DISCOURSE ANALYSIS: KEY CONCEPTS AND PERSPECTIVES

Moving from one layer of language to another, linguists consider the discourse level the apex of linguistic description. The enterprise of Discourse Analysis is to uncover the regularities of language that surpass the sentence_ the traditional ‘highest’ unit of description _ and that encompass the context of its use. Discourse Analysis is interdisciplinary in nature and has applications inseveral fields to which language has a particular relevance. The purpose of this paper is to briefly sketch out some of its key concepts and major broad lines of research.