Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis Across Disciplines (CADAAD)

Inspired by Foucault, Kress (1985: 6-7) offers the following definition: "a discourse provides a set of possible statements about a given area, and organises and gives structure to the manner in which a particular topic, object, process is to be talked about." Also inspired by Foucault, Fairclough applies the concept of order of discourse, where "the order of discourse of some social domain is the totality of its discursive practices, and the relationships...between them" (1995a: 132).

In contrast to these abstract notions of discourse, 'discourse' at the microlevel refers to actual language use or usages situated in time and place. Discourse in this sense can consist in different registers. Following Halliday and Hasan (1985: 38-39) registers are varieties of language "typically associated with a particular situational configuration of field, tenor and mode", for example, parliamentary debates, election manifestos or hard news articles. Whilst some authors make distinctions between them, talk and text can be considered verbal and written forms of discourse in this concrete sense.