dyskursie

Dyskurs (discourse) is a concept used in linguistics and the social sciences to refer to the way language is used within a domain and to the broader system of knowledge, power, and practices that shapes and is shaped by that language. It covers both concrete stretches of talk and writing and the abstract frameworks that organize a field’s talk about topics such as politics, education, or media. In linguistic contexts, dyskurs often means extended sequences of spoken or written text and the linguistic resources that organize them—for example genre, cohesion, and rhetorical devices.

Various theoretical traditions study dyskurs differently. Critical discourse analysis treats discourse as a site where social power and ideology are produced and reproduced; other approaches emphasize how discourse functions in social life, governance, and identity construction. Key figures include Michel Foucault, who described discourses as systems of statements that shape knowledge and power, and contemporary scholars such as Norman Fairclough, Teun van Dijk, and Ruth Wodak.

Applications include political discourse analysis, media discourse, educational discourse, and online or digital discourse. Researchers investigate vocabulary choices, metaphor use, stance, argumentation, intertextuality, and genre; they may combine qualitative analysis with corpus methods or ethnographic observation to understand how discourse operates in practice and how it interacts with social structures.

Critics warn that the term can be broad or vague, and that methodological differences affect comparability. Nevertheless, dyskurs remains a central concept for analyzing how language shapes and reflects social reality, influences public opinion, and constructs social identities.