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Discourse is a term used in semantics and discourse analysis. In semantics, discourses are linguistic units composed of several sentences — in other words, conversations, arguments or speeches.

It also refers to a social conception of discourse, often linked with the work of French philosopher Michel Foucault (1926-1984) and the Jürgen Habermas' The Theory of Communicative Action (Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns). Each thinker had personal conceptions of discourse which are thought to be incompatible with the other. They remain two important figures in this field; Habermas trying to find the transcendent rules upon which speakers could agree on a groundworks consensus, while Foucault was developing a battle-type of discourse which opposed the classic marxist definition of ideology (superstructure).

Discourse analysis

Main article: Discourse analysis

The social conception of discourse

In the social sciences, a discourse is considered to be an institutionalized way of thinking, a social boundary defining what can be said about a specific topic, or, as Judith Butler puts it, "the limits of acceptable speech" - or possible truth. Discourses are seen to affect our views on all things; it is not possible to escape discourse. For example, two notably distinct discourses can be used about various guerrilla movements describing them either as "freedom fighters" or "terrorists". In other words, the chosen discourse delivers the vocabulary, expressions and perhaps also the style needed to communicate. Discourse is closely linked to different theories of power and state, at least as long as defining discourses is seen to mean defining reality itself. According to Foucault's definition, discourse must be heard rather as synonym of his concept of episteme, notwithstanding important theoretical displacements (episteme was first thought of as the condition of possibility of discourses). In other words, Foucault's discourse must both be understood as a singular discourse, as defined above, and as a more general discourse, meaning the boundaries given to any particular discourse. In this more general sense, discourse is not composed only of words, which would be to limit oneself to a dualist conception: as he demonstrated in Discipline and Punish, discourse is also composed of architectural dispositifs, such as Jeremy Bentham's panopticon or the map of a classroom, etc. A dispositif is "a resolutely heterogeneous assemblage, containing discourses, institutions, architectural buildings [aménagements architecturaux], reglementary decisions, scientific statements, philosophical, moral, philanthropic propositions, in one word: said as well as non-said [du dit aussi bien que du non-dit], those are the dispositif's elements. The dispositif in itself is the network that we can establish between those elements."

According to Foucault, discourse can't be reduced to an ideological reflexion, it is to be thought as itself a Kampfplatz or battlefield. Against Kant's conception, Foucault argues that truth is not the objective bounty that the winners can take; truth is not an absolute, it is on the contrary produced in this battle with strategic aims. This conception of truth may be related to Althusser's theory on the "epistemological break" between science and ideology (the "epistemological break" is not an event, but a process; "science" always has to fight for its truth against ideology, which keeps coming back). Since knowledge and power are intrinsically related, according to Foucault, he can thus say that power relations are immanent to discourses, whereas in the classic marxist conception, the discourse is conceived as the ideological superstructure - which, of course, interacts with the base, as Marx wrote, but this does not impede the power relations being essentially located in the economic base, afterward reflected in the superstructure. Furthermore, as he showed in Society Must Be Defended (1976-77), discourse is not anyone's property and thus has no essentialist meaning. The same discourse may change political sides quite often, being reappropriated and endlessly modified, as did Foucault show in his analysis of the historical and political discourse; there is a "polymorphic tactics" of discourses. In other words, specific discourses are not tied to the subject; rather, the subject is a social construction of the discourse, or, as Nietzsche said, a "grammatical fiction". Judith Butler would maintain this ambivalency of discourse, which can be performed in various contexts by different subjectivities. In psychology critical perspectives on discourse have been developed in relation to developmental psychology by Erica Burman and in relation to social theory and psychoanalysis by Ian Parker (psychologist), and a critical research group, the Discourse Unit, was founded by these two. This perspective has also then had an influential bearing on critical psychology.

Critical Discourse Analysis

Main article: Critical discourse analysis

Miscellaneous

In computational linguistics practice, a discourse may lightly refer to a cohesive piece of text, such as a newspaper article or a book paragraph.

See also

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

Discourse

Philosophy Portal

• Foucault's episteme
• Critical discourse analysis
• Political discourse analysis
• Postcolonial literature
• Parrhesia
• Discourse Community

• Beyond Open Access: Open Discourse, the next great equalizer, Retrovirology 2006, 3:55