Analyzing Public Discourse demonstrates the use of discourse analysis to provide testimony in public policy consultations: from environmental impact statements to changes in laws and policies. Scollon asserts that it is in the best interest of democratic public discourse for all participants in the process to be working with a common discursive framework. He puts forward a strategy by which discourse analysts can become engaged in this framework as participants through the process of public consultations. Using documents which are publicly available online from specific consultative projects, Scollon provides the reader with concrete examples and introduces basic skills for discourse analysis. Accessible to readers who are new to discourse analysis, Analyzing Public Discourse will be of interest to students of linguistics and language studies as well as to those on environmental studies courses. This book can also be used as a guide for any public consultation which calls for public responses.

Analyzing Public Discourse demonstrates the use of discourse analysis to provide testimony in public policy consultations: from environmental impact statements to changes in laws and policies.

Scollon asserts that it is in the best interest of democratic public discourse for all participants in the process to be working with a common discursive framework. He puts forward a strategy by which discourse analysts can become engaged in this framework as participants through the process of public consultations. Using documents which are publicly available online from specific consultative projects, Scollon provides the reader with concrete examples and introduces basic skills for discourse analysis.

Accessible to readers who are new to discourse analysis, Analyzing Public Discourse will be of interest to students of linguistics and language studies as well as to those on environmental studies courses. This book can also be used as a guide for any public consultation which calls for public responses.

Discourses in Place is essential reading for anyone with an interest in language and the way we communicate. Written by leaders in the field, this text argues that we can only interpret the meaning of public texts like road signs, notices and brand logos by considering the social and physical world that surrounds them. Drawing on a wide range of real examples, from signs in the Chinese mountains to urban centres in Austria, Italy, North America and Hong Kong, this textbook equips students with the methodology and models they need to undertake their own research in 'geosemiotics', the key interface between semiotics and the physical world.
Discourses in Place is highly illustrated, containing real examples of language in the material world, including a 'how to use this book' section, group and individual activities and a glossary of key terms.

Discourses in Place is essential reading for anyone with an interest in language and the way we communicate. Written by leaders in the field, this text argues that we can only interpret the meaning of public texts like road signs, notices and brand logos by considering the social and physical world that surrounds them. Drawing on a wide range of real examples, from signs in the Chinese mountains to urban centres in Austria, Italy, North America and Hong Kong, this textbook equips students with the methodology and models they need to undertake their own research in 'geosemiotics', the key interface between semiotics and the physical world.
Discourses in Place is highly illustrated, containing real examples of language in the material world, including a 'how to use this book' section, group and individual activities and a glossary of key terms.

Author Biography:
Ron Scollon is Professor of Linguistics at Georgetown University, USA.

Mediated Discourse: The Nexus of Practice sets out a discursive theory of human action.
Language and action are intimately related. The difficult question to answer is how they are related. Mediated Discourse Theory looks into social relationships to see how the use of language is both a form of action in itself and is also indirectly related to all other forms of human action.
Through the empirical study of a one year old child learning to exchange objects with caregivers, Scollon challenges the commonly held claim that all practices are represented in discourse and that all discourse has the function of structuring practice.
Calling upon work in interactional sociolinguistics, critical discourse analysis, anthropological linguistics, sociocultural psychology, and intercultural communication, the Mediated Discourse Theory set out in this book resolves current problematic issues such as how practices are learned across the boundaries of groups and how individuals come to be socialized as social actors.

This study combines media studies and social interactionalist discursive research on the news media, and bridges the gap between the analyses of texts and their production, and studies of audience reception and behaviour. On one hand media studies need interactional sociolinguistics to open up to more reflective studies of media audiences. At the same time, interactional sociolinguistics needs media studies to enrich its understanding of the ever-increasing place of texts of the media in daily social interactions. The study is based on five years of ethnogrphic and discursive study of the role of the news media (print and television) in the social construction of identity.

Mediated Discourse as Social Interaction makes an explicit link between media studies and social interactionalist discursive research where previously the two fields of study have been treated as separate disciplines. This text presents an integrated theory illustrated by ample concrete examples, bringing together the latest research in these two fields. It offers a critique to the sender-receiver model implicit in media studies, and argues for an analysis of media discourse as social interaction, on the one hand among journalists and newsmakers as a community of practice, and among readers and viewers as a spectating community of practice on the other. The book also argues for a coherent and interdiscursive methodology for the ethnographic study of the role of the news media in the social construction of identity and is based on a considerable body of ethnographic and textual analysis of both print and television news media. The theory of mediated discourse presented in this volume will be of great interest to advanced undergraduates and postgraduates studying media studies, sociology of language, discourse analysis, interactional sociolinguistics, ethnography of communication and applied linguistics. It will also be welcomed by scholars and professionals involved in research in these areas.

The overarching theme of Discourse and Technology is cutting-edge in the field of linguistics: multimodal discourse. This volume opens up a discussion among discourse analysts and others in linguistics and related fields about the two-fold impact of new communication technologies: The impact on how discourse data is collected, transcribed, and analyzed -- and the impact that these technologies are having on social interaction and discourse.As inexpensive tape recorders allowed the field to move beyond text, written or printed language, to capture talk -- discourse as spoken language -- the information explosion (including cell phones, video recorders, Internet chat rooms, online journals, and the like) has moved those in the field to recognize that all discourse is, in various ways, "multimodal," constructed through speech and gesture, as well as through typography, layout and the materials employed in the making of texts. The contributors have responded to the expanding scope of discourse analysis by asking five key questions: Why should we study discourse and technology and multimodal discourse analysis? What is the role of the World Wide Web in discourse analysis? How does one analyze multimodal discourse in studies of social actions and interactions? How does one analyze multimodal discourse in educational social interactions? and, How does one use multimodal discourse analyses in the workplace? The vitality of these explorations opens windows onto even newer horizons of discourse and discourse analysis.