In semantics, discourses are linguistic units composed of several sentences - in other words, conversations, arguments or speeches. Conventional phraseology often characterises a discourse as 'learned', as in: 'The Professor delivered a learned discourse on the obscure art of Orange peeling.' In the main, semantics (from the Greek semantikos, or significant meaning, derived from sema, sign) is the study of meaning, in some sense of that term. ... For the movie from Francis Ford Coppola, see The Conversation. ... Argument may refer to: (in logic) a logical argument, that is, an attempt to prove a demonstration of the half-truth of a conclusion based on the truth of a set of premises (in mathematics) at least three different things: a parameter or independent variable that is the input to... One might be looking for the academic discipline of communications. ...

Discourse analysis is the study of language used by members of a speech community. It looks at both language form and language function and includes the study of both spoken interaction and written texts. It identifies linguistic features that characterize different genres as well as social and cultural factors that aid in our interpretation and understanding of different texts and types of talk. An analysis of written texts might include a study of topic development and cohesion across the sentences, while an analysis of spoken language might focus on these aspects plus turn-taking practices, opening and closing sequences of social encounters, or narrative structure. Speech community is a concept in sociolinguistics that describes a more or less discrete group of people who use language in a unique and mutually accepted way among themselves. ...

Discourse analysis originally developed from a variety of disciplines: sociolinguistics, anthropology, sociology, and social psychology. Thus discourse analysis takes different theoretical perspectives and analytic approaches (among others): Sociolinguistics is the study of the effect of any and all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way language is used. ... Anthropology (from the Greek word άνθρωπος, human) consists of the study of humankind (see genus Homo). ... Social interactions of people and their consequences are the subject of sociology studies. ... Social psychology is the study of the nature and causes of human social behavior, with an emphasis on how people think towards each other and how they relate to each other. ...

• Speech act theory
• Interactional sociolinguistics
• Ethnography of communication
• Pragmatics
• Conversation analysis
• Variation analysis

Although each approach emphasizes different aspects of language use, they all view language as social interaction. A speech act is best described as in saying something, we do something, such as when a minister says, I now pronounce you husband and wife, or an action performed by means of language, such as describing something (), asking a question (Is it snowing?), making a request or order (Could... Sociolinguistics is the study of the effect of any and all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way language is used. ... Ethnography (from the Greek ethnos = nation and graphein = writing) refers to the qualitative description of human social phenomena, based on fieldwork. ... Pragmatics is generally the study of natural language understanding, and specifically the study of how context influences the interpretation of meanings. ... Conversation analysis is the study of talk in interaction. ...

In the social sciences, a discourse is considered to be an institutionalized way of thinking, a social boundary defining what can be said about a specific topic. Discourses are seen to affect our views on all things; in other words, it is not possible to escape discourse. For example, two distinctly different discourses can be used about various guerrilla movements describing them either as "freedom fighters" or "terrorists". In other words, the chosen discourse delivers the vocabulary, expressions and perhaps also the style needed to communicate. The Social Sciences are a group of academic and research disciples that study the human aspects of the world, that requires the application of the scientific method. ...

Discourse is closely linked to different theories of power and state, at least as long as defining discourses is seen to mean defining reality itself.

The social conception of discourse is often linked with the work of the French social philosopher Michel Foucault (1926-1984). Michel Foucault Michel Foucault (October 15, 1926 – June 26, 1984) was a French philosopher and held a chair at the Collège de France, a chair to which he gave the title The History of Systems of Thought. His writings have had an enormous impact on other scholarly work: Foucault...

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations by or about:

Discourse