Discourse studies

In Discourse Studies, discourse is typically seen as a social practice of participants communicating through linguistic and other semiotic resources in certain contexts. Researchers in this field often insist on the constitutive character of discourse for social realities, structures and subjectivities. This article discusses both discourse theories (e.g., poststructuralist, deliberative, critical realist strands) as well as the more empirical approaches in discourse analysis (e.g., semantic and pragmatic, qualitative and quantitative strands). Special mention is made of developments in the West, notably in France and the UK, where Discourse Studies first started to emerge around 1970