Discourse as Structure and Process, Volume 1

Front Cover
Teun A. van Dijk
SAGE, 1997 - Business & Economics - 356 pages
What are the structures of discourse and what are the functions of these structures in the communicative context? This volume explains how and why discourse is organized at various levels.

The multidisciplinary contributions illustrate that discourse analysis goes far beyond the linguistic answer of designing grammars and goes hand in hand with the study of their uses and functions in the social context. Comprehensive and accessible, the volume covers a huge variety of discourse genres, including written and spoken, and storytelling and argumentation. The chapters also illustrate the necessity to examine the mental processes of the language users: How do people go about producing, understanding and remembering text or talk? The book stresses that both discourse and its mental processing have a social basis and can only be fully understood in relation to social interaction.

From inside the book

Contents

The Study of Discourse
1
The Story of Discourse Analysis
35
Discourse Semantics
69
Discourse and Grammar
112
Discourse styles
139
Rhetoric
157
Narrative
185
Argumentation
208
Genres and Registers of Discourse
247
Discourse Semiotics
265
Cognition
313
Social Cognition and Discourse
320
Name Index
348
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