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There are in fact a number of differing views on what discourse analysis actually is. Social science researchers, for example, might argue that all their work is concerned with the analysis of discourse, yet often take up the term in their own, sometimes different, ways (Fairclough 2003).Fairclough (2003) contrasts what he calls 'textually oriented discourse analysis' with approaches to discourse analysis that have more of a social theoretical orientation.

There are in fact a number of differing views on what discourse analysis actually is. Social science researchers, for example, might argue that all their work is concerned with the analysis of discourse, yet often take up the term in their own, sometimes different, ways (Fairclough 2003). Mills (1997) makes a similar observation showing how through its rela- tively short history the term discourse analysis has shifted from highlighting one aspect of language usage to another, as well as being used in different ways by different researchers.
Fairclough (2003) contrasts what he calls ‘textually oriented discourse analysis’ with approaches to discourse analysis that have more of a social theoretical orientation. He does not see these two views as mutually exclusive, however, arguing for an analysis of discourse that is both linguistic and social in its orientation. Cameron and Kulick (2003) present a similar view. They do not take these two perspectives to be incompatible with each other, arguing that the instances of language in use that are studied under a textually oriented view of discourse are still socially situated and need to be interpreted in terms of their social meanings and functions.
David Crystal’s (2008) analysis of Barack Obama’s victory speech when he won the US presidential election is an example of textually oriented discourse analysis. One of the fea- tures Crystal notes in Obama’s speech is the use of parallelism, where he repeats certain grammatical structures for rhetorical effect. In the following extract from the opening lines of his speech Obama repeats ‘who clauses’ (highlighted below) lowering the processing load of the speech so that listeners will focus on the content of each the clauses that follow. Crystal also shows how Obama follows the rhetorical ‘rule of three’ in this section of his speech in a way that mirrors the speeches of former political leaders such as Winston Churchill.