of study is the meaning of compounds, another is the study of relations between different linguistic expressions (homonymy, synonymy, antonymy, polysemy, paronyms, hypernymy, hyponymy, meronymy, metonymy, holonymy, exocentric, and endocentric). Semantics includes the study of thematic roles, argument structure, and its linking to syntax. Semantics deals with sense and reference, truth conditions, and discourse analysis. Pragmatics is often considered a part of semantics, but otherwise is treated as a branch of its own.
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