In this age of information overload, wherever we turn, we’re bombarded by media content,

having no knowledge of discourse analysis and pragmatics equals taking no precautions during a pandemic.

Being two of the courses I handled in the just concluded semester reminded me more that the challenge we have in this information-overload generation is no longer the access to information.

The issue today is much more on the ability of the people to select and process information.

The danger of having no access to information may not be as bad at the inability to select the right message, and process them effectively.

This is where discourse analysis and pragmatics come in.

I like how The Oxford English Dictionary defines discourse analysis as: “Linguistics, a method of analysing the structure of texts or utterances longer than one sentence, taking into account both their linguistic content and their sociolinguistic context; analysis performed using this method.”

It’ll make you understand, not just the text or statement. 
You’ll easily know the motivation behind statements,
when someone is hiding details,
when what they say is not what they mean,
and how power relations affect tone and meaning of text.

Students generally dread research methods. They usually run to Survey. But since my undergraduate project supervisor Prof. Chinwe Okpoko convinced me that I could apply content analysis even when other dodged it, I’ve appointed myself as the chief advocate of “You can use other research methods.”

I’m glad that one of my students conducted an excellent mini research using the Discourse Analysis method. They’ve so fallen in love with it that they will use it for their final project.
I’ll share the assignment here, especially for the topic it studied.