Editing Discourse analysis (section)

==History==
{{Globalize|article|USA|2name=the United States|date=December 2010}}

===Early use of the term===

There is ongoing discussion about whether Austria-born [[Leo Spitzer]]'s ''Stilstudien'' (''Style Studies'') of 1928 is the earliest example of ''discourse analysis'' (DA).{{cn|date=November 2024}} [[Michel Foucault]] translated it into French.<ref>{{Cite web|last = Elden |first = Stuart|url= https://progressivegeographies.com/2016/11/10/when-did-foucault-translate-leo-spitzer/ |title=When did Foucault translate Leo Spitzer? |date=2016-11-10|website = Progressive Geographies}}</ref> However, the term first came into general use following the publication{{cn|date=November 2024}}  of a series of papers by [[Zellig Harris]] from 1952<ref>{{Cite journal|last = Harris |first = Zellig|url= https://www.jstor.org/stable/409987 |title=Discourse Analysis |date=1952|journal = Language| volume=28 | issue=1 | pages=1–30 | doi=10.2307/409987 | jstor=409987 |url-access=subscription }}</ref> reporting on work from which he developed [[transformational grammar]] in the late 1930s. Formally equivalent relations among the sentences of a coherent discourse are made explicit by using sentence transformations to put the text in a canonical form. Words and sentences with equivalent information then appear in the same column of an array.

This work progressed over the next four decades (see references) into a science of [[sublanguage]] analysis (Kittredge & Lehrberger 1982), culminating in a demonstration of the informational structures in texts of a sublanguage of science, that of immunology (Harris et al. 1989),<ref name=Hardy1991>{{Cite journal|last=Hardy|first=Donald E.|date=1991-04-01|title=The foundations of linguistic theory: Selected writings of Roy Harris Ed. by Nigel Love (review)|url=https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/linguistic-society-of-america/the-foundations-of-linguistic-theory-selected-writings-of-roy-harris-JpN3RDAbWC|journal=Language|language=en|volume=67|issue=3|doi=10.2307/415056 |jstor=415056 |issn=1535-0665|url-access=subscription}}</ref> and a fully articulated theory of linguistic informational content (Harris 1991).<ref name=Hardy1991/> During this time, however, most linguists ignored such developments in favor of a succession of elaborate theories of sentence-level syntax and semantics.<ref>[[John Corcoran (logician)|John Corcoran]], then a colleague of Harris in Linguistics at University of Pennsylvania, summarized and critically examined the development of Harris’s thought on discourse through 1969 in lectures attended by Harris’ colleagues and students in Philadelphia and Cambridge.<br/>
{{Cite journal |last=Corcoran |first=John |date=1972 |editor-last=Plötz |editor-first=Senta |title=Harris on the Structures of Language |journal=Transformationelle Analyse |publisher=Athenäum Verlag |location=Frankfurt |pages=275–292}}</ref>

In January 1953, a linguist working for the American Bible Society, James A. Lauriault (''alt.'' Loriot), needed to find answers to some fundamental errors in translating Quechua, in the Cuzco area of Peru. Following Harris's 1952 publications, he worked over the meaning and placement of each word in a collection of Quechua legends with a native speaker of Quechua and was able to formulate discourse rules that transcended the simple sentence structure. He then applied the process to Shipibo, another language of Eastern Peru. He taught the theory at the<ref>{{Cite web|title=SIL International|url=https://www.sil.org/|access-date=2020-12-03|website=SIL International|language=en}}</ref> Summer Institute of Linguistics in Norman, Oklahoma, in the summers of 1956 and 1957 and entered the University of Pennsylvania<ref>{{Cite web|title=University of Pennsylvania {{!}}|url=https://www.upenn.edu/|access-date=2020-12-03|website=www.upenn.edu|language=en}}</ref> to study with Harris in the interim year. He tried to publish a paper,<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Loriot|first1=James|last2=Hollenbach|first2=Barbara|date=1970|title=Shipibo Paragraph Structure|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/25000427|journal=Foundations of Language|volume=6|issue=1|pages=43–66|jstor=25000427|issn=0015-900X}}</ref>''Shipibo Paragraph Structure'', but it was delayed until 1970 (Loriot & Hollenbach 1970).{{Citation needed|date=November 2013}} In the meantime, [[Kenneth Lee Pike]], a professor at the University of Michigan,<ref>{{Cite web|title=University of Michigan|url=http://umich.edu/|access-date=2020-12-03|website=umich.edu|language=en}}</ref> taught the theory, and one of his students, [[Robert E. Longacre]], developed it in his writings. Harris's methodology disclosing the correlation of form with meaning was developed into a system for the computer-aided analysis of natural language by a team led by [[Naomi Sager]] at [[NYU]], which has been applied to a number of sublanguage domains, most notably to medical informatics. The software for the Medical Language Processor is publicly available on [[SourceForge]].<ref>http://mlp-xml.sourceforge.net/</ref>

===In the humanities===
In the late 1960s and 1970s, and without reference to this prior work, a variety of other approaches to a new cross-discipline of DA began to develop in most of the humanities and social sciences concurrently with, and related to, other disciplines. These include [[semiotics]], [[psycholinguistics]], [[sociolinguistics]], and [[pragmatics]]. Many of these approaches, especially those influenced by the social sciences, favor a more dynamic study of oral talk-in-interaction. An example is "conversational analysis" (CA),<ref>{{Cite web|title=Conversational Analysis {{!}} Encyclopedia.com|url=https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences/applied-and-social-sciences-magazines/conversational-analysis|access-date=2020-12-03|website=www.encyclopedia.com}}</ref> which was influenced by the sociologist Harold Garfinkel,<ref>{{Cite web|last=Lynch|first=Michael|date=2011-07-13|title=Harold Garfinkel obituary|url=http://www.theguardian.com/education/2011/jul/13/harold-garfinkel-obituary|access-date=2020-12-03|website=The Guardian|language=en}}</ref> the founder of [[ethnomethodology]].