Taking a stab at definition

[zmaalej]

To Mark Allen,

Hi. Is it possible to have a look at the working paper you mentioned. If you
agree, I am visiting the American University, Egypt for an International
Conference on Contrastive Rhetoric next month, which you must be aware of.

Zouhair
-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Allen Peterson <peterson at AUCEGYPT.EDU>
To: DISCOURS at linguist.ldc.upenn.edu <DISCOURS at linguist.ldc.upenn.edu>
Date: 26 ÌÇäÝííå, 1999 13:09
Subject: Taking a stab at definition


>The following is my effort to define "discourse" in a working paper on
deixis in newswriting:
>
>Discourse has become something of a portmanteau concept. Barthes opened the
way for a broad and unspecific use of the term by treating language,
discourse and speech interchangeably in his Mythologiques (1972: 111).
Nonetheless, most uses of discourse, including Barthes's, can fall generally
within van Dijk's definition of discourse as "units of language use" having
both textual and contextual dimensions:
>
>Textual dimensions account for the structure of discourse at various levels
of description.
>Contextual dimensions relate these structural descriptions to various
properties of context
>such as cognitive processes and representations or social factors (van Dijk
1988: 24).
>
>If van Dijk is rather unclear on the nature of these "social factors" he is
not alone. Writings which focus on the contextual dimensions of discourse
have produced much of the semantic fuzziness surrounding the term. Many
authors write vaguely but authoritatively of "discourses of patriarchy" and
"discourses of hierarchy" and so forth. Most of these seem to be influenced
by Edward Said's brilliant 3-volume polemic on Orientalism, in which the
discourse of Orientalism is described variously and simultaneously as a
"style of thought," a "way of writing," a "configuration of power," and "a
sign" of that power (Said, 1979, 1980, 1981).
>One way to understand this multi-tiered approach is to imagine discourse as
a social space within which habitual action -- including those deeply
embedded sets of habits we call institutions -- engage with systems of signs
in the production of texts. In the process, the sets of meanings and values
shared (to various degrees) by participants are reproduced or changed.
Texts -- whether utterances, newspaper articles, movies, short stories,
instances of songs or of conversations -- in this conception are the
vehicles through which discourses are reproduced, contested and changed. But
a discourse is not the sum of a body of texts. Most texts are nodes,
junctures where multiple discourses meet. Texts must be "deconstructed" or
submitted to some other form of "archaeology" to recover traces of these
discourses.
>A discourse, then, is a form of language use possessing certain formal
characteristics which are the product of 'styles of thinking' and which
include corresponding 'ways of writing (or speaking).' Discourses reproduce
themselves in texts, the production and consumption of which are themselves
social processes marked by struggles for meaning between groups with
different access to authority and power. Interpretations of texts are never
simple but are guided by understandings people have of the languages through
which texts are constructed, as well as social conventions about what the
discourses and texts "mean," how they function and why they were written.
>