DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

Discourse analysis is a broad term for the study of the ways in which language is used in texts and contexts. Also called discourse studies.

Developed in the 1970s, the field of discourse analysis is concerned with "the use of language in a running discourse, continued over a number of sentences, and involving the interaction of speaker (or writer) and auditor (or reader) in a specific situational context, and within a framework of social and cultural conventions" (Abrams and Harpham, A Glossary of Literary Terms, 2005).

Discourse analysis has been described as an interdisciplinary study of discourse within linguistics, though it has also been adopted (and adapted) by researchers in numerous other fields in the social sciences. Theoretical perspectives and approaches used in discourse analysis include the following: applied linguistics, conversation analysis, pragmatics, rhetoric, stylistics, and text linguistics, among many others.

See the observations below. Also see:

Source: http://grammar.about.com/od/d/g/discanalysisterm.htm