What is meant by "discourse analysis"?

Remember, there are no stupid questions, just stupid people.

The answer to this particular question can be found at the oddly-titled Stef Slembrouck (1998-2003) - WHAT IS MEANT BY DISCOURSE ANALYSIS?:

One starting point is the following quotation from M. Stubbs' textbook (Stubbs 1983:1), in which discourse analysis is defined as (1) concerned with language use beyond the boundaries of a sentence/utterance, (2) concerned with the interrelationships between language and society and (3) as concerned with the interactive or dialogic properties of everyday communication.

The term discourse analysis is very ambiguous. I will use it in this book to refer mainly to the linguistic analysis of naturally occurring connected speech or written discourse. Roughly speaking, it refers to attempts to study the organisation of language above the sentence or above the clause, and therefore to study larger linguistic units, such as conversational exchanges or written texts. It follows that discourse analysis is also concerned with language use in social contexts, and in particular with interaction or dialogue between speakers.
--STUBBS Michael, 1983. Discourse Analysis: The Sociolinguistic Analysis of Natural Language. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Discourse analysis does not presuppose a bias towards the study of either spoken or written language. In fact, the monolithic character of the categories of speech and writing is increasingly being challenged, especially as the gaze of analysts turns to multi-media texts and practices on the Internet. Similarly, one must ultimately object to the reduction of the discursive to the so-called "outer layer" of language use, although such a reduction reveals quite a lot about how particular versions of the discursive have been both enabled and bracketed by forms of hierarchical reasoning which are specific to the history of linguistics as a discipline (e.g. discourse analysis as a reaction against and as taking enquiry beyond the clause-bound "objects" of grammar and semantics to the level of analysing "utterances", "texts" and "speech events"). Another inroad into the development of a discourse perspective is more radically antithetical to the concerns of linguistics "proper". Here the focus is on the situatedness of language use, as well as its inalienably social and interactive nature - even in the case of written communication.

With respect, I don't think English is his native language. At the very least, it's probably not the only one he knows; how many do you speak?

Been trying to go more multimedia around here lately, embedding images and (in a failed, browser-crashy mess) sounds. That, and tried to make it easier to get in touch with me, but the status indicators for AIM and ICQ just didn't work as well as I'd hoped.

The analysis/criticism bits, well, those have been around from the start.

Realize some people have problems with the notion that the nigger has anything going on under the dreads, and I've been willing to put up with that -- even from people who really should fucking know better -- for a while.

Be Nice to Bigots Week is over. Not sure why it lasted as long as it did, actually.