_In poststructural criticism, discourse has become a very prominent term, supplementing (and in some cases displacing) “text” as the name for the verbal material which is the primary concern of literary criticism. In poststructural usage, however, the term is not confined to conversational passages but, like “writing,” designates all verbal constructions and implies the superficiality of the boundaries between literary and nonliterary modes of signification. Most conspicuously, discourse has become the focal term among critics who oppose the deconstructive concept of a “general text” that functions independently of particular historical conditions. Instead, they conceive of discourse as social parlance, or language-in-use, and consider it to be both the product and manifestation not of a timeless linguistic system, but of particular social conditions, class structures, and power relationships that alter drastically in the course of history. In Michel Foucault, discourse as such is the central subject of analytic concern. Foucault conceives that “discourse” is to be analysed as totally anonymous, in that it is simply “situated at the level of the ‘it is said’ (on dit)”. (The archaeology of Knowledge, 1972, pp.55, 122.) for example, new historicists (for whom, in this respect, Foucault serves as a model) may attend to all Renaissance references to usury as part of an anonymous “discourse”, which circulates through legal, religious, philosophical, and economic writings of the era; it circulates also through those literary writings, such as Shakespeare’s sonnets or the Merchant of Venice, in which usury is alluded to, whether literally or figuratively. Any allusion to usury is conceived to be better understood if it is referred to the total body of discourse on that topic, as well as to the social forces and institutions that have produced the conception of usury at that time and in that place.
Definition 2:
_Usually a learned discussion, spoken or written, on
a philosophical, political, literary or religious topic. It is closely related
to a treatise and a dissertation. In fact, the three terms are very nearly
synonymous. A famous example is Descartes’s Discourse on Method (1637).
In linguistics ‘discourse’ demotes a ‘stretch of
language’ larger than a sentence.
Latterly, the term has acquired much wider meanings
and much wider implications. Basically, it is language which is understood as
utterance and thus involves subjects who speak and write- which presupposes
listeners and readers who, in a sense, are objects. Discourse has an object and
is directed to or at an object. Thus, in theory at any rate, discourse might
include any modes of utterance as part of social practice. They are
differentiated by their intention. Thus, discourse may be poetry or prose. It may
be a poem, a philosophical essay, a political tract, a biblical commentary, a
speech on the hosting, a funeral address, a polemic, a dialogue or an exercise
in deconstructive criticism. It may be any number of things.
Reference
A Handbook of Literary Terms, Abrams M.H, published
by CENGAGE Learning,2009.
Dictionary of literary terms and literary theory. Cuddon, J.A. Fourth Edition, Penguin Reference
