ABSTRACT
Definitions of “discourse” are many, and vary across discipline boundaries (Mills, 1997). This chapter uses the term ‘discourse’ the way it is generally understood in functionally oriented linguistics, namely language use for communication in social context (Brown and Yule, 1983). While the significance of discourse in linguistic research has increasingly come to be appreciated, its place in linguistics cannot be taken for granted, given the dominance of Formal Linguistics for much of the 20th century. The intensification of interest in discourse in the last three decades was a key part of the functionalist rebellion to Formal Linguistics. Functionalism argues against the existence of syntax as an independent, self-contained structural level (Givón, 1984; Dik, 1997). It insists that grammar be studied in relation to pragmatic functions, discourse context, and discourse structure (Givón, 1979, 1983, 1984, 1989, 1995; Tai and Hsueh, 1989; Dik, 1997; Hopper 2001; Hengeveld and Mackenzie, 2008, 2014, inter alias).
