How to Study

Read. Read the chapter in the free textbook on Zenodo. Use the five topics below to focus your reading.

Watch. Watch the matching original chapter lesson.

Listen. Listen to the matching original podcast to revisit the main ideas.

Your summary. Write a short summary in your own words. Return to the textbook to check unclear points.

Explore the 15 Chapters

Choose a chapter below. Each section includes a short overview, five topics, an original video lesson, and an original podcast. Page ranges refer to the printed textbook pages.

Chapter 1: Foundations of Discourse Analysis

Textbook pp. 14–31

Overview — simplified study support

Explore language as part of an activity, from a short notice to a whole exchange. Compare approaches to discourse and choose evidence that can support a focused interpretation.

Watch Chapter 1   |   Listen to Chapter 1

Five core topics

1.1 Discourse, Text, and Language in Use
In plain English: Connect a text with the people, setting, and activity through which it makes meaning.

1.2 Three Perspectives on Discourse: Structure, Use, and Social Practice
In plain English: Compare how texts are organized, what people do with language, and how communication relates to social practices.

1.3 Units and Levels of Discourse
In plain English: Choose a sentence, turn, exchange, or whole text according to the question and the evidence needed.

1.4 Major Questions and Traditions in Discourse Analysis
In plain English: Compare text-focused, pragmatic, interactional, and social approaches by the questions they ask.

1.5 Discourse Data, Evidence, and Areas of Application
In plain English: Distinguish observed, elicited, and constructed material, and keep conclusions within the available evidence.

Chapter 2: Context and Interpretation

Textbook pp. 32–47

Overview — simplified study support

Messages often leave information unstated. Examine how surrounding language, shared knowledge, and the situation support an interpretation while leaving room for alternatives.

Watch Chapter 2   |   Listen to Chapter 2

Five core topics

2.1 Co-text and Local Linguistic Context
In plain English: Use earlier and later language to identify references and narrow possible meanings.

2.2 Situational, Social, and Cultural Context
In plain English: Examine the setting, participants, relationships, and expectations relevant to a particular exchange.

2.3 Background Knowledge, Schemas, and Frames
In plain English: Compare familiar routines with the activity participants actually understand themselves to be doing.

2.4 Deixis and Context-Dependent Reference
In plain English: Locate the speaker, time, and place needed to interpret expressions such as I, here, and tomorrow.

2.5 Inference and Interpretation
In plain English: Separate what a message states from conclusions supported by context, and check competing readings.

Chapter 3: Spoken, Written, and Recorded Discourse

Textbook pp. 48–64

Overview — simplified study support

Compare communication across speech, writing, and digital combinations. Consider how recordings and transcripts preserve selected features, and choose a representation that fits the analysis.

Watch Chapter 3   |   Listen to Chapter 3

Five core topics

3.1 Features of Spoken Discourse
In plain English: Examine pauses, restarts, repetition, and responses as part of the organization of spoken interaction.

3.2 Features of Written Discourse
In plain English: Consider revision, layout, and explicit context, and distinguish a finished document from its production history.

3.3 Mode, Medium, and Hybrid Communication
In plain English: Distinguish meaning-making resources such as speech and image from the technologies that carry them.

3.4 Types of Discourse Data: Texts, Recordings, Transcripts, and Corpora
In plain English: Choose data forms according to what they preserve, omit, and allow you to compare.

3.5 Transcribing and Representing Spoken Interaction
In plain English: Represent selected words, timing, overlap, and actions consistently, without treating notation as evidence of motives.

Chapter 4: Cohesion and Textual Connection

Textbook pp. 65–80

Overview — simplified study support

Trace the linguistic links that connect a text. Compare reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction, and vocabulary choices while distinguishing visible connections from overall interpretation.

Watch Chapter 4   |   Listen to Chapter 4

Five core topics

4.1 Cohesion, Texture, and Textual Connection
In plain English: Identify specific grammatical and lexical links that help language function as a connected text.

