A Russian translation of Analyzing Discourse: A Manual of Basic Concepts by Robert A. Dooley and Stephen H. Levinsohn, linguists working with SIL International, is the latest scholarly edition published by IBT. This linguistic handbook was first published in English by SIL in 2000. The present edition was translated and contextualized by Russian linguists with the contemporary Russian speaker in mind.

The purpose of this book is to acquaint future field linguists with the basic concepts of discourse analysis, so that they can use them in analyzing linguistic material gathered in various languages. Having a sound grasp of textual discourse concepts and other principles of communication is necessary for studying a foreign language, doing lexical, semantic and morphosyntactic analysis, or carrying out practical tasks such as teaching, expressive writing or translating.

The book offers a practical methodology tested by the authors’ many years of field experience and teaching on this subject. It is based on the functional-cognitive approach, which models the real life processes of generating and processing discourse. An ample bibliography is supplied for further study for those interested in a more detailed treatment of the subject matter.

This handbook is unique in that it is specifically geared to the Russian reader.  Besides giving actual Russian-language illustrations (not only those translated from English), it also provides other information to help readers better understand the material. Extensive use is made of footnotes that refer to important Russian linguistic research dealing with the discussed concepts. These situate the findings of Russian linguists in the general context of discourse analysis.

Analyzing Discourse can be used in both individual and group study, as part of a linguistics course, in workshops and other venues. IBT’s hope is that it will fill a scholarly lacuna in the existing Russian-language literature on the subject.