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discourse

Generalization of the notion of a conversation to any form of communication

Entityconceptual system literary genreQ190539

Also known as speech

Instance of: conceptual system
, literary genre
Subclass of: human communication
Part of: human communication

Overview

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia · Read full article · Text CC BY-SA 4.0

Discourse is a generalization of the notion of a conversation to any form of communication. Discourse is a major topic in social theory, with work spanning fields such as sociology, anthropology, continental philosophy, and discourse analysis. Following work by Michel Foucault, these fields view discourse as a system of thought, knowledge, or communication that constructs our world experience. Since control of discourse amounts to control of how the world is perceived, social theory often studies discourse as a window into power. Within theoretical linguistics, discourse is understood more narrowly as linguistic information exchange and was one of the major motivations for the framework of dynamic semantics. In these expressions, denotations are equated with their ability to update a discourse context.

Overview

All data

34 statements · 21% with external sources · numbers in brackets are citations

Different from: Project:Discourse
oration
Studied by: sociolinguistics
discourse linguistics

Data quality

statements

21%

externally sourced

Source last edited October 13, 2026. AIDB refreshes this page daily.

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AIDB. (2026). discourse (Q190539). Retrieved from https://aidb.si/e/discourse-Q190539