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.

Check out my other English Language A Level resources!

Language and Gender
Language and Region
Language and Power and Occupation
Language and Global and World Englishes
Language Change
Language and Technology
Language and Ethnicity
Language and Social Groups
Language Discourses
Child Language Acquisition - Speech
Child Language Acquisition - Reading and Writing