4.2 Reference
In plain English: Trace how expressions point backward, forward, or outside the text to people, objects, and ideas.

4.3 Substitution and Ellipsis
In plain English: Distinguish replacing wording from leaving recoverable wording unexpressed.

4.4 Conjunction and Discourse Relations
In plain English: Examine how connectors signal addition, contrast, cause, and time in their actual context.

4.5 Lexical Cohesion
In plain English: Trace repetition and meaning relations across vocabulary, checking the role each connection plays.

Chapter 5: Coherence and Information Flow

Textbook pp. 81–96

Overview — simplified study support

A text needs more than linking words to make sense. Explore how readers connect ideas and how writers manage accessible information, new information, and clause starting points.

Watch Chapter 5   |   Listen to Chapter 5

Five core topics

5.1 Coherence and Interpretive Connections
In plain English: Explain how purpose, relevant knowledge, and inferences contribute to understanding a meaningful whole.

5.2 Given and New Information
In plain English: Track what a text treats as already accessible and what it introduces as newly relevant.

5.3 Topic and Comment
In plain English: Distinguish what a contribution is about from what it says about that topic.

5.4 Theme and Rheme
In plain English: Use the chapter’s limited English convention to identify a clause’s starting point and its development.

5.5 Thematic Progression and Information Flow
In plain English: Compare how successive clauses maintain or change their starting points as an explanation develops.

Chapter 6: Discourse Structure and Organization

Textbook pp. 97–112

Overview — simplified study support

Move from individual links to the organization of whole texts and exchanges. Examine openings, relations, markers, institutional patterns, and stories in relation to their communicative purposes.

Watch Chapter 6   |   Listen to Chapter 6

Five core topics

6.1 Global Organization: Openings, Development, and Closings
In plain English: Identify how larger phases establish an activity, develop it, and bring it toward a close.

6.2 Discourse Relations and Organizational Patterns
In plain English: Compare sequence, explanation, comparison, reason-result, and problem-solution patterns.

6.3 Discourse Markers and Boundary Signals
In plain English: Interpret markers through their position and surrounding activity rather than assigning each a fixed function.

6.4 Exchange Structure and Institutional Discourse
In plain English: Examine how questions, responses, and follow-up moves organize participation in role-based settings.

6.5 Narrative Structure and Evaluation
In plain English: Trace connected events and the ways a story communicates why those events matter.

Chapter 7: Pragmatics and Meaning in Discourse

Textbook pp. 113–129

Overview — simplified study support

Explore how people perform actions and communicate more than they explicitly say. Examine directness, implied meanings, assumptions, and relationships through evidence from the exchange.

Watch Chapter 7   |   Listen to Chapter 7

Five core topics

7.1 Speech Acts and Communicative Actions
In plain English: Connect utterances with actions such as requesting, promising, apologizing, and refusing.

7.2 Directness and Indirectness
In plain English: Compare linguistic form with communicative action and consider what makes an indirect meaning recoverable.

7.3 The Cooperative Principle and Implicature
In plain English: Examine how listeners infer unstated meanings from expectations and the specific conversational context.

7.4 Presupposition and Shared Assumptions
In plain English: Identify information presented as already accepted and consider whether participants actually share it.

7.5 Face, Politeness, and Relational Meaning
In plain English: Examine how language choices manage relationships without assuming one expression is polite everywhere.

Chapter 8: Conversation Analysis

Textbook pp. 130–145

Overview — simplified study support

Study how participants organize conversation turn by turn. Use the sequence of responses to examine speaker change, paired actions, preference, and repair.

Watch Chapter 8   |   Listen to Chapter 8

Five core topics

8.1 Turn-Taking and Speaker Change
In plain English: Examine how speakers recognize opportunities to continue, select another speaker, or take a turn.

8.2 Adjacency Pairs and Sequence Organization
In plain English: Trace how first actions make particular next actions relevant and how sequences can expand.

8.3 Preference Organization
In plain English: Distinguish interactional patterns in responses from personal likes and dislikes.

