The Definition Discourse
Discourse
Discourse is generally used to designate the forms of
representation, codes, conventions and habits of language that produce specific
fields of culturally and historically located meanings. Michel Foucault's early
writings ('The Order of Discourse', 1971; The Archaeology of Krlowledge, 1972)
were especially influential in this. Foucault's work gave the terms 'discursive
practices' and 'discursive formation' to the analysis of particular
institutions and their ways of establishing orders of truth, or what is
accepted as 'reality' in a given society. Developed in the 1970s, the field of discourse analysis is
concerned with "the use of language in a running discourse, continued over a number of sentences, and involving the
interaction of speaker (or writer) and auditor (or reader) in a specific
situational context, and within a framework of social and cultural
conventions" (Abrams and Harpham, A Glossary of Literary Terms, 2005). Discourse (from Latin discursus, "running to and
from") denotes written and spoken communications such as: In semantics and discourse analysis: Discourse is a
conceptual generalization of conversation within each modality and context of
communication. The totality of codified language (vocabulary) used in a
given field of intellectual enquiry and of social practice, such as legal
discourse, medical discourse, religious discourse, et cetera. In the work of Michel Foucault, and that of the social
theoreticians he inspired: discourse describes "an entity of sequences, of
signs, in that they are enouncements (énoncés)", statements in
conversation.
Discourse Analysis
Discourse analysis is concerned with language use as a
social phenomenon and therefore necessarily goes beyond one speaker or one
newspaper article to find features which have a more generalized relevance.
This is a potentially confusing point because the publication of research
findings is generally presented through examples and the analyst may choose a
single example or case to exemplify the features to be discussed, but those
features are only of interest as a social, not individual, phenomenon." (Stephanie Taylor, What is Discourse Analysis? Bloomsbury,
2013) "[Discourse analysis] is not only about method; it is
also a perspective on the nature of language and its relationship to the
central issues of the social sciences. More specifically, we see discourse
analysis as a related collection of approaches to discourse, approaches that
entail not only practices of data collection and analysis, but also a set of
metatheoretical and theoretical assumptions and a body of research claims and
studies." (Linda Wood and Rolf Kroger, Doing Discourse Analysis. Sage,
2000)
