ТЕОРИЯ ДИСКУРСА В ПОИСКАХ СОБ-СТВЕННОЙ ИДЕНТИЧНОСТИ
Discourse studies on the move: in search of identity

Summary/Abstract: Discourse studies have grown into a vast and multifaceted domain of academic research. Vacillating between interdisciplinary and eclectic, discourse studies spin around a certain common denominator which seems to be related to the very essence of discursive phenomena. Saussure, Benveniste, Harris, Humboldt and others had pinpointed the opposition of process vs. product, or language as it is vs. language in social environment, the latter being considered, e.g. by Halliday as its most natural state and form of existence. Discourse studies in Russia have evolved from multiple roots: text linguistics, psycholinguistics, stylistics, lexicology, etc. An interdisciplinary and integrational approach admits viewing discourse from both similarly “opposing” sides. Technically it is concatenating words into utterances, utterances into chains, unities, fragments, texts, etc. Functionally and effectively it is leading to new meanings being born. The ensuing discursive effect is a result of combining elements into a whole at some point of time and place, by someone possessing certain social and individual characteristics, to achieve certain aims, etc. Discursive practices form a foundation for human praxis in general. They serve for organizing, categorizing, archiving and interpreting human behavior. The dual nature of discourse might suggest a basis for dialogue and reconciliation between systemic and anthropocentrical approaches in linguistics, or even between sciences and the humanities, in general.

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