8.4 Repair and Interactional Trouble
In plain English: Follow how participants identify and resolve problems in speaking, hearing, or understanding.

8.5 Everyday and Institutional Interaction
In plain English: Compare sequences across settings and show how institutional roles matter in the interaction itself.

Chapter 9: Interaction, Culture, and Identity

Textbook pp. 146–163

Overview — simplified study support

Examine how participants signal what is happening and position themselves and others. Connect context, culture, and identity with observable interaction while avoiding broad stereotypes.

Watch Chapter 9   |   Listen to Chapter 9

Five core topics

9.1 Speech Events and the SPEAKING Framework
In plain English: Describe relevant components of a communicative event before explaining how it works.

9.2 Contextualization Cues and Conversational Inference
In plain English: Examine how features such as timing and delivery guide participants’ interpretations.

9.3 Frames, Footing, and Participation
In plain English: Trace how participants understand the activity and their changing alignments within it.

9.4 Identity, Positioning, and Social Relations
In plain English: Analyze locally relevant identity claims and roles without treating one utterance as a complete personal identity.

9.5 Intercultural and Multilingual Interaction
In plain English: Examine differing expectations and multilingual resources through local evidence rather than nationality-based assumptions.

Chapter 10: Genre, Register, and Discourse Communities

Textbook pp. 164–181

Overview — simplified study support

Explore recurring forms of communication in university study, work, and everyday life. Relate language patterns and text organization to shared purposes and community practices.

Watch Chapter 10   |   Listen to Chapter 10

Five core topics

10.1 Register and Situational Variation
In plain English: Connect patterns of language with the activity, participant relationships, and role of communication.

10.2 Genre and Communicative Purpose
In plain English: Identify recurring communicative purposes and expectations rather than classifying texts by topic alone.

10.3 Discourse Communities and Shared Practices
In plain English: Examine how groups coordinate goals, feedback, specialist language, and newcomer participation.

10.4 Genre Structure, Stages, and Moves
In plain English: Explain the communicative work done by broad phases and smaller functional parts of a text.

10.5 Academic, Professional, and Everyday Genres
In plain English: Compare genres in their actual settings and recognize that expectations vary across disciplines and workplaces.

Chapter 11: Critical Discourse Studies

Textbook pp. 182–199

Overview — simplified study support

Investigate connections between discourse and power through careful analysis of representation. Examine wording, grammar, evaluation, and other voices while distinguishing supported findings from unverified intentions.

Watch Chapter 11   |   Listen to Chapter 11

Five core topics

11.1 Discourse, Power, and Ideology
In plain English: Examine how communication relates to access, authority, inequality, and accepted accounts of events.

11.2 Representation, Naming, and Categorization
In plain English: Compare how labels present people and events, checking what each choice makes relevant.

11.3 Agency and Grammatical Representation
In plain English: Trace who is shown as acting or responsible and distinguish missing information from evidence of concealment.

11.4 Modality, Evaluation, and Voice
In plain English: Examine certainty, obligation, judgments, and whose perspectives are represented.

11.5 Intertextuality and Responsible Critical Interpretation
In plain English: Trace relationships with other texts and explain alternative readings and limits to critical claims.

Chapter 12: Multimodal Discourse Analysis

Textbook pp. 200–217

Overview — simplified study support

Study how words, images, layout, sound, and bodies work together. Select details and units that answer a focused question about how meaning is organized.

Watch Chapter 12   |   Listen to Chapter 12

Five core topics

12.1 Modes and Multimodal Meaning
In plain English: Examine combinations of meaning-making resources and state how you define the modes in your analysis.

12.2 Language and Image Relations
In plain English: Identify how wording and images specify, repeat, complement, or complicate one another.

12.3 Layout, Typography, and Spatial Organization
In plain English: Examine grouping, placement, size, and contrast without assuming their effects are universal.

12.4 Gesture, Gaze, Sound, and Embodied Interaction
In plain English: Connect bodily and audible actions with their timing and role in the unfolding activity.

