Author: Mary McKeller

Our understanding of the word ‘discourse’ comes from a multitude of academic disciplines including linguistics, literature, history, political science, philosophy, and communications. Because each field defines the term slightly differently, a single definition of what discourse is, its implications, and a more specific use within communications scholarship and academia can be difficult to discern. The term ‘discourse’ is often used as a synonym for rhetoric, but there are many nuances and perspectives of discourse that sets it apart from rhetoric, as the term is an event and ongoing verb rather than a noun. Michel Foucault defines discourse as, “Systems of thoughts composed of ideas, attitudes, and courses of action, beliefs, and practices that systematically construct the subjects and the worlds of which they speak” (Foucault 1972). This definition of discourse is broad but provides a basis of understanding that communication has power and constitutive properties. For this essay, I will be emphasizing the definitional use of discourse within Rhetoric and Communication studies as a way of understanding how language is used to shape our reality.  

The term ‘discourse’ derives from the Latin word discursus, or “running to and from”. This notion is now used to describe written and spoken communications; however, it takes slightly different forms depending on the discipline and the context in which it is used. In semantics, discourse is a conceptual description of a conversation that is made up of a string of signs and meanings (Marks 2001). This definition is prominent in the study of linguistics and fields that study how language produces meaning. Philosopher Michel Foucault takes the definition of discourse into a more metaphorical and conceptual level. Within discourse, a statement is not a unit of semiotic signs, but an abstract construct that allows the signs to assign meaning as well as to communicate specific, repeatable communications to, between, and among objects, subjects, and statements (Foucault 1972). Therefore, a discourse is composed of semiotic sequences of signs that communicate meaning between and among objects, subjects, and statements, which are repeated to develop a universal understanding. This definition configures discourse as an event and ongoing verb.

In Rhetoric and Communication studies, the term discourse is directly derived from the work of Foucault.   Discourse is systems of thoughts composed of ideas, attitudes, courses of action, beliefs and practices that systematically construct the subjects and the worlds of which they speak. In his work, specifically The Archaeology of Knowledge (1972), Foucault analyzes the role of discourses in wider social processes of legitimating power, emphasizing the construction of current truths, how they are maintained and what power relations they carry with them. Foucault later theorized that discourse is a medium through which power relations produce speaking subjects. As Hayden White (1978) emphasizes, discourse is the source of understanding, bridging the gap between reality and meaning. White writes:

The tropological theory of discourse gives us understanding of the existential continuity between error and truth, ignorance and understanding, or to put it another way, imagination and thought. For too long the relationship between these pairs has been conceived as an opposition. The tropological theory of discourse helps us understand how speech mediates between these supposed oppositions, just as discourse itself mediates between our apprehension of those aspects of experience still "strange" to us and those aspects of it which we "understand" because we have found an order of words adequate to its domestication (21).

Discourse, essentially, is the act of assigning and reproducing meaning. A discourse is a body of text meant to communicate specific data, information, and knowledge, and because of this there exists internal relations in the content of a given discourse; likewise, there exist external relations among discourses. As such, a discourse does not exist per se (in itself), but is related to other discourses, by way of inter-discursivity. For example, political discourse has implications of anthropological, communication, and philosophical discourses that make these inseparable from one another.  Chilton (2008) writes, “even if the language instinct is itself politics neutral, so to speak, one has to assume that the cultural and culturally transmitted characteristics of human language observably serve (though of course not exclusively) the needs of the political” (6). This reiterates how human language, its production and reproduction, contain implications of culture and power, and therefore politics, of which further discourses are created.

Discourse analysis tends to be synonymous with rhetorical criticism. However, there are important and necessary distinctions between the two. Tracy (2005) writes:

Rhetorical criticism and discourse analysis share the commitment to close study of texts in context. Yet the commitment gets understood and pursued against markedly different intellectual backdrops. Rhetorical criticism is pursued within a humanistic frame where analyses of texts are related to literary criticism, political and continental philosophy, history, film studies, and so on. Discourse analysis, in contrast, is typically grounded in social science and considers its cognate disciplines to be psychology, sociology, linguistics, education, and so on. Moreover, where rhetorical critics tend to study speeches and unique political actions, discourse analysts tend to study those aspects of social life that are ordinary and unremarkable (727).

Therefore, discourse is not only within public declarations of speech, but within our daily use of language that could be considered ordinary and unremarkable. But it is within this daily use of language where our reality is consituted and maintained.

One major challenge is how versatile the concept can be.  Because different fields offer different definitions and use the term for analytical purposes, theorist Seamus Miller (1990) has argued that the term risks becoming meaningless. He writes, “it is common now to hear (a) that everything is discourse; (b) that anything discursive in nature is by definition fictive or without foundation; and (c) that, therefore, everything is fictive and without foundation (115)”. This is something that scholars must take into account when analyzing discourse or using the term at all; while discourse is a repetitive and constitutive concept that outlines the creation of our reality, to expand the definition too broadly leads to a circular thought that if everything is discourse, and discourse is fictive and man-made, therefore everything is fictive and man-made. Even within scientific discourse, the belief that things are inherently true is only so because of the use of lanuage to constitute them as such.

Although the term discourse has entered our public sphere as a sort of buzzword, its application within the field of rhetoric and communication studies is of utmost importance. Since language is what consitutes our reality, the study and analysis of how it does so is important so that we can grow and develop as a society, rather than reproduce what has happened in the past.

Works Cited

Chilton, P. (2008). Analysing political discourse. London: Routledge.

Foucault, Michel. 1969. The Archaeology of Knowledge. Trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith. London and New York: Routledge, 2002. ISBN 0-415-28753-7.

Marks, Larry (June 2001). "A Little Glossary of Semantics". Revue-texto.net.

Miller, S. (1990). Foucault on Discourse and Power. Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory, (76), 115-125. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/41801502

Tracy, K. (2005). Discourse Analysis in Communication. The Handbook Of Discourse Analysis, 725-749. doi: 10.1002/9780470753460.ch38

White, Hayden. 1978. Tropics of discourse. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press.