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Complexity Applications in Language and Communication Sciences pp 187–205Cite as

Discourse Analysis: The Constructivist Perspective and Transdisciplinarity

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Abstract

This paper explores how discourse analysis can benefit from the main tenets of complexity theory : including its holistic (or systemic) perspective in the research of any object, always in relation to its emergency conditions; and transdisciplinarity as methodology . If applied to the study of discourse, it revitalizes ethnography as an empirical methodology , constructivism as a theoretical starting position, and the integration of discourse analysis with rhetoric, argumentation theory and semiotics , among other disciplines.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Indeed, with the death of Professor Gumperz, I would like to take advantage of this reference to pay tribute to him; and also to remember his kindness during the seminars that I attended in 1990.

  2. 2.

    As an example of the importance of this transparency between form and meaning , Kress uses the choice made by two chess players when they discover they have lost one of their pieces. Due to the strength of convention, they know that any object could replace the missing piece, but because of the strength of transparency, they would choose an object with a similar shape, size and colour to the original piece.

  3. 3.

    I refer to an earlier work (Morales-López 2011) to explain the origin of the term framework in the American tradition. In Montesano-Montessori and Morales-López (2015), we have linked the term framework with the concept of narrative or narrativity (Somers 1994).

  4. 4.

    In Montesano-Montessori and Morales-López (2015), we addressed the relationship between these two traditions, and their application to an analysis of the discourses of social change .

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Aknowledgments

This research is part of the projects RECDID and CODISCO, financed by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competition, and European Feder Funds (FFI2013-40934-R and FFI2017-85227-R; periods: 2014–2017 and 2018-2020; website: http://cei.udc.es).

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  1. Universidad de A Coruña, A Coruña, Spain

    Esperanza Morales-López

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  1. Esperanza Morales-López
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Correspondence to Esperanza Morales-López .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Catalan Philology and General Linguistics, Scripta (FFI2016-80482P), UBICS, CUSC, Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

    Àngels Massip-Bonet

  2. Grupo de Ingeniería Lingüística, Instituto de Ingeniería, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Ciudad de México, Mexico

    Gemma Bel-Enguix

  3. Department de Lingüística General, Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

    Albert Bastardas-Boada

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Morales-López, E. (2019). Discourse Analysis: The Constructivist Perspective and Transdisciplinarity. In: Massip-Bonet, À., Bel-Enguix, G., Bastardas-Boada, A. (eds) Complexity Applications in Language and Communication Sciences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04598-2_11

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