ABSTRACT
In the field of discourse analysis, scholars have typically emphasized adequate (if not exhaustive) description and explanation of communicative events in various contexts. Some have employed these tools in order to explore and account for the mechanisms of conversation as such; others have sought to disclose important features of the life world shared by members of diverse speech communities and/or by humanity at large. Among some discourse analysts, however, there has been a growing aspiration to the development of discourse-sensitive means for the deliberate alteration of people’s communicative practices in pursuit of improved personal, and even societal, outcomes. We may distinguish this as a kind of prescriptive turn in the discipline.
