1346 Discourse

As the current thinking about disclosure suggests, we find that people manage a
balance between wanting to connect through telling private issues, and also wanting to
protect themselves from possible unwelcome or unexpected outcomes resulting from
disclosure. Thus there appears to be a calculus that we use to traverse the complicated
informational world we live in and still manage to establish, sustain, and repair our
interpersonal relationships when it comes to disclosure of our private information.

SEE ALSO:
Bad News in Medicine, Communicating
Bona Fide Groups
Dis-
closure in Health Communication
Family Communication Patterns
Interpersonal
Communication
Privacy
Relational Dialectics
Social Support in Interpersonal
Communication

References and Suggested Reading

Afifi, T. D. (2003). “Feeling caught” in stepfamilies: Managing boundary turbulence through
appropriate communication privacy rules. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 20, 729 –755.
Afifi, T. D., & Olson, L. (2005). The chilling effect in families and the pressure to conceal secrets.
Communication Monographs, 72, 192 –216.
Allman, J. (1998). Bearing the burden or baring the soul: Physicians’ self-disclosure and boundary
management regarding medical mistakes. Health Communication, 10, 175 –197.
Altman, I., & Taylor, D. A. (1973). Social penetration: The development of interpersonal relationships.
New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Caughlin, J. P., & Afifi, T. D. (2004). When is topic avoidance unsatisfying? Examining moderators
of the association between avoidance and dissatisfaction. Human Communication Research, 30,
479 –513.
Frijns, T. (2004). Keeping secrets: Quantity, quality, and consequences. Amsterdam: Vrije Universiteit,
Ridderkerks.
Greene, K., Derlega, V. J., Yep, G. A., & Petronio, S. (2003). Privacy and disclosure of HIV in
interpersonal relationships: A sourcebook for researchers and practitioners. Mahwah, NJ: LEA.
Jourard, S. M. (1971). The transparent self. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.
Petronio, S. (2002). Boundaries of privacy: Dialectics of disclosure. NY: SUNY Press.
Rosenfeld, L. B. (1979). Self-disclosure avoidance: Why am I afraid to tell you who I am?
Communication Monographs, 46, 63 –74.
Wheeless, L. R., & Grotz, J. (1976). Conceptualization and measurement of reported self-disclosure.
Human Communication Research, 2, 338 –346.

Discourse
Paul Cobley
London Metropolitan University

As a common term in English, discourse means any extended verbal communication, such
as Jesus’s discourse with the people (John 6: 22–71) or, “The Disinherited Knight then
addressed his discourse to Baldwin” (Scott, Ivanhoe). Discourse is lengthy but targeted
speech between individuals or between an individual and a group. As a theoretical term,
 Discourse 1347

discourse gained in importance during the twentieth century, both in the relatively new
discipline of → linguistics and in the newer discipline of communication study (→ Commun-
ication as a Field and Discipline), taking on two distinct meanings. First, it refers to
stretches of communication beyond the small units that are examined with the traditional
methods of linguistic analysis. Second, discourse directs attention to the social origins and
consequences of communications (→ Communication: Definitions and Concepts).

HISTORY OF THE CONCEPT

Discourse has a Latin root in discurrere, which itself is related to currere (“to run”). French
derives the terms discourir and cours from these roots; English similarly derives “discursive,”
“excursion,” “current,” and “courier.” The core meaning is movement of one sort or
another, or running around. This idea is embodied in current uses of “discourse” to refer
to communication as social interchange, and was also reflected in older occurrences of the
term. Famously, Descartes’s Discourse on method (1637) is envisaged as a journey round
the philosophical issues with which he was concerned.
After the Renaissance, “discourse” was employed in philosophy to suggest a laying out
of and meditation on theoretical matters. This usage echoes the idea of rhetoric as the
moving back and forth between intellectual positions in order to communicate effect-
ively (→ Rhetorical Studies). From the classical period onwards, rhetoric had been
established, on the one hand, as a practical means of identifying and studying longer
forms of human communication than individual signs – for example, exordium, narratio,
argumentatio, refutatio, peroratio (MacCabe 1979). On the other hand, these forms of
communication lent themselves to persuasive or strategic uses. In envisaging movements
between each of these forms or stages of communication, and between study and practice,
rhetoric served to develop categories of discourse for scholarly as well as other social
communication.