12.5 Integrating Modes in Multimodal Analysis
In plain English: Build an account of how selected resources work together, guided by the question and the available record.

Chapter 13: Digital and Mediated Discourse

Textbook pp. 218–235

Overview — simplified study support

Explore how technologies shape the conditions of communication and how people use them. Compare participation, genres, identity, and movement between online and offline activities.

Watch Chapter 13   |   Listen to Chapter 13

Five core topics

13.1 Mediation and Communicative Affordances
In plain English: Examine how systems support and constrain visibility, timing, storage, and response options.

13.2 Digital Interaction and Participation
In plain English: Distinguish visible messages from wider participation and analyze the evidence relevant to the question.

13.3 Digital Genres and Discourse Practices
In plain English: Connect familiar communicative purposes with the arrangements of specific digital settings.

13.4 Multimodality and Identity in Digital Communication
In plain English: Interpret profiles, images, reactions, and wording in context without assuming they transparently reveal a person.

13.5 Continuity and Change Across Offline and Online Discourse
In plain English: Compare similar activities across media while accounting for differences in purpose, relationships, and available cues.

Chapter 14: Corpus-Assisted Discourse Analysis

Textbook pp. 236–253

Overview — simplified study support

Combine patterns across a documented collection with close reading of examples. Learn how counts, concordances, and co-occurrences can support an interpretation without replacing contextual analysis.

Watch Chapter 14   |   Listen to Chapter 14

Five core topics

14.1 Corpora and Discourse Questions
In plain English: Design and document a collection whose selection and boundaries fit a focused discourse question.

14.2 Frequency and Keywords
In plain English: Distinguish raw counts from comparable rates and interpret keywords in relation to a reference collection.

14.3 Concordance Lines and Recurrent Patterns
In plain English: Compare search results in their surrounding wording and return to fuller texts when needed.

14.4 Collocation and Semantic Prosody
In plain English: Define how co-occurrence is measured and examine recurring evaluative associations in context.

14.5 Combining Corpus Patterns with Close Reading
In plain English: Move between broad patterns and detailed examples, recording revised categories and testing alternative explanations.

Chapter 15: Doing a Discourse Analysis Project

Textbook pp. 254–272

Overview — simplified study support

Bring the book’s approaches together in a manageable project. Connect a focused question with suitable data, ethical decisions, transparent analysis, and a clear evidence-based report.

Watch Chapter 15   |   Listen to Chapter 15

Five core topics

15.1 Formulating a Discourse Analysis Question
In plain English: Turn a broad topic into a specific question that can be answered with an appropriately bounded collection.

15.2 Selecting, Collecting, and Documenting Data
In plain English: Explain inclusion rules, sources, units, and collection decisions so the evidence can be understood.

15.3 Research Ethics, Consent, and Privacy
In plain English: Plan responsible access, consent, storage, and presentation according to the people and institution involved.

15.4 Choosing an Approach and Building a Trustworthy Analysis
In plain English: Match concepts and procedures to the question and show how analytical decisions support the interpretation.

15.5 Writing and Presenting a Discourse Analysis
In plain English: Connect each claim with an excerpt or pattern and explain the method, alternatives, and limits.

About this textbook

Foundations of Discourse Analysis: For EFL University Students
First Edition | Version 1
Project Director: Prof. Munassir Alhamami
Professor of Applied Linguistics, King Khalid University, Saudi Arabia

Suggested Citation
Alhamami, M. (2026). Foundations of discourse analysis: For EFL university students (1st ed., Version 1). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22903758

© Munassir Alhamami
Except where otherwise stated, the original content is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). Material credited to other sources remains subject to the terms stated for that material.

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license

Chapter titles and topic headings retain the textbook’s wording. Overviews and plain-English explanations are separate study support.

Developed with assistance from ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and NotebookLM. The Project Director is responsible for the final editorial decisions and released version. The original video lessons and podcasts were generated with NotebookLM and include AI-generated narration.

Contact: munassir7@gmail.com
University contact: mhamame@kku.edu.sa

Other textbooks in the series