The analysis of language and/or speech above the level of the sentence. Roland Barthes and other semioticians have undertaken a "linguistics of discourse" to exhibit the rules and units of discourse. A metaphor used by Barthes is that linguists are like the botanists who describe the flower, and discourse analysis is describing the way flowers are arranged in the bouquet.
the study of meaningful language units larger than a sentence.
Analysis of the social function of discourses. There are some things that cannot be said or thought. This means that discourses may have an effect similar to that of ideology.
analysis of speech units larger than the sentence and of their relationship to the contexts in which they are used.
is concerned with language use beyond the boundaries of a sentence, the interrelationships between language and society, and the interactive properties of everyday communication. For an introduction, with further links, see for example Slembrouck or Palmquist.
A research method that does not involve the use of experimental manipulation or statistics but focuses on conversations and text in an attempt to establish how people construct their reality or views of the world. See an outline of Discourse Analysis in 'deleted scenes' from the book
Discourse analysis (DA), or discourse studies, is a general term for a number of approaches to analyzing written, spoken or signed language use.