discourse |
Working Definition:
discourse is a string of sentences structured by a purpose, usually a communicative one.
Disciplinary Definitions:
"It is generally agreed that the study of discourse takes us beyond the study of the sentence. However, as this book demonstrates, we are not always taken to the same place. In some cases, it seems, we are not taken that very far at all: thus according to the tradition set by Zellig Harris (1951), discourse is a structural unit which can be studied by analogy with the sentence. For example, Salkie (1995) suggests that while grammar is "basically about how words combine to form sentences, text and discourse analysis is about how sentences combine to form texts." And Hovy and Maier's (1994) work in artificial intelligence is based on the claim that "one of the first observations that one makes in analysing discourse is that it exhibits internal structure" (1994: 2).
In other cases, we are taken beyond and away from the notion of structure altogether to the notion of discourse as social behavior which must be studied in terms of its function. Thus Fasold (1990) defines the study of discourse as the study of any aspect of language use (1990: 65). And of course, one of the most influential books on linguistic aspects of discourse, Halliday and Hasan's (1976) Cohesion in English, is based on the view that a text is a "unit of language in use" (1976: 2) which must be studied in terms of its function in communication." Diane Blakemore, Handbook of Discourse Analysis, 100.
"Discourse is not the majestically unfolding manifestation of a thinking, knowing, speaking subject, but, on the contrary, a totality, in which the dispersion of the subject and his discontinuity with himself may be determined." Foucault, Michel. The Archaeology of Knowledge and The Discourse on Language. 1972. [page??]
See "text"
Comments:
Notes
In his A Theory of Semiotics, Umberto Eco puts this issue into a sharp focus. In his first chapter he describes a very simple communication situation in which a engineer receives signals from a transmitter about the water level of a dam to inform him whether the watergate needs to be opened or can remain closed.
Since there are at least three codes, a denotative one and two connotative ones, if all three are ferred to when interpreting the sign-vehicle, the engineer has got three messages, namely: (i) «the water has reached danger level»; (ii) «you must activate the evacuation lever»; (iii) «there is a flood ».
Thus, a single sign-vehicle, insofar as several codes make it become the functive of several sign -functions (although connotatively linked), can become the expression of several contents, and produce a complex discourse such as: «Since water has reached the danger lvel, you must evacuate it, otherwise there will be a flood.» I am not saying that a single code can produce many messages, one after the other, for this is a mere truism: I am saying that usually a single sign-vehicle conveys many intertwined contents and therefore what is commonly called a 'message' is in fact a text whose content is a multilevelled discourse. (57, emphasis mine, italics Eco's).
The distinction Eco makes between a text and a discourse hinges on the notion that texts contain discourses. This is a useful distinction, though not necessarily a widely shared one. If we consider Tuen van Dijk's work on "text grammars," we would take a text to be a distinctive combination of sentences and their functions. For example, a narrative has a different functional sentence structure than a proposal or a formal argument.
In "Discourse and Relevance Theory," Diane Blakemore that during the heyday of structuralism, the serarch for rules and conventions that constitute a "well-formed text" dominated linguistics. She distinguishes this approach from one that views discourse as a communicative behavior and seeks to discover the social "acceptability" of discourse. So discourse is situated in a context of communication.
In this sense, texts (the way sentences are combined to form a unit) contains discourses (the way the sentences are used in a communication).
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last revised:
June 13, 2007
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