Studienarbeit aus dem Jahr 2006 im Fachbereich Anglistik - Linguistik, Note: 1,7, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, Sprache: Deutsch, Abstract: IndexI. IntroductionII. Clause as Exchange- The Nature of DialogueIII. Discourse Analysis According to Michael StubbsIV. Surface Cohesion and Underlying Coherence- Indirection in Speech Acts according to John R. Austin4.1 Utterances as Actions4.2 Discourse Acts and Speech Acts4.3 Identifying Speech Acts4.4 Speech Acts and Social RolesV. Speech Act Analysis according to John R. SearleVI. ConclusionVII. BibliographyI. IntroductionDiscourse analysis is the general term for a number of approaches to analyzewritten or spoken language. Discourse Analysis began to develop in the late1960s and 1970s in most of the humanities and social sciences and in relationwith semiotics, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, and pragmatics.The object of discourse analysis is defined in terms coherent sequences ofsentences, propositions, speech acts or turns-at-talk. In opposite to traditionallinguistics, discourse analysts not only study language use beyond the sentenceboundary, but also prefer to analyze naturally occurring language use, and notinvented examples.Whereas earlier studies of discourse mainly focused on the abstract structuresof written texts, many contemporary approaches, especially those influencedby the social sciences, favour a more dynamic study of spoken talk ininteraction.Often a distinction is made between local structures of discourse, such asrelations between sentences, and global structures, such as the overall topicsand the schematic organization of the discourse or conversation as a whole.This term paper will first of all deal with the nature of dialogue and show howinteraction functions. In my second chapter I will have a closer look ondiscourse according to how Michael Stubbs, who teaches courses in generaland applied linguistics, lexicology, grammar; semantics and pragmatics, textand corpus analysis, varieties of English, stylistics, sociolinguistics, thesociology of language in Britain and language and thought, approaches it.In the following chapter I will deal with the indirection in speech acts.Regarding this I will focus on John Austins theories of constantives andperformatives as well as his distinction between locutionary, illocutionary andperlocutionary acts. Thereupon I will focus on John R. Searles view whichcontrasts Austins characterization of speech acts. In my conclusion I willsummarize my chapters as well as compare Austins and Searles point ofviews. [...]