Abstract:

The paper discusses three aspects of the relation between discourse and technology. The first is the influence of new communication technologies on the agenda of linguistics and discourse analysis. The beginning of radio broadcasting led to new theories of intonation and the beginning of television created an interest in linguistically inspired approaches to non-verbal communication. The second is the use of technologies as tools for discourse analysis. The move from film to the tape recorder and the subsequent birth of conversation analysis diminished the earlier interest in non-verbal communication, while today corpus linguistics challenges approaches that focus on the analysis of single, whole texts. Finally, contemporary software not only builds in spelling and grammar rules, but also text structure rules (templates), and systematic options for the use of layout, typography, colour, animation and other non-linguistic means of expression, leading to a renewed interest in multimodality. The paper concludes with the view that considerations of technology should be integrated with discourse analysis and cites the work of Ron and Suzie Scollon as an early example of this approach.

Author: Theo van Leeuwen