A big shock came at the beginning of the class as Dhanapati sir gave us each one presentation and one field work. Well the presentation is fine as I can do some research on the topic of ‘Symbolic Interactionism’ and prepare a good enough presentation. But the real challenge is to prepare at least half an hour of video presentation on the discourse of a taxi driver. I thought that it would be something easier like discourses written at the back of the trucks or of hoarding boards but it is much more challenging and frankly speaking very exciting. I am really looking forward to this kind of discourse analysis. In both case we have to make a half an hour presentation and write a paper based on the data and presentation.

The first half of today’s class was very practical as we solved different kinds of problems by either top to bottom process and bottom to top process.

According to Cook’s Model for bottom up process first there is sounds and structure then grammar and lexis, cohesion, conversational practice, discourse function, discourse structure, discourse type, shared knowledge and social relationship at the end. Meanwhile Nunan’s Top down processing Model has Past experiences and language intuitions at first, followed by selective aspects of print, meaning and sound or pronunciation at the end if necessary. We also looked at the 3000 most commonly used words in English language.

But then I had to go home at the middle of the class as my wife was alone at home and she could need my help at home. But I did read the remaining slides given by Djanapati sir, in which he discussed about how to do a discourse analysis of written article. The following question should be asked in given case:-

1. Hidden realtions of power present in the articles
2. Whose discourses are being presented
3. Who are consulted for the article
4. Who is the audience for the article
5. What is left unsaid
6. The use of passive voice
7. The use of adjectives to indicate a strong discourse