Mikrodyskurs

Mikrodyskurs is a term used in linguistics and discourse studies to describe the smallest meaningful units of talk within an ongoing communicative event. It focuses on how individual utterances function in interaction, how they manage turn-taking, how speakers express stance, and how meaning is shaped by context, prosody, and social relations. The concept is used to study the micro-structure of communication, complementing macrolevel analyses of larger discursive patterns such as ideology, policy, or media frames.

Analysts of mikrodyskurs examine linguistic form (lexical choice, syntax, intonation), illocutionary force, politeness and face-work, deixis, reference, and how coherence is maintained across consecutive turns. By looking at local sequences—question-answer pairs, complaints, offers, refusals—their aim is to illuminate how understandings are co-constructed in real time.

Contexts for mikrodyskurs include everyday face-to-face conversations, workplace interactions, classroom talk, and digital communication such as text messaging, forums, and comments on social media. It is also used to analyze micro-level patterns in broadcast interviews or news discourse where brief utterances contribute to broader narratives.

Common methods are conversation analysis, interactional linguistics, and micro-level discourse analysis, often supported by qualitative coding or corpus-based approaches. Data consist of transcripts, video or audio recordings, chat logs, and other records of short exchanges.

Overall, mikrodyskurs provides a lens for examining how small-scale communicative actions produce social meaning, negotiate relationships, and shape collective understanding, while complementing larger-scale discursive analyses in linguistics and communication studies.