DISCOURSE AND LANGUAGE

In his Cours de linguistique générale (Course in general linguistics 1916; translated into
English in 1959 and 1983), Saussure projected “a science which studies the role of signs as
part of social life” (1983, 15; → Semiotics). Despite his focus on the linguistic sign as such
and the system by which specific utterances are underwritten (langue), he articulated a
need to open up linguistics for analyses beyond individual signs and sentences. Following
work by the Danish linguist, Louis Hjelmslev, Saussure’s Cours became applied outside
linguistics and outside the domain of spoken discourse. Hjelmslev’s resolute systematization
of approaches to the different levels of language, its elements and rules, made Saussure’s
framework even more amenable to other structuralist thinkers (→ Structuralism) such as
Claude Lévi-Strauss and Roland Barthes (→ Barthes, Roland). Both of these theorists
sought to explicate the components and possible combinations of language, further applying
these as general categories to various other media and modalities of communication
(→ Modality and Multimodality). While such work did not focus explicitly on a conception
of discourse, it delineated an approach to the social uses and implications of signs as rule-
governed, discursive sequences.
1348 Discourse

In the American structuralist tradition of the 1930s, Zellig Harris also explored rules
beyond the sentence by developing the concept of transformation. Whereas this notion
has been developed in various ways, within the theory of discourse it was elaborated
especially in the area of sociolinguistics. For example, through extensive ethnographic
work, Dell Hymes found that speech acts and other communicative events followed certain
well-defined parameters within a given cultural context: discursive and social patterns
were precisely aligned (→ Ethnography of Communication). The capacity to communicate,
then, is not simply a matter of being able to produce an infinite number of syntactically
correct sentences. Rather, communication depends on what current research would call a
discourse – a frame of reference including practical knowledge of when one can speak, to
whom, with what purpose, and in what circumstances.
Other sociolinguists such as William Labov and John J. Gumperz worked to cement the
understanding of language as part of the social world, with reference to a similar, nascent
notion of discourse (→ Interactional Sociolinguistics). One of the most influential sub-
fields of sociolinguistics, → conversation analysis, concerned itself with turn-taking in
discursive interaction and the protocols governing this, often highlighting the seemingly
marginal aspects of linguistic communication such as interjections, intonations, pauses,
and overlaps that inevitably feature in everyday talk. Next, conversation analysis would
focus on these features as formal representations bearing witness to the social roles of the
participants in a given interaction. The implication is that discourse – communication
bearing a close relation to speakers’ and hearers’ roles – should be understood as an en-
compassing system of social interaction that constitutes any particular group of speakers
in terms of a periphery and a core, and which comprises both their verbal and nonverbal
communication.

DISCOURSE AND SOCIETY

The first meaning of discourse – units of communication larger than sentences – tends to
imply the second meaning – communication as embedded in society – which requires
more than a descriptive account of language. Austin’s (1962) notion of speech acts has been
one of the key influences on theories of discourse in this respect (→ Linguistic Pragmatics).
While demonstrating that certain statements, in certain circumstances, have a performative
function rather than a descriptive (constative) one (e.g., naming a ship, pronouncing a
verdict), Austin went on to suggest that all statements tend to be performative – even if
they might be portrayed otherwise. This insight underlies contemporary discourse studies:
discourse has a rhetorical purpose, constituting speakers and hearers as ingroups or
outgroups, while simultaneously delimiting those social fields to which reference can
legitimately be made.
As a rhetorical form and a social practice, the concept of discourse further relates to
two other conceptions of communication beyond the sentence level. Text is a theoretically
neutral concept that refers to a string of verbal or nonverbal signs – written paragraphs,
paintings, films, dance performances, gestures, etc. (→ Text and Intertextuality). An analysis
might determine that such texts are part of a larger rhetorical form, or that they enter into
discursive practices with ideological implications. Genre denotes a group of texts that
share particular features, and which have been shaped for specific audiences and purposes
 Discourse 1349

(→ Genre). As such, genres, in addition to being discourses in themselves, may frame

specific social discourses – drama, debate, → journalism, → advertising, etc.
As social discourses, texts and genres ultimately entail the exercise of power (→ Power
and Discourse). While implicit in earlier understandings of discourse, power was defined
as its key constituent following the works of Michel Foucault. Today, it provides a
reference point for the social understanding of discourse, the second meaning above.
Foucault (1980) suggested that a particular manifestation of communication leads to an
embodiment of power in discourse. Because the state cannot be omnipotent, power is
often exercised (in an apparently nonstate fashion) through discourses. Although discourses
open up possibilities for what may be said or thought, their very organization also
delimits what can in fact be said or thought in a particular social sphere. Such discourses
include those addressing the body, education, gender, public health, etc. Moreover, each
discourse, according to Foucault, is maintained by specific technologies facilitating,
not least, the surveillance of individual subjects.
This understanding of discourse, further, implies a constructionist position (→ Con-
structivism). A discourse not only delimits what can be communicated about an object,
but produces the very objects of knowledge. A social constructionist position on discourse
is traceable at least to Volosinov’s work of the 1920s (Volosinov 1973), emphasizing that
verbal communication is more a matter of what people want to get out of a situation than
of information exchange. Discourse encompasses goal-orientated acts of representation,
effectively creating what is being represented. Because theories of discourse consider
discursive representations so powerful in constituting the social world, the concept of
discourse has sometimes replaced that of ideology.

DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
While building on earlier work on language and society, → discourse analysis proceeds
from a Foucauldian perspective on power as circumscribing discourse, and on discourse
as constructing social reality. In empirical studies, discourse analysis sheds further light
on how discourse is constituted in practice. Conversation analysis focused on turn-
taking between people but, ultimately, surveyed the workings of power as discourse
organizes membership roles for some while excluding others. Communication between
humans is not merely a matter of attempting to reflect the world; rather, it is a form of
social action.
Discourse analysis, despite variations, is committed to the general idea that meaning
and social roles are produced in interaction. This is true, for example, of frame analysis,
conversation analysis, and critical discourse analysis. One variant, → discursive psychology,
seeks to demonstrate that people’s very existence is constructed through their commun-
ications. Discursive psychology examines the detailed workings of discourse, especially
how people use discourse to do things, constructing the social world for themselves and
others. Such studies uncover, for example, the many disregarded stakes and interests that
people pursue in everyday communication (see, e.g., Potter 1996; Edwards 1997; Edwards
and Potter 2005).
Much discourse analysis has been predicated on verbal communication, but is increasingly
conducted with reference also to nonverbal signs (→ Nonverbal Communication and
1350 Discourse

Culture). The multimodal communications of electronic media serve as one reminder

that texts and genres are frequently part of a broader discourse, emanating from an industry,
an artistic practice, a historical epoch, or a mode or reception. Also in → interpersonal com-
munication, analysis has shown that the discourses pertaining to, for instance, occupational
practices are constituted as much by nonverbal as by verbal communication (see, e.g.,
Goodwin 1994 on court proceedings and archaeological digs; see also Sidnell & Stivers
2005). Discourse is also operative in the myriad nonverbal communications that make up
everyday life – the regularities of gesture, kinesics, and proxemics (→ Gestures and Kinesics;
Gestures in Discourse; Proxemics) that people employ implicitly while enacting social
roles for themselves and others.

SEE ALSO:
Advertising
Argumentative Discourse
Barthes, Roland
Business

Discourse
Communication: Definitions and Concepts
Communication as a Field
and Discipline
Constructivism
Conversation Analysis
Development Discourse

Discourse Analysis
Discourse Comprehension
Discourse Markers
Discursive
Psychology
Emotion and Discourse
Ethnography of Communication
Gender and
Discourse
Genre
Gestures in Discourse
Gestures and Kinesics
Identities and
Discourse
Interactional Sociolinguistics
Interpersonal Communication
Journalism

Language and Social Interaction
Linguistic Pragmatics
Linguistics
Meta-
Discourse
Modality and Multimodality
News as Discourse
Nonverbal Commun-
ication and Culture
Organizational Discourse
Political Discourse
Power and
Discourse
Proxemics
Rhetorical Studies
Semiotics
Structuralism
Text
and Intertextuality

References and Suggested Readings

Austin, J. L. (1962). How to do things with words. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Coupland, N., & Jaworski, A. (eds.) (2006). The discourse reader, 2nd edn. London: Routledge.
Edwards, D., & Potter, J. (2005). Discursive psychology, mental states, and descriptions. In H. te
Molder & J. Potter (eds.), Conversation and cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
pp. 241–259.
Edwards, D. (1997). Discourse and cognition. London: Sage.
Fairclough, N. (1995). Media discourse. London: Arnold.
Foucault, M. (1980). Truth and power. In C. Gordon (ed.), Power/Knowledge: Selected interviews
and other writings, 1972–1977. New York: Harvester, pp. 109–133.
Goodwin, C. (1994). Professional vision. American Anthropologist, 96(3), 606– 633.
MacCabe, C. (1979). On discourse. Economy and Society, 8(4), 270–307.
Potter, J. (1996). Representing reality: Discourse, rhetoric, and social construction. London and New
Delhi: Sage.
Saussure, F. de (1983). Course in general linguistics (trans. R. Harris). London: Duckworth.
(Original work published 1916).
Scollon, R. (2001). Mediated discourse: The nexus of practice. London: Routledge.
Sidnell, J., & Stivers, T. (2005). Multimodal interaction. [Special issue]. Semiotica, 156, 1–4.
Van Dijk, T. A. (ed.) (1997). Discourse studies: A multidisciplinary introduction. London: Sage.
Volosinov, V. N. (1973). Marxism and the philosophy of language (trans. L. Matejka & I. R. Titunik).
New York: Seminar Press.