Defining discourse

[Christian Kjaer Nelson]

At 09:25 PM 1/26/99 +0000, Zouhair wrote:
>    Notice that I have deliberately avoided talking about a definition of
>discourse. Is a definition desirable? Would a definition be possible in the
>presence of an ever-increasing number of discourse-as-utterance discourses?
>Would a definition be useful in the light of this diversity of discourses,
>which show adopt different moves, strategies, plans, goals, etc.? What plus
>would such a definition give to DISCOURSE? I think that DISCOURSE is
>utterances, and the the subfields of DISCOURSE define themselves according
>to registers, moves, goals, methodologies, etc.

This seems to suggest that the only kind of definition possible is one that
is "synthetic"--i.e., one that empirically describes a thing to which it is
attached.  One need not take this approach to defintions; one can take an
"analytic" approach to definitions, conceiving them as statements which
teach the use of the term through specification of its verbal equivalents,
etc.  Certainly it is useful to teach persons our, or the possible, uses of
a term.

Christian Nelson

Dr. Christian K. Nelson
Communication Department, Machmer Hall
Box 34815
University of Massachusetts
Amherst, MA 01003-4815 USA
413/545-6345
cnelson at comm.umass.edu