ABSTRACT
The need to account for discourse processes is pretty much universally recognised across the linguistic sciences, and is rapidly gaining recognition well beyond. On the other hand, there are widely differing views about what should be expected to derive from this endeavour, and therefore about what is involved both theoretically and methodologically. There are clearly different contemporary discourses of discourse analysis. The range of current and past conceptualisations and practices of discourse analysis cannot be comprehensively reviewed here, and this has in any case been recently done (by van Dijk 1985, particularly volumes 1 and 2). But a brief sketch of major current emphases will, I hope, establish a context for the diverse analyses assembled in this book, and allow me to present its collected chapters as showing a broadly agreed, distinctive orientation and enacting its own set of priorities for the analysis of discourse. These particular priorities, as we shall see, require a modification of several of the assumptions underlying more traditional work on discourse,
toward~ a greater recognition of diversity, a more direct focus on contextual explanation at various levels, and more conscious integration with broader social scientific (beyond more narrowly linguistic) concerns. I shall present this realignment as the reimposition, in at least certain important respects, of the goals of stylistics (in explanation of the book's title) and work towards a definition of discourse analysis as the contextual interpretation of psycho-sociolinguistic diversity.