Studies of discourse have roots in a range of theoretical traditions that investigate the relations between language, structure and agency. The notion of 'discourse' is the subject of heated debate. It has become one of the key critical terms in the vocabulary of the humanities and the social sciences, so it is not surprising that it is contentious. Discourse encompasses the use of spoken, written and signed language and multimodal/multimedia forms of communication, and is not restricted to 'non-fictional' (eg. stylistics) nor verbal (eg. gesture and visual) materials. Although early linguistic approaches judged the unit of discourse to be larger than the sentence, phenomena of interest can range from silence, to a single utterance (such as "ok"), to a novel, a set of newspaper articles or a
conversation.
Approaches that are commonly included under the term 'discourse studies' (or have overlapping concerns) include critical discourse analysis, critical linguistics, text linguistics, conversation analysis, ethnomethodology, discursive psychology, stylistics, genre studies,
mediated discourse analysis, discourse theory, sociolinguistics, rhetorical analysis, argumentation theory,
polyphony theory...
Key theorists include Mikhail
Bakhtin, Michael
Billig,
Jan Blommaert, Judith
Butler, Deborah
Cameron, Camen
Rosa Caldas-Coulthard, Oswald
Ducrot,
Derek Edwards, Norman Fairclough,
Michel Foucault,
James
Paul Gee, Michael Halliday,
Rick Iedema,
Gunther Kress, Ernesto Laclau,
Jay Lemke,
Jim Martin, Michel Pecheux,
Alastair Pennycook,
Jonathan
Potter, Harvey Sacks,
Emanuel Schegloff,
Ron Scollon,
Shi-xu,
Michael Silverstein, Stef
Slembrouck,
Michael Stubbs, John
Swales,
Terry Threadgold, Theo van
Leeuven, Teun van Dijk,
Margaret Wetherell and
Ruth Wodak.
Current research on discourse can be found in several international journals, including
Critical Discourse Studies,
Current Issues in Language &
Society, DAOL Discourse Analysis OnLine,
Discourse,
Discourse
Processes,
Discourse & Society, Discourse Studies,
Journal of Language and Politics,
Journal of
Multicultural Discourses,
Journal of Pragmatics,
Journal of Sociolinguistics,
Journal of Technical Writing & Communication,
Language in
Society,
Pragmatics, Research on Language and Social Interaction,
Semiotica,
Social
Semiotics,
Text,
and Visual
Communication.
See the links page for specific centres and
sites concerned with discourse studies.
