.

discourse
A term with several related and often quite loose meanings. (1) Perhaps in its
most general usage, it can refer to any form of language in use (Brown
and Yule 1983) or naturally occurring language. (2) It can also refer more
specifically to spoken language, hence the term DISCOURSE MARKER, which
tends
to refer to speech. Stubbs (1983: 9) also makes a distinction between discourse,
which is interactive, and text, which is a non-interactive monologue.
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(3) Another meaning conceives discourse as language above the sentence or
above the clause (Stubbs 1983: 1) and would lend itself to the analysis of text
structure and pragmatics. (4) Discourse can also be used to refer to particular
contexts of language use, and in this sense it becomes similar to concepts
like genre or text type. For example, we can conceptualize political discourse
(the sort of language used in political contexts) or media discourse (language
use in the media). (5) In addition, some writers have conceived of discourse as
related to particular topics, such as an environmental discourse or colonial
discourse (which may occur in many different genres). Such labels sometimes
suggest a particular attitude towards a topic (e.g. people engaging in
environmental discourse would generally be expected to be concerned with
protecting the environment rather than wasting resources). (6) Related to this,
Foucault (1972: 49) defines discourse more ideologically as practices which
systematically form the objects of which they speak. Burr (1995:48) expands
on Foucaults definition as
a set of meanings, metaphors, representations, images, stories, statements
and so on that in some way together produce a particular version of
events . . . Surrounding any one object, event, person etc., there may be a
variety of different discourses, each with a different story to tell about the
world, a different way of representing it to the world.
(7) Sunderland (2004) takes Foucaults meaning a stage further by explicitly
identifying and naming specific discourses such as women beware women
and male sexual drive (see DISCOURSE NAMING, GENDERED DISCOURSE).
Discourses
are not articulated explicitly but traces of them can be found in language use.
The more ideological uses of discourses, which occur towards the end of
this list, reflect postmodernist thinking. Potter and Wetherell (1987) have
shown that people often appear to voice conflicting opinions around a topic,
which they argue is due to them accessing a range of competing discourses
in their talk. Discourses are therefore contradictory and shifting, and their
identification is necessarily interpretative and open to contestation, particularly as
it is difficult to step outside discourse and view it with complete
objectivity. Foucault (1972: 146) notes, it is not possible for us to describe our
own archive, since it is from within these rules that we speak.