Defining discourse

[Bruce McComiskey]

All,
	Wow!  Define "discourse"!  I think there are hundreds of equally-valid
definitions, most of which are discipline-specific.  Let me babble for a
while on Discourse Analysis (DA) and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), and
I'll let others jump in.
	DA began, I think, with an article by Zellig Harris (titled "Discourse
Analysis") that claims that traditional linguistics is limited by its focus
on language units of sentence-length and less.  Harris proposed that we
apply linguistic analysis to "discourse," i.e. language structures longer
than the grammatical sentence.  Of course, most of us mean a great deal
more when we use the term "discourse" than Harris meant by it many years ago.
	CDA takes two "turns" on Harris' notion of DA.  First, it is "critical,"
i.e. its intent is to critique uses of language that marginalize some and
privilege others.  Second, "discourse" still means
"language-beyond-sentence-level," but it has acquired a Foucauldian valence
that wasn't present in Harris' article.  In Foucault, "discourse" has to do
with the institutionalized rules that govern the use of language.
"Utterances"--(maybe someone else can explain this better than I
can!)--"Utterances" are the rhetorical choices we make within the
linguistic potentialities presented to us by institutionalized rules.
	But it is terribly misleading to suggest that the D in CDA is purely a
Foucauldian notion.  Really, it has received its meaning from many other
sources of cultural theory as well.  Foucault is ever-present, I think, but
so are many others in the CDA usage of the word "discourse."
	I'm really still trying to figure all this out, so any help or correction
would be much appreciated.
Cheers,
Bruce McComiskey
University of Alabama at Birmingham
mccomisk at uab.edu



At 07:04 PM 1/24/99 -0500, you wrote:
>As promised, and in the hopes of finding common ground--or at least
>fruitful connections--in the vast interdisciplinarity of the list, we're
>sending out our first topic for discussion:
>
>What is discourse? What definition(s) do you find useful, and what
>definitions seem unhelpful or off the mark? What frameworks or theories
>inform your definition?  Alternatively, do you feel that defining discourse
>is pointless, wrong-headed, detrimental (as Paul Bove suggests in his
>chapter on discourse in *Critical Terms for Literary Study,* Univ. of
>Chicago Press, 1995)? If so, what other approach would you advocate?
>
>We're looking forward to a range of responses from numerous disciplinary
>(and interdisciplinary) perspectives.
>
>The listowners
>
>Mary Bucholtz
>James Cornish
>Chris Holcomb
>Marty Jacobsen
>