What is Discourse?

Discourse Analysis

In this course, Professor Veronika Koller (Lancaster University) provides an introduction to discourse analysis. In the first module, we introduce the concept of discourse, before turning in the second module to think about the concept of critical discourse studies. In the three modules after that, we apply critical discourse studies to three particular types of discourse: workplace discourse, political discourse, and discourse relating to gender identity. In the sixth and final module, we think about some new approaches to discourse analysis, including corpus-assisted discourse studies and positive discourse analysis.

What is Discourse?

In this module, we introduce the concept of 'discourse', focusing in particular on: (i) the various different definitions for 'discourse', and the one that we will be using in this course; (ii) the definition of 'a text'; and (iii) the distinction between 'a discourse' (count noun) and 'discourse' (mass noun).