Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics
Cover term for various analyses of discourse. Motivated by linguistic terminology and theory (
formal logic, structuralism, transformational grammar) it is used synonymously with text analysis, with a particular interest in wellformedness ( coherence, cohesion) and deductive rules (e.g. rules for speech acts ). While in this strand of research, texts are mainly taken to be static products (discourse grammar, text linguistics), there is another strand influenced by functional grammar, psycholinguistics, and approaches to cognitive science that emphasizes the dynamic character of discourse as construction and interpretation processes by the speaker/writer and the listener/ reader (see Brown and Yule 1983). According to Van Dijk (1985), discourse analysis has become a new cross-disciplinary field of analysis since the early 1970s. It is of interest to disciplines such as anthropology and sociolinguistics (ethnography of speaking), artificial intelligence, cognitive science, philosophy of language (speech act theory), psycholinguistics, sociology of language (conversation analysis), rhetoric (style), and text linguistics. For an overview see van Dijk (1985).
References
Brown, G. and G.Yule. 1983. Discourse analysis. Cambridge.
Coulthard, M. 1977. An introduction to discourse analysis. London.
——(ed.) 1992. Advances in spoken discourse analysis. London.
Givón, T. (ed.) 1979. Syntax and semantics, vol. 12: Discourse and syntax. New York.
Labov, W. and D.Fanshel. 1977. Therapeutic discourse. New York.
Levinson, S. 1983. Pragmatics. Cambridge.
Mann, W.C.
and S.A.Thompson (eds) 1992. Discourse description: diverse linguistic analyses of a fund-raising text. Amsterdam.
Myhill, J. 1992. Typological discourse analysis. Oxford.
Petöfi, J. (ed.) 1987. Text and discourse constitution: empirical aspects, theoretical approaches. Berlin.
Potter, J. and M.Wetherell. 1987. Discourse and social psychology: beyond attitudes and behaviour. London.
Salkie, R. 1995. Text and discourse analysis. London.
Steiner, E.E. and R.Veltmann (eds) 1988. Pragmatics, discourse and text: some systematically inspired approaches. London.
Stubbs, M. 1983. Discourse analysis. Oxford.
Stutterheim, C.v. and W.Klein. 1989. Referential movement in descriptive and narrative discourse. In R.Dietrich and C.Graumann (eds), Language processing in social contexts. Amsterdam. 39–76.
Van Dijk, T. (ed.) 1985. Handbook of discourse analysis, 4 vols. London.
Journals
Discourse and Society.
Discourse Processes.
discourse grammar, text linguistics
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