Analysing Discourse – Spoken Language – A Level Unit

A 9 lesson unit comprising of a 66 slide PowerPoint and 9 different worksheets (8 include a transcript for analysis) exploring the topic of spoken language analysis and a summary terminology and theory sheet. This unit can be used to teach A Level English Language or A Level Language and Literature and is not linked to any particular exam board.

Each lesson includes a starting discussion prompt which acts as a learning objective, detailed notes on the theories and terminology listed below, a worksheet containing a transcript (or revision cards for lesson 9), and a homework task. The following theories and terminology are covered:

• Discourse – Michel Foucault (1969)
• Narrative Categories – William Labov (1972)
• Turn taking; adjacency pairs; backchanneling
• IRF Model – Sinclair and Coulthard (1975)
• Charles Goodwin – Storytelling Structure (1984)
• Discourse markers; tag questions; skip connectors; overlap
• Speech Acts – J.R. Searle (1969)
• Transactional talk; phatic talk; monitoring features
• Cooperative Principle and Gricean Maxims – Paul Grice (1975)
• Contraction; elision; ellipsis; interruption
• Register and Context – Michael Halliday (1985)
• Situational Factors Affecting Language Use – David Crystal (1995)
• Assimilation; false start; filler; intonation; non-fluency features; paralinguistic features; prosodic features
• Face-work – Erving Goffman (1967)
• Politeness Theory – Brown and Levinson (1987)
• Accommodation; colloquialisms; comment clauses; deixis; hedging

The final lesson is a consolidation activity complete with guided revision cards. Alternatively, you could use an app such as Quizlet so that the students could produce digital revision resources.