A History of Discourse Analysis in France

Abstract

The field of discourse analysis comprises a variety of traditions and approaches. As their smallest common denominator, we can consider the assumption that signs, sentences, and texts do not have any inherent meaning, but that meaning presupposes a context and that linguistic activity is not limited to the level of signs and sentences. In the Anglo-American debate, influenced by pragmatism and analytical philosophy, discourse is in many cases understood as organized turn taking, for example as conversations and interactions. By contrast, the tradition that has emerged since the 1960s in France tends to associate discours with written texts circulating in larger social communities (Maingueneau 1987; Détrie et al. 2001; Charaudeau and Maingueneau 2002; Mazière 2005; Münchow 